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Attorneys and Counselors
Self-Insured Companies
Michigan Coverage Decisions
Michigan Coverage Decisions, Issue 192
Secura Insurance v. Joy B. Thomas et. al.
Unpublished. Decided December 1, 2015, Michigan Court of Appeals Docket No. 322240
The insurer filed a declaratory action to rescind coverage on a non-owned vehicle which had been endorsed onto the policy. The vehicle was involved in two accidents resulting in claims for PIP and underinsured motorist benefits. Based on fraud, the trial court allowed rescission of the policy. The trial court also entered judgment in favor of the carrier for restitution damages associated with payments made relating to the fraudulent claims.
On appeal, the Court rejected the policyholder’s arguments that the carrier was prohibited from rescinding due to statutory minimum liability requirements and that the carrier had failed to give proper cancellation notice. The Court of Appeals did vacate the damages award, with the exception of the payment for first-party benefits and remanded for a clarification on the award for attorney fees.
Kallas & Henk Note
The Court followed the recent Titan v. Hyten decision and its reasoning in reaching its conclusion regarding the availability of rescission.
John D. McAuliffe et. al. v. Auto-Owners Ins. Co. et. al.
Unpublished. Decided December 10, 2015, Michigan Court of Appeals Docket No. 323349
The insured was involved in a motor vehicle accident, incurring injuries, and subsequently settled with the other party responsible for the accident. The insurance carrier denied the claim on the basis that the insured failed to comply with the requirement to obtain prior written consent to settle. The trial court ruled the factual questions existed preventing summary disposition in favor of the insurer.
The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for entry of summary disposition in favor of the insurer on the basis that the insured had failed to comply with the written consent to settle provision. The Court rejected the argument that the insurer was equitably estopped from enforcing the policy provision by its silence. The Court noted that there was no basis to invoke equitable estoppel which was supported by any evidence provided to the Court.
The Court followed the long-standing principles of contract interpretation in enforcing the unambiguous provision and that equitable estoppel cannot expand the terms of the contract without justifiable reliance and prejudice.
Billy Rayfield v. Edwin Jared Stewart and American Reliable Ins. Co.
The Plaintiff was involved in an accident with the individual defendant and brought a claim for uninsured motorist benefits. The parties filed summary disposition motions on the basis that the Plaintiff did not have insurance at the time of the accident because he had failed to pay his renewal premium, therefore, was not entitled to seek recovery for his injuries. The trial court granted summary disposition in favor of the insurance carrier.
The Court of Appeals affirmed summary disposition in favor of the insurer on the basis the Plaintiff failed to present any evidence that he had paid the renewal premium. The Court also rejected the Plaintiff’s equitable estoppel argument for lack of any evidence to support this theory and the Plaintiff was not entitled to rely on the mailbox rule given that the payment was not properly addressed and no proof of mailing existed.
While the Court discusses the application of equitable estoppel in a non-payment situation, the Court specifically noted that there was no evidence of detrimental reliance by Plaintiff to use equitable estoppel to require coverage.
Robert and Susan Thill v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Ins. Co.
This case arises out of an “ice dam” damage claim on Plaintiffs’ home. A claim professional for the Defendant insurer determined the damage to the wood siding was due to rot and deterioration, which is excluded from coverage. Plaintiffs then decided to not pursue the claim and the carrier sent confirmation of this decision in writing. Plaintiffs reasserted the claim one year later. The carrier denied the claim based on the original and additional rot and deterioration. The trial court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claims based on the statute of limitations contained in the insurance contract.
The Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims based on its review of the insurance code’s statute of limitations provisions rather than the policy provision addressing the time limitation on filing a claim.
Implicitly, the Court engrafted the statutorily provided statute of limitations into the insurance contract by assessing the issue solely based on the mandatory statutory provisions.
© Copyright 2018 Kallas & Henk, PC. All Rights Reserved. | Website by: Affordable Website Specialists
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This blog is published chronologically. Go straight to the most recent post.
Gochsheim: Apple Blossoms in the Kraichgau Hills
The Kraichgau northeast of Karlsruhe is a landscape with rolling hills and picturesque villages. There are few small forests, the hills are mostly covered in fields and orchards, so you have wide views of the open landscape from every hilltop.
My favourite season to visit is in spring when the fruit trees are in bloom. Autumn and ripe apples along the way are also worth taking into consideration. I do not recommend hiking the hills on hot summer days because there is too little shade due to the lack of forests.
Many towns and villages have little castles and palaces. This landscape has a particular history. It was not part of Baden or Speyer or any larger territory around. Instead, it was home to several noble families who were Reichsritter (imperial knights) and ruled independent territories, subjects to the Emperor and no one else. These independent territories consisted of hardly more than one or two villages and the surrounding fields, but anyway. Nobility lost its independence in 1803 but many of these dynasties still exist and thrive, they play an important role in public life.
Gochsheim is one of the most beautiful among these settlements. Due to its location on top of a rather steep hill it has a significant skyline. Small as it is, it qualifies as a town. The town was founded by the Counts of Eberstein in the 12th century and was granted city rights by Emperor Friedrich II in 1220.
Gochsheim Castle and Church
These two buildings are the landmarks in Gochsheim’s skyline. The castle in Gochsheim belonged to the Counts of Eberstein. The family has long been extinct. Only one wing of their castle is still standing. There used to be a second, larger wing parallel to the smaller one but this part has been demolished. The complete castle on top of the ridge must have been even more impressive than it is now. The two wings framed a courtyard with wooden galleries along the first floor. The family crest of the Counts of Eberstein is attached above the portal. It is a so-called speaking crest: „Eber“ is a male pig, thus the crest shows a black boar.
The castle hosts a museum about the history of the town and the counts. A model in there shows what the castle used to look like while the main wing was still standing.
Gochsheim shared the fate of most towns and villages in the Upper Rhine Valley: It was burned to ashes by French troops in the Palatinate Heritage War in 1689.
Of the medieval church, only the steeple remained. The present church was built in the 18th century on the old foundations. The half-timbered baroque top of the steeple also dates from this rebuilding while the stone walls underneath are still medieval.
The town hall next to the church is also a late 18th century building, dated 1773, though with older parts.
If you happen to walk around the church and the castle, have a closer look at the school behind the church, in particular at the porch. The roof is supported by two wooden beams which are ornated with woodcarvings. They show two funny figures, the teacher and the naughty boy. The building is dated 1905 on the gable. The figures are most probably from the same time. The boy is stealing apples from a tree, feasting on his prey. The teacher is threatening him, finger uplifted in that typical teacher gesture and stick in hand. Is it meant as a warning to the children who enter the school? On the other hand, the boy's face is one big naughty grin... The teacher may shout at him as much as he wants, he is too far away to actually reach and hit him.
Apples have always been important in Gochsheim…
The Dry Walls - a Nature Reserve
The steep southern slope of the town hill below the castle is stabilized with stone walls and terraced gardens. Since it is exposed to the sun all day it has a very warm microclimate.
The stone walls have become home to plant and animal specieses which usually live in the Mediterranean but are extremely rare North of the Alps. The small ecosystem is researched and protected and gained the status of a nature reserve, known as „Gochsheimer Trockenmauern“.
The garden terraces are private property and cannot be entered.
There is one public path through the stone walls, a steep stairway that leads from the road below up to the castle, church and town centre.
The foot of the slope is the starting point for two worthwhile walking routes.
The Footpath along the Creek
A narrow grassy footpath leads along the creek in the valley south of the old town hill. There are three options to access it but all are a bit hidden.
By the bridge east of the old town near Gasthof Krone you can walk through a passage under a building to reach it.
The other options are from the main street along the foot of the old town hill where the stone walls are and next to the former town gate and executioner's house.
The path leads along the back gardens of the houses along the street. There are some chickes, lots of vegetables and flowers. Some old houses have been built on the remains of the town walls. There is also a rebuilt tower which once protected the (demolished and gone) gate where the street entered the town.
The Panorama Walk
The old town of Gochsheim is most impressive from the south. Castle, school, Bürgerhaus and church stand in line on top of the steep ridge. The panoramic view is best enjoyed from the opposite hill. After crossing the stream, a gravel path leads uphill. It continues along the edge of the hill and leads through orchards with apple and pear trees – breathtakingly beautiful in spring when the trees are in bloom. On the hilltop the landscape views open up in all directions. Grain and canola (rapeseed) fields cover the hills.
And even more in the evening under a full moon with nightingales singing… They have a large population of nightingales in the hills around Gochsheim. These birds have become rare in Germany, but here they seem to find perfect conditions. There was a whole chorus of them.
Nooo, I am not confessing my secret romance here! Back to more prosaic topics…
Hiking in the Kraichgau Hills
The hilly landscape of the Kraichgau offers lots of options for easy hikes. Bike tours can also be done but due to the ups and downs of the hills biking is more strenuous than walking.
Forests are rare and small. Most of the landscape consists of open fields and orchards. This means lots of wide views from the hills over to the Rhine plain and the larger hills of Stromberg and Heuberg.
The open landscape means hardly any shade. Hiking here is not recommended on hot summer days. The Kraichgau hills are most enjoyable in spring when the fruit trees and the canola fields are in bloom, and in autumn with fall colours and ripe fruit.
The only danger: ticks in the grass. This region is a high-risk area for FSME and Lyme infections. If you plan to leave the paths, tuck your pants into your socks and check regularly. On light-coloured uni pants a crawling tick is easiest to spot.
Three S-Bahn lines run through the Kraichgau: the S 31 and S 32 from Karlsruhe/Bruchsal, they split up in Ubstadt-Weiher, one proceeds to Menzingen via Gochsheim, the other to Odenheim. The third is the S 4 via Bretten to Eppingen and Heilbronn. Hiking routes can easily be planned between S-Bahn stops and lines. www.kvv.de has the details about the public transport network.
Posted by Kathrin_E 01:54 Archived in Germany Tagged gochsheim kraichgau Comments (1)
Bretten: A Poor Doggie, and the Town’s Greatest Son
Bretten is a quaint town in the Kraichgau hills, about half an hour northeast of Karlsruhe. Its old centre has preserved an authentic flair with small alleys and half-timbered houses. So far hardly in the focus of tourists, it is a worthwhile day or half-day trip. In 2017, in connection with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it may receive more attention than usual, though, because it is the birthplace of a certain very famous person… But more about him later.
Bretten’s old town is a maze of small alleys. The town is small enough not to get lost altogether, though. Photographers will find many pretty street views with little old houses, a bit of timberframe, and one or two towers showing up in the distance. There are the steeples of the churches, two medieval watchtowers along the town wall, and the gables of the old houses. The old town is located on a slope, so topography changes the views and perspectives all the time.
View from Bahnhof
Reaching Bretten on public transport is easy from all directions. Bretten is the train, or rather tram, hub for the Kraichgau region. The tram line S4 between Karlsruhe and Heilbronn crosses the line S9 between Bruchsal and Mühlacker at Bretten Bahnhof (train station). From Karlsruhe centre, the S4 takes you to Bretten in about 35-40 minutes depending where you board. Eilzüge (express trams) are faster. KVV tariff applies.
Bretten is not too big and the old town can be reached from Bahnhof on foot in about 15 minutes. If you are on the S4, though, you better stay on the tram one stop further and get off at „Bretten Stadtmitte“ which is just 5 minutes walk from the edge of the old town.
S-Bahn in the station, stop "Stadtmitte", and the view of the old town from there
On the way from tram stop „Stadtmitte“ into town I came across this Graffiti, and found it so funny and interesting that I want to draw your attention to it. I assume that the building behind has some function in the town's supply of drinking water. The outside wall has been painted with an artwork in graffiti style that includes the chemical symbol for water. „H2O“ is depicted in large letters made from pieces of fancy plumbing. A big wave of water seems to splash over the wall.
Brettener Hundle: The Doggie of Bretten
The little dog is the hero of an old legend which has no historical background but is very popular in town. Once upon a time, it tells, Bretten was besieged by a large army. The situation was desperate, food was scarce and military powers were not sufficient to drive the enemies away. There was no help from outside to be expected. Only a clever trick could save the town.
One of the city councellors had an idea: Let’s collect all available food, take a little dog and feed him, and when he is round and fat send him outside the town gate to the enemies. They will then believe that we have food in abundance and breaking us by starvation would take a very long time.
The trick worked, the enemies ended the siege and left. Disappointed and angry as they were, though, they cut off the poor doggie’s tail before they sent him back. The grateful citizens erected a monument with a statue of the little dog who rescued their town from falling. (I hope they also treated the doggie’s wound. Posthume fame alone would not have eased his pain.)
The original doggie is sitting on top of a historical fountain in Melanchthonstraße, not far from the Western town gate. The gable of Stiftskirche also bears a statue of the little dog (third photo from left). New copies of the dog statue can be spotted in some private gardens (photo on the right).
The Town’s Most Famous Son
On February 16, 1497 the first child was born to a certain Georg Schwartzerdt, armorer of the Elector of Palatinate, and his wife Barbara, the daughter of Bretten‘s mayor. It was a boy and they named him Philipp. The family inhabited a house in market square, so the boy will indeed have been playing around the fountain as depicted in the fresco.
Young Philipp was a talented boy. He was soon sent to the Latin School in Pforzheim where he studied all classical subjects including ancient Greek. Johannes Reuchlin, the humanist and Pforzheim’s reformator whom I mentioned in my entry about Pforzheim, was his great-uncle, by the way.
Nowadays Philipp would probably have translated his name into English and make it „Blacksoil“ to sound cooler. However, in the times of humanism, Latin and Greek were the fashionable languages among intellectuals. His teacher translated his last name into Greek and Philipp would then use that new name for the rest of his life. Under that name he has become famous to this very day: Philipp Melanchthon.
After his studies at the universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen Melanchthon moved to Wittenberg, where he became professor of the ancient Greek language at the age of 21. He was fascinated by the theology of Martin Luther and became, after Luther, the second most important protagonist of the Wittenberg Reformation. The rest is history, as we say.
Sometimes I wonder, what if Melanchthon has translated the Bible instead of Luther. The language of Luthers Bible had a vast influence on the development of what we now call High or Standard German. Luther was from Saxony and his language was Saxon, the upper-class Saxon German that court and authorities used. Had it been Melanchthon, the whole of Germany would be speaking Badisch now…
Melanchthon left Bretten at the age of 11, after the death of his father, and has not returned except maybe for short visits. The town is nevertheless proud of him and cherishes his memory. His father’s house where he was born does not exist any more. Around 1900 the large neogothic Melanchthonhaus was erected in this place. A statue of Melanchthon can be found in front of the main church, another in opposite the (sic) Melanchthongymnasium. Of course they also have one inside Melanchthonhaus.
Melanchthonhaus
The largest and most striking building in Bretten’s market square is the so-called Melanchthonhaus. The huge sandstone gable dominates the square. This is the place where Philipp Melanchthon was born in 1497.
The building is, as the neogothic architecture betrays, a lot younger and has nothing to do with his original birthplace. The original house of the Schwartzerdt family was destroyed in the fire of 1689 and nothing is left of it.
Melanchthon’s 400th birthday in 1897 was the occasion to build this house as a memorial hall, library, museum and research centre. Construction works were finished in 1903.
The interior is decorated in all splendour the late 19th century was capable of. Would Melanchthon himself have liked this style? Good question. In Wittenberg he inhabited a rather plain townhouse without much decorum.
When the neogothic Melanchthon House was built from 1897 to 1903 to commemorate the reformator's 400th birthday, the ground floor was designed as a memorial hall to Melanchthon and his colleagues. Life-sized statues depict the most important reformators: Luther, Bucer, Jonas, Brenz, Bugenhagen, Calvin, and of course Melanchthon himself, front and center. The frescoes on the walls show scenes from Melanchthon's life, including the young boy Philipp in Bretten's market square, the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 where Melanchthon handed the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Karl V., the opening of the high school in Nuremberg in 1526, Melanchthon's visit to his hometown Bretten in 1524, and Luther's visit to his friend's sickbed in 1540.
The memorial hall is part of the museum. The upper floors contain both permanent and temporary exhibitions around the life and work of Philipp Melanchthon.
From February to November Melanchthonhaus can be visited. Please check the Melanchthonhaus website for up to date information on opening hours, current exhibitions and events: http://www.melanchthon.com/ The complex is also the seat of Melanchthon Academy, a scientific research centre that does research projects on history, theology and arts, conferences and lectures, exhibitions and publications. Their seat is the hidden modern annex, reachable through the new side entrance. Their activities can also be found through the website.
Market Square and Old Town
Marktplatz is the heart of the old town. It is surrounded by a number of interesting buildings. The largest and most striking is the neogothic Melanchthonhaus. Next to it there is the town hall. The opposite side has a group of pretty timberframe houses from the era around 1700. The market still has its original triangular shape that originates from the medieval town plan. All buildings around date from after the fire of 1689, though. The only older piece is the 16th century fountain in the upper corner.
The sandstone fountain in market square is crowned by a column with the statue of a knight in full armour. His shield depicts the Palatinate escutcheon. The statue represents the governors of the town, the Electorate of Palatine. The date 1555 is inscribed on the column.
There were a couple of goldfish in the fountain - I have no idea whether they are official residents, or if somebody simply had emptied their aquarium into the basin to get rid of unwanted pets.
Bretten’s „old“ town hall in market square is not as old as it may seem. The town must have had a splendid medieval town hall, but it was destroyed in the fire of 1689 together with most of the town. A provisory was built soon after, but a real town hall was only erected almost a century later, in 1787. This building soon became too small, so it was extended and refurbished to its present shape in 1888. The facades in „German Renaissance“ style are a product of 19th century historism.
If there is an „old“ town hall there must also be a „new“ one. The new town hall, a few blocks away, is a modern concrete and glass building probably from the 1970s or 1980s.
Bretten has quite a lot of half-timbered houses everywhere in the old town. The most impressive ensemble is probably the northern side of market square, all built around 1700. Others can, for example, be found in Melanchthonstraße and in the alleys further downhill around the two churches. The cutest ones are in my humble opinion the little houses in Friedrichstraße.
Because you asked: No, these houses are not medieval: Bretten was, like most cities and towns in the Southwest of Germany, burned to ashes in 1689 by French troops. Hence all of them were built around 1700 and later. Young Melanchthon has not walked past any of these.
This real estate between the two churches has been the seat of the bailiff, the representative of the Palatinate government, since the middle ages. The first Amtshaus was a medieval stone house, then extended and refurbished over the centuries, which was then destroyed in the fire of 1689. Rebuilding it took some time. Finally, in the 1780s, the impressive neoclassical building complex was erected. After Bretten became property of Baden in 1803 it became the seat of Baden’s civil servants; that’s why the rooftop terrace bears the large crest of Baden. Nowadays the building hosts the local law court (Amtsgericht).
A small museum tells about life in Bretten in past centuries. Gerberhaus (tanner’s house) is located on the edge of the town by the stream, a typical location because this craft requires a lot of water and causes a lot of bad smell. The timberframe house is the oldest preserved residential house in town, built around 1585. Thanks to its location on the edge and next to running water, it survived the big fire of 1689.
Gerberhaus
In the 1980s the house was to be demolished in order to make room for a parking lot. A private initiative of Bretten citizens saved it. Research showed not only its age, but also the intact structure of a typical house of „farming citizens“, people who lived in town, worked in their craft and at the same time farmed their fields outside the wall.
The house was then restored and turned into a museum, together with the adjacent part of the town wall and gate arch. The exhibition shows the history of the tanners’ craft and the daily life in old Bretten. The museum is open on Sunday afternoons only.
Stiftskirche, the oldest and largest church in town, is one of the few buildings that survived the big fire of 1689. Its oldest part is the bottom of the steeple, originally the keep of an early medieval castle. The gothic nave and choir were separated by a jube as befits the church of a convent of canons.
The first and second reformation in the 16th century turned the church into a Calvinist parish church. After the peace treaty of Rijswijk (1697) the church was, like many churches in biconfessional Palatine, shared by Calvinists and Roman Catholics. The choir was closed with a wall and became the catholic church while the Calvinists used the nave.
The simultaneum lasted until 1938, when the catholic community completed their own parish church. Stiftskirche is now the main parish church of the Protestants in town.
I cannot figure out if the Stiftskirche has any regular opening hours for visitors outside the services. Except once I have always encountered locked doors. During my most recent visit I finally found the main church open for the first time. The interior was a bit of a disappointment, though. The whole nave has been cleared from anything historical, it is all modern, wide and vast. The only exception are the old tombstones attached to the walls of the southern transept which still has its gothic vaults.
The huge new organ fills the former choir entirely. The room appears more like a concert hall than a church. In front of this huge instrument the altar, or rather communion table as we are in an area with calvinist tradition, almost disappears. Forgive the blasphemy, but this piece of furniture reminded me of those folding tables that are used for pasting wallpaper. The (also new) flat ceiling is painted with an abstract fresco that suggests the shape of a cross or the sun or a shining figure in the sky - at least it adds some colour to all this emptiness. In other words, you won’t miss too much if you find the church doors locked.
Kreuzkirche
Kreuzkirche, the former Lutheran church, the smaller of the two churches, was built around 1700. Since Lutherans and Calvinists united to one protestant parish in 1821, the community has taken the larger Stiftskirche as their main church and this one is hardly in use any more.
It is said to have a beautiful baroque interior, but I wonder whether it is ever open to visitors.
St. Laurentius
After sharing Stiftskirche with the Calvinist and then United Protestant parish community for centuries, the Catholics were finally able to build their own parish church from 1936-1938 on a patch of land by the Northern edge of the old town. They dedicated it to St Laurentius.
The architecture is an example of the „retro“ style which was popular in times of the NS regime. The facades are rather plain. The interior is a wide hall with a low side nave along the Northern wall. The choir has a pseudo-gothic vault while the nave is covered by a wooden ceiling with carved and painted beams. The higher middle part consists of cassettes painted with abstract symbols of faith, trees and animals. The mural in the apsis was added in the 1990’s; I have no information about it but it looks a lot like it’s a work by the painter Emil Wachter. This church is, unlike its protestant sisters in town, open in the daytime.
Towers and Fortifications
Pfeiferturm
Simmelturm
Once upon a time Bretten was surrounded by walls, gate and watch towers. Most of them are gone. Along the creek on the southern side and in the southeastern corner parts of the wall are preserved, Three towers of the town’s medieval fortifications are still there. Two of them are complete and appear in the town’s silhouette, the third is a torso.
The tall Pfeiferturm on the Northern side of the old town is hard to overlook. It used to be the strongest tower. Its origins date from the 13th century. Through its history it has been damaged and repaired countless times. In former times it was accessible from the wall only, now there is a new entrance on the ground floor.
The tower can be climbed for the view; the key is available at the tourist information office and at the town hall.
Only a stump is preserved of another tower on the uphill side, named Frauenturm.
Simmelturm in the southeastern corner of the old town is smaller than Pfeiferturm and harder to spot. The tower has a crooked and worn-out look which tells of how much it has been through in its history. In former times it protected the Southeastern corner of the town. A stretch of town wall is still attached to it. A little park around the tower invites to sit down and rest.
A plaque on the wall recalls the Battle of Brettheim (Bretten) in 1504, the most dramatic event in the town’s history. Every year during Peter-und-Paul-Fest the battle is re-enacted here in the meadows around the tower. Peter-und-Paul-Fest is a big medieval festival which is celebrated in Bretten every year on the first weekend in July - but this deserves another visit and a separate blog entry!
The Town's Coat of Arms: Are We In Bavaria?
The coat of arms of Bretten will look oddly familiar to anyone who has ever visited Munich or other places in Bavaria. However, Bretten is not in Bavaria and has never been ruled by Bavaria. The lozenge pattern in blue and white originates from the Wittelsbach dynasty’s armorial bearings. One branch of this dynasty ruled Bavaria, the other governed Palatine. Due to their close relationship both lines used the same escutcheon with the lozenges and the golden lion on black ground. The magistrate of Bretten has adopted the territory‘s as their town coat of arms.
Posted by Kathrin_E 03:45 Archived in Germany Tagged bretten kraichgau Comments (0)
A Pilgrimage: Moosbronn and Michelbach
Moosbronn - this is almost the total length of the village
Here is another, very off the beaten path for tourists, suggestion for a combined hiking and sightseeing trip in the Northern Black Forest. Moosbronn and Michelbach are both parts of the municipality of Gaggenau, but separated from the main town. Both have preserved their village character. While Moosbronn is, first of all, a place of pilgrimage, Michelbach qualifies, to me, as one of the most beautiful villages in the wider surroundings of Karlsruhe.
The alternative to hiking is the KVV bus 253 that connects both villages with the station in Gaggenau and thus the Murg valley S-Bahn S 8 and S 81. The bus departs in the square opposite the station (Gaggenau Bahnhof). Buses run hourly until very late in the evening, they depart in Gaggenau on the full hour. The ride to Michelbach takes 6 minutes, to Moosbronn via Freiolsheim 20 minutes. The road to Moosbronn leads over the mountain ridge and is rather scenic, even with some views over to the Rhine plain. If you don't want to hike all the way to Moosbronn, or hike only one way, the bus is a convenient alternative. KVV tariff applies. If you arrived by S-Bahn, your ticket is also valid on the bus. Moosbronn also has regular bus connections to Ettlingen and Bad Herrenalb.
Moosbronn
Moosbronn is located in a tiny side valley high up in the mountains between Murg and Alb valley. From Gaggenau centre one has to cross the rather steep ridge of Mahlberg. Moosbronn is a small and quiet village. Walking the full length hardly takes five minutes. The village is surrounded by lush green meadows and forests with plenty of options for hiking.
The most striking feature of the village is the pilgrimage church of Maria Hilf which attracts a lot of visitors. These make the living for three or four inns. The catholic church runs two houses that accommodate groups. The church is impossible to miss in the small village. It is open daily from 9.00-19.00, in summer until 20.00.
Pilgrimages to Moosbronn began already in the late 17th century in times of the Turkish Wars. Legends tell of a farmworker who got stuck with his horses and wagon and cried to the Madonna for help, and Mary helped. The first sanctuary was just a small chapel, built in 1683. Since it attracted more and more pilgrims, a laarger church was needed. In the 1740s the present church was erected. Franz Ignaz Krohmer, court architect of the Margrave of Baden, desinged the plans. The sacred image of the Madonna is displayed in the retable of the main altar. It was painted after Lucas Cranach's Madonna with Child.
The second most striking feature is the stud farm and riding centre of Mönchhof where Icelandic horses are bred and trained. The house next-door is a shop which is specialized on equipment for Icelandic horse riding.
The Border That Cut the Village in Half
The village of Moosbronn, tiny as it is, used to be divided in two by a border that run right through the village. Since 1660 (when the Counts of Eberstein died out) one half belonged to the Margraviate of Baden-Baden and later the Grandduchy of Baden, the other to the Duchy, later Kingdom of Württemberg.
The division also influenced the religion: Baden's half was catholic, Württemberg's half was protestant. After the end of the two states the border still existed as border between two governmental districts within the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. Only in the administration reform of the 1970s Moosbronn was finally reunited when both halves became part of the municipality of Gaggenau.
The historical border stones are still there. They show the crests of Baden on one side and Württemberg on the other. A marked hiking trail (Grenzweg) follows the former border. In the middle of the village a stone obelisk marks the location of the former border. On some old houses you'll see the crest of the respective state.
Pilgrims Trail from Michelbach to Moosbronn
... or vice versa, I walked it the other way round.
The little church in Moosbronn and its sacred image of the Madonna is a popular destination for regional pilgrimages. Processions on foot from Michelbach are done on some holidays, and many people visit on their own.
At three locations there are small stone shrines with images of Mary and baby Jesus, private donations from the 18th and 19th century.
The trail is marked with a little picture of the church in Moosbronn and named Wallfahrtsweg (pilgrimage trail). It is signposted but sometimes you have to look twice to see the signs, usually nailed to trees. The pilgrims trail is not one of the large wide paths, it is the small and steep trail that crosses the wide paths.
The distance between Michelbach and Moosbronn is given as 3.5 kilometres, which sounds like a relaxed hike. I was in Moosbronn and did not feel much inclination to wait for the next bus. The weather was glorious but not too hot, and 3.5 kilometres did not sound too bad, so I decided to walk. At first the trail was wide and comfortable, leading through meadows and orchards (this applies to the Michelbach side, too). However, the route soon leaves the big path and takes a narrow, uneven trail straight up the steep slope. The highest point is Mönchskopfsattel on top of the ridge between the two villages at an altitude of 525 metres. The descent to Michelbach was a lot longer but just as steep. (Well, a pilgrimage has something to do with repention, eh.)
Unfortunately I was wearing my trekking sandals (I had not planned to go hiking, after all) - it was doable but far from perfect and far from safe. I recommend wearing closed shoes, not necessarily hiking boots but comfortable walking shoes with soles that have a good grip.
Michelbach is the most beautiful among the villages that now form the town of Gaggenau. It is cuddled into a side valley among the hills. A mountain ridge with Mahlberg and Bernstein as highest elevations forms the background. The older part of the village stretches along a stream named Michelbach (surprise surprise) at the bottom of the valley. Newer residential quarters have grown on the slopes above.
Michelbach is known for its beautiful and well restored half-timbered houses. Flower pots in the streets add to the atmosphere. The village is well taken care of, it has won a couple of prizes in countrywide „Beautify Our Village“ competitions.
Some houses are still working farms, others are just residential houses. Two marked walking routes present the village, its history, attractions and particularities which are explained on signboards (in German). The prettiest part is along the stream. The street leads gently up until you reach the Gumbe at the end of the village, a small pond that is a nature reserve and a leisure ground with barbecue and a Kneipp basin etc.
The current of Mühlbach stream has long been used. There must have been more water mills in the past - one is preserved, about halfway from the village centre towards the Gumbe and the upstream end of the village. Some of the water is lead in a wooden flume a lot further upstream which has less decline than the stream itself, hence this water reaches the top of the mill wheel several metres above the stream's water level and this drives it. The wheel is not un use any more, though, and does not turn. The former mill is a residential house now. When I took my photos, there was an old man sitting on the verandah by the water, relaxing in his deck chair and snoring happily. I think the inhabitants can do without the noise of a mill wheel.
Some houses still have them: little stone huts in the courtyard that contain a baking oven. While other villages have one or two large baking houses that were used by the whole community, here the farms each had one of their own or maybe for a handful of families. The ovens were separate buildings outside the houses because of the heat and the danger of fire. Having them in the street, easily accessible, makes sense. I found two in Rotenfelser Straße, round the corner from the church, but there must be more.
The catholic parish church marks the centre of the village. It was built on a terrace above the main square. Its history dates back to the middle ages, it is one of the oldest parishes in the Murg valley. Only the bottom part of the steeple is left of the medieval church, though. The nave was substituted by a larger one in the 18th century which then underwent further changes in the 20th (date 1936 above the portal). The interior is a wide hall without much atmosphere. The four altars and the pulpit are in baroqze style but they do not fit together, they look like an exhibition in a furniture shop. It is hard to tell how old they really are because the catholic church art still uses the baroque style to this very day. The church is open in the daytime. If you walk past anyway, you may want to have a look inside, but it is not worth a detour.
The Walk from Michelbach to Gaggenau through the Streuobstwiesen
Paved paths lead through the orchards between Gaggenau and Michelbach. I had missed the bus in Michelbach and would have had to wait for almost an hour, so I decided, despite my tired feet, to walk the last leg back to Gaggenau and the tram home instead. The gentle slopes offer a great view into the Murg valley, which is already rather wide in this part. Many apple trees are growing in the meadows. It was beautiful in autumn. In April when the apple trees are in bloom it must be absolutely lovely.
There seems to be no exact translation into English for the term Streuobstwiese, so let me use the German word. It describes a traditional type of cultural landscape around villages: grassland loosely planted with fruit trees of various varieties: apples, pears, plums, walnuts, cherries etc. The grass is mown only once or twice a year and can be used for making hay. The trees require some cutting in early spring and the harvest in summer or autumn depending on the type of fruit. Otherwise they are left alone. Pears and apples from the trees are, for example, the base for the making of „Moscht“, the local variety of cider.
These meadows are home to many specieses of wildflowers, to many insects, small mammals and birds and form a valuable natural habitat. They are very important for the ecologic balance. Many animals appreciate the hollows in old trees for nesting and refuge. The wide variety of specieses makes Streuobstwiesen precious natural reserves, as well as being useful to the human owners because of their fruit. In former times they covered wide areas. Industrialized agriculture made them redundant. In the 20th century many of them disappeared to make room for more efficient ways of farming. In recent times they are being re-established in many places, though, for their value in the protection and conservation of nature.
Streuobstwiesen can be found on the lower, gentle slopes around the villages in the Murg valley. Paths and small roads allow easy walks. In spring, the blooming fruit trees and the wildflowers are a beautiful sight. In autumn, a walk through Streuobstwiesen is nourishing. Warning, these trees belong to someone, so don't rob the whole harvest. However, I see nothing wrong in picking up a fallen apple or two from the grass under a tree and enjoying it on the spot.
Through the suburbs of Gaggenau I finally reached the station and jumped on the S-Bahn. With the bus I would have made the same train, so the walk did not cost me extra time. After this, for my habits, rather long hike I appreciated the seat on the tram...
Posted by Kathrin_E 00:18 Archived in Germany Tagged black_forest gaggenau Comments (1)
Knittlingen: Hometown of Alchemy and Schlager
Knittlingen is a tiny town in the Kraichgau hills. Judging from ist size, you would call it a village - but for almost 200 years it has had the status of a town. Located between Bretten and Maulbronn, Knittlingen is an easy stopover along the way between them. The town is quite rural in its appearance. Many residential houses are old farmhouses. Its historical centre has several dozens of fine half-timbered houses, some well restored, others not so.
Knittlingen claims to be the birthplace of Doctor Faustus, the real Doctor Faustus, who was an alchemist in the early 16th century. However, there are three other towns and villages that also claim to be his birthplace. Who knows.
However, and that's for sure, Knittlingen is also the birthplace of Die Flippers, one of Germany's most successful Schlager bands, who started their big career in 1969. Two of the three band members are still living here. Their music fits into this place. Somehow time stood still here, in particular if you decide to go shopping...
Knittlingen's historical centre covers a hill, not too high but the ascent is notable. It used to be surrounded by a wall and moat to protect the town from attacks. Both are gone, but the oval ground plan of the town centre still reflects where it was. The church, the old town hall and the wine press(!) occupy the highest point of the hill. Knittlingen is a wine town. In the middle ages it belonged to Maulbronn Abbey. Later it became property of the Duchy of Württemberg.
The old town can be explored on foot in half an hour. Its dimensions are small. Despite several destructions in the wars of the early modern era, quite a number ofhistorical stone buildings and half-timbered houses are preserved. The place is entirely untouristy, though. They try a bit of marketing, but I don't think that the town gets too many visitors. If you want to see „authentic rural Germany“, here it is.
The old town extends along the streets Marktstraße and Kirchplatz, Untere Gasse, Pfleghof, Fauststraße, Seestraße, Brunnenstraße and Gaisbergstraße. As I said, it is small...
In the 18th century houses were marked with signs that represented the owner's profession. I found these here in Untere Straße but I am sure that there are more in other streets, too.
The first two photos belong to the same building, a large winery and a cooper's workshop. The tools compass, hammer, and two others I can't identify, together with a barrel - indicate, I think, a cooper's business. Above the cellar door on the side, there is a barrel depicted: Does it translate to, „The wine goes in here“? Jacob Plag, whose front door you see in the third photo, surely was a butcher.
The most central building in Knittlingen is neither the church nor the town hall, but this rather plain stone building. It was constructed by Maulbronn abbey, the owner of the village, in the middle ages as part of the Pfleghof, i.e. their economical estate within the (then) village. T
his building hosted the wine presses. The size indicates that large amounts of grapes were harvested here and brought in for pressing.
We are in a wine region - priorities must be set!
The town's parish church has its origins in the middle ages, probably in the 13th century. The late gothic choir dates from the 15th century. The wars of the early modern era did not spare the church, though. Repairs and refurbishments were necessary more than once. The village being property of Württemberg after 1504, the reformation was introduced and the church became Lutheran.
To the west, the hill suddenly makes a rather steep descent, so from that side the steeple appears most impressive and higher than it actually is. Unfortunately the church was not open (I wonder if it ever is outside services), so I cannot tell you anything about the interior.
Every year on May 1, a May Tree is set up in the centre of the town, which then remains over the summer and fall. It is a high tree trunk crowned with a fresh spruce or fir tree. The trunk is decorated with little scenes from daily life and professions in former times. These here look rather home-made, really cute. I am not sure what the dolphins on the top bar are referring to, though. The May Tree adds that little extra that makes the ensemble of church,. old town hall and wine press the perfect postcard puicture.
This photo, the one at the top, must have impressed the photo people here on Travellerspoint, as it was one of my first pics that got featured... Who would have thought that this little place would receive so much honour and attention.
In the Footprints of Doctor Faustus
Johann Georg Faust, the real Doctor Faustus, is said to have been born in a house next to the church in Knittlingen around 1480. He became a (in)famous alchemist, astrologer, healer and magician. His death occurred under mysterious circumstances in Staufen im Breisgau around 1540 - legends tell that the devil came to collect him. Most likely one of his alchemist experiments went sadly wrong.
The historical figure inspired Goethe to write his most famous drama, Faust I.
The half-timbered house on the corner of Kirchplatz is known as Faust's birthplace and marked with plaques. This is not the original house, though. The present building probably dates from the 16th century.
The baroque building next to it used to be Knittlingen's Latin School. Nowadays it hosts the Faust archive and library, which can be used for research. The house is also used for temporary exhibitions, concerts and lectures.
The old town hall is the most beautiful half-timbered house in Knittlingen. Its present shape is owed to repair and rebuilding in the early 18th century after it had suffered substantial damages in the wars of the 17th.
In modern times it became too small for aven a small town's administration. In the 1950s the new town hall was built on the grounds of the former Thurn und Taxis post station at the opposite end of Marktstraße.
Since then the old town hall has been the seat of the Faust museum. The museum shows, according to the desciption on their website, a permanent exhibition on the life and myths of the historical Faust. We came at lunchtime on a weekday, though, so we could not visit the museum.
Opening hours: Tues-Fri 09.30 - 12.00 and 13.30 - 17.00, Sat, Sun and holidays 10.00 - 18.00
Website: http://faustmuseum.de
Shopping like in the 1970s
We laughed our heads off when we found this shop window in the centre of Knittlingen. The goods on display look as if they have neither sold anything nor received anything new since about 1985, and many pieces are even much older. The shop sells various stuff including papetries and school supply, books and maps, some clothes and swimwear, toys, bags and suitcases, household items, and model trains.
The board games looked familiar to me - I actually owned one of them in my childhood, in exactly the same box. One of the schoolbags, the orange one, reminded me very much of my own that I had when I started school in 1972. Or do you need a road map of Yugoslawia…?
Swimwear fashion has also changed *a bit* in recent decades. The books in the window are self-help books for parents of schoolkids (it was September and the new schoolyear just about to begin); they also look very much 1970s. At least, prices are already in Euro.
The shop was closed and no one there, so we did not offend anyone with our laughter. One of our party later went back when the shop was open. He returned very happy, having found some items for his model train that weren't available anywhere else any more. He said the shop is owned by a very old lady who probably keeps the business running after the death of her husband, and who has somehow lost contact with modern times.
Posted by Kathrin_E 06:17 Archived in Germany Tagged kraichgau Comments (2)
Vrooommm Santa Claus! Basel on St Nikolaus Day
„Santa Claus“ is actually Saint Nikolaus and his holiday is December 6. In Basel they call it „Samichlaus“, and it is an important event. Basel is full of santas that day, respective the Saturday that is closest to Dec 6 (in that year Dec 6 was on a Saturday). Nikolauses, or rather Nikoläuse to use the correct German plural, are everywhere in the shops and streets. Kids can take a ride in a horse-drawn carriage with Nikolaus. One was in a canoe on the Rhine. Later I even spotted a dragon boat with some 20 Nikolauses rowing, unfortunately it was too far away to take a photo. There was also kind of a barrel organ festival in the city with musicians everywhere. And the Christmas market is on.
The Nikolaus's dress is usually the same as the Weihnachtsmann respective Santa Claus wears: red coat and pointed hat with white furry borders, long white beard and so on. Only those who 'work' for churches will wear a bishop-like outfit that resembles the original Saint Nikolaus, bishop of Myra.
Nikolaus often comes with a companion, Knecht Ruprecht or Schmutzli. The guy in black is the counterpart of good Nikolaus who can be Nikolaus' helper but also the scary one who punishes bad deeds.
Many shops have their own Nikolauses distributing sweets to children. Most are dressed in the usual Santa Claus outfits. Some look different, though. The strange blue creature is the mascot of a shop in Basel. They dressed him up with a Santa hat for the occasion and let him distribute sweets to the kids. Understandably the littlies were scared of him, though...
In one square, three men dressed up as The Three Holy Kings or Magi were collecting money for a charity project that helps homeless people. If anyone threw a coin into the hat, they would bang their sticks on the hollow ground of the little stage.
Harley Niggi-Näggi Parade
However: Forget everything you ever heard of reindeers, sleighbells and stuff. Modern Santa Claus rides a Harley!
The Harley parade takes place on the Saturday closest to St Nikolaus Day, December 6, at 5 p.m. The city centre stops its shopping activities, people line up on the sidewalks to see the „Harley Niggi-Näggi“ parade.
This event is organized by the North West Switzerland chapter of the Harley Davidson club to raise money for charity. They do a parade through the city centre to Marktplatz, where they will then collect donations.
About 40 or 50 bikers dress up and decorate their bikes with incredible imagination. You hardly see the bikes underneath all that Christmassy decoration. Absolutely hilarious and not to be missed.
Santa and Mrs Claus go biking together
How many Christmas trees fit on a Harley? At least four.
One guy dressed his motorbike in fur and turned it into a donkey. So shall we call it a "Harley Donkeyson"?
Another transported a whole herd of plush reindeer.
Other use artificial fir garlands, glittery ornaments, blinking chains of light in all colours.
In case anyone wonders about safety: Yes they do wear helmets underneath. Yes Police accompanies the parade and keeps spectators out of the way.
My recommended place to watch is in the middle part of Freie Straße (the pedestrianized shopping street) between Streitgasse and Bäumleingasse, because the parade passes here twice. They come from Barfüßerplatz, turn right into Freie straße, then do a loop through the side lanes and return along Freie Straße towards market square. The parade passes quickly, hence it’s good to see them a second time.
Posted by Kathrin_E 23:49 Archived in Switzerland Tagged christmas events basel Comments (0)
(Entries 16 - 20 of 51) Previous « Page 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 10 .. » Next
Schiltach: Fairytale Town in the Black Forest
Vogtsbauernhof Museum Village
Mainz Christmas Market
Ludwigsburg: Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins
The Palatinate Forest: Hikers‘ Paradise
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Statement to the UN Security Council on the Situation in Darfur.
1. Thank you for your invitation. Allow me to begin by congratulating you on assuming the Council’s Presidency and wish you every success in steering the important work of this august body throughout the month of June.
Mr. President, Your Excellencies,
2. It is over thirteen years since the Council referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court and directed me to report to it every six months on actions taken and progress made pursuant to the Resolution. After thirteen years and twenty-seven reports, the victims of grave crimes which prompted this Council to refer the Darfur situation to the ICC are yet to see those alleged to be most responsible for such crimes face justice.
3. The question begs asking: how many more years and how many more reports will be required for this Council to be galvanized into taking tangible action? How much longer should victims of the alleged atrocity crimes in Darfur suffer in silence or wait to have their torment acknowledged through concrete results?
4. This Council has an important role to play in supporting the effective implementation of its own Resolution which referred the Darfur situation to the Court.
5. In operative paragraph 2 of Resolution 1593, this Council decided that the Government of Sudan and all other parties to the conflict in Darfur, shall cooperate fully with and provide any necessary assistance to the Court and the Prosecutor.
6. Regrettably, the Government of Sudan has not only refused to cooperate with the Court, in clear violation of the Council’s Resolution but has rather been emboldened to publicly denounce the Court in this forum. It does so repeatedly with facile and baseless allegations aimed at creating a distraction from the real issues and the Government’s failure to fulfill its responsibilities and obligations.
7. It is also regrettable that such intransigence has been presented in this Chamber where respectful discourse is to govern all interventions, focused on finding real solutions to the serious issues this august body is seized of.
8. The eyes of the world are upon us; the eyes of victims and victims’ groups in Darfur, some of whom are present today, are upon us. They are owed at least this minimum decorum and they deserve not to have their ordeals undermined by rhetoric aimed at confusing the issues and distracting the Council’s and the world’s attention from what we are really concerned with here: the need to ensure there is accountability through the Court’s independent judicial process for the serious and destabilising crimes under the Rome Statute committed in Darfur.
9. Today, I also want to use this opportunity to reassure the victims in Darfur, my Office has neither forgotten nor abandoned them. Despite the many challenges we face, my Office continues to do all within its power and means to ensure that alleged perpetrators against whom ICC arrest warrants have been issued will face justice in Court.
10. The ICC is a permanent judicial institution and it is here to stay. The evidence collected to date as part of our Darfur investigations, thanks to the assistance and commitment of victims and witnesses often at great risk, has persuaded the judges of the Court to issue warrants of arrest against five suspects. My Office continues to collect more evidence. Considerable progress has been made in this regard, thanks to the cooperation of a number of States and the sacrifices that many continue to make to help us solidify our cases towards the aim of being trial ready.
11. What is required now is for this Council and the international community at large, to support the apprehension and transfer of ICC suspects to the Court so that they can answer the charges against them through a fair, independent and objective judicial process.
12. Let me be clear: the effective power to arrest and surrender ICC suspects in the Darfur situation solely rests with States. This Council also plays a vital role in ensuring these obligations are honoured.
13. I once again urge the Council to take concrete action concerning States referred to it by the Court following failures by such States to arrest and surrender ICC suspects in the Darfur situation, while on their territory. I am encouraged by the efforts that a number of members of this Council, including permanent members, continue to make to break the impasse. These efforts include proposals for potential responses by the Council to the referrals it receives and public calls to States, including Sudan, to cooperate with the Court to execute outstanding arrest warrants. This ongoing support for the work of the Office by individual members of this Council is greatly valued.
14. As mentioned, there are today, five persons in the Darfur situation subject to outstanding warrants of arrest: officials of the Government of the Republic of Sudan, Mr. Omar Al Bashir, Mr. Ahmad Harun and Mr. Abdel Hussein, militia leader Mr. Ali Kushayb and rebel leader Mr. Abdallah Banda. All are presently at large.
15. These fugitives stand accused of multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes. These alleged atrocities include the widespread rape and sexual assault of women and girls, attacks on civilians and forcible expulsion from their homes, and detention, torture and summary executions of men detained by Janjaweed and the Sudanese Army. It is also alleged that in 2007, personnel of an African Union peacekeeping operation in Darfur were attacked and murdered at their Haskanita base by rebel forces under the command of Mr. Banda. These are all serious crimes of great concern that must be addressed.
16. Following this Council’s referral, the Office’s investigation and applications for warrants of arrest and the Pre-Trial Chambers’ issuance of these warrants, there are now two main areas of focus in the Darfur situation: first, the Office’s efforts to advance its investigations and second, the Court’s collective efforts to secure the arrest and surrender of the suspects in the Darfur situation. The support of the Council is critical to each if we are to move the Darfur situation forward and achieve justice for the victims.
17. In relation to the Office’s ongoing investigations, during the reporting period, the efforts of my team of lawyers, investigators and analysts resulted in important advancements in the cases against the Darfur suspects. Additional witnesses have been interviewed and a significant number of leads developed.
18. However, despite this progress, additional funding is required to allow the team to increase the pace and breadth of its investigations. For this reason, I must respectfully repeat my request to this Council to facilitate financial support from the United Nations for the Office’s investigations in the Darfur situation, as is envisaged under article 115(b) of the Rome Statute.
19. My report also makes clear that during the reporting period, the team’s ongoing investigations benefited from the cooperation of over twenty States Parties. My Office is immensely grateful for this support.
20. Regrettably, however, Sudan and a number of States Parties do not cooperate with my Office in the Darfur situation. I, therefore, repeat my request to this Council to take steps to facilitate dialogue between my Office and the Government of Sudan. I also repeat my invitation to the Government of Sudan to constructively engage with my Office, including in particular, to discuss future investigative missions by the Office to Darfur.
21. My report further provides an overview of the current ongoing litigation before the Court relating to States Parties that failed to arrest and surrender Mr. Al Bashir while on their territory.
22. In relation to the Republic of Uganda and the Republic of Chad, Pre-Trial Chamber II has initiated proceedings pursuant to article 87(7) of the Rome Statute in relation to the failures by these State Parties to arrest and surrender Mr. Al Bashir during official visits on 14 November 2017 and 1-2 December 2017, respectively. Both Uganda and Chad were previously referred by Pre-Trial Chambers of the Court to this Council for past failures to arrest and surrender Mr. Al Bashir: Uganda in 2016 and Chad in 2011 and 2013. No action in relation to these, or any other referrals by Pre-Trial Chambers to this Council, has been taken. This situation, I respectfully submit, is untenable and the Council must increasingly assume its responsibility to take appropriate action following a notification by the Court of non-compliant States.
23. Proceedings are also ongoing regarding Jordan’s failure to arrest and surrender Mr. Al Bashir in March 2017.
24. I must emphasize that the Pre-Trial Chambers of the Court have developed a body of jurisprudence that clarifies the obligations of States Parties under the Rome Statute. The Council will recall that Pre-Trial Chamber II of the Court made a decision in December 2017, to find the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in non-compliance with its obligation to arrest and surrender Mr. Al Bashir during a visit on 29 March 2017, and to refer the matter to this Council and the Assembly of States Parties. This decision again made clear that Mr Al Bashir’s official status did not justify a failure by a State Party to arrest and surrender a suspect subject to an ICC arrest warrant. Jordan appealed that decision and the Court’s Appeals Chamber is now seized of the question.
25. The Appeals Chamber has scheduled a hearing for 10, 11 and 12 September 2018. In advance of this hearing, on the basis that the legal issues in this appeal may have broader implications, the Appeals Chamber has invited relevant parties to make submissions that may assist its determination of the legal issues raised in Jordan’s appeal.
26. In response to an invitation by the Appeals Chamber to States Parties and professors of international law, the United Mexican States and 16 law professors were granted permission to submit legal observations.
27. The Appeals Chamber has also invited the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the League of Arab States and the Organization of American States to submit observations on the legal issues in this appeal by the 16th of July.
28. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that the African Union has recently notified the Appeals Chamber of its acceptance of this invitation to submit observations. The participation of the African Union in this process is very important, not least because, as the African Union observed in its notification to the Appeals Chamber, “Thirty–three of the 55 African Union Member States are also parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”
29. The issue of official immunities in relation to persons subject to ICC warrants of arrests was discussed at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa on 28 and 29 January 2018. I am also aware that various follow-up initiatives are being considered by the African Union. In this context, I commend the African Union for taking this opportunity to constructively engage with the Appeals Chamber on this important issue.
30. The Appeals Chamber has also invited the Sudan and Mr Al Bashir to file submissions on the merits of the legal questions raised in Jordan’s appeal, by 16 July 2018. It is important for the Appeals Chamber to hear and consider the views of all interested parties before its final determination on this issue.
31. All relevant stakeholders in this matter have the opportunity to express their views to the Appeals Chamber. I am hopeful that they will each do so, including this Council via the United Nations, and thereby participate in a process that will result in a final determination of this critical issue.
32. My Office would be remiss not to recognize and appreciate the continued progress towards stability in Darfur. I commend the efforts of all those involved in the Darfur peace process, led by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel and supported by the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur.
33. Despite this progress, as my report makes clear, intermittent violence in Darfur continued during the reporting period. A number of clashes were reported between forces of the Government of Sudan and various rebel groups in the Jebel Marra area. In addition, there were reported attacks by Rapid Support Forces and militiamen during March and April on villages located in Jebel Marra. These clashes and attacks reportedly resulted in the creation of tens of thousands of additional internally displaced persons.
34. My report notes the 1 February 2018 report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs which stated that, according to the Government of Sudan, there has been a substantial decrease in the overall number of internally displaced persons from Darfur and that hundreds of thousands are returning to their homes. I note that the OCHA indicated that it is verifying the numbers of returning internally displaced persons, and as stated in my last report, the Office echoes this Council’s view expressed in its Resolution 2363 of 2017 that any return should be “safe, voluntary and in accordance with applicable international law.”
Mr President, Your Excellencies,
35. Sustainable peace and stability can only return to Darfur once the root causes of conflict are addressed. This includes ending impunity for alleged crimes under the Rome Statute in Darfur and ensuring accountability for the victims of these serious crimes.
36. The collective efforts aimed at ensuring this accountability, which I have outlined in my report, will go on. My Office will continue to play its role, together with the other organs of the Court and the international community at large. I appeal to the courageous women and men who are victims of the past and on-going crimes in Darfur not to despair but to bear with us and continue to cooperate with our ongoing investigations.
37. Today, I ask the Council, as the body that began the process of accountability for Rome Statute crimes in Darfur, to more actively play its part in these collective efforts. In particular, to show its support for my Office’s investigations through the facilitation of UN funding and also by taking steps to ensure that my Office obtains the cooperation it needs, including from Sudan.
38. Finally, I respectfully request this Council to provide its support to secure the arrest and surrender of the Darfur suspects. This is a pre-requisite to justice being done for the thousands of victims in the Darfur situation and a vital next step in the process that this Council started with its referral of the Darfur situation to my Office.
39. In addition to falling short of adequately responding to the legitimate calls of victims for justice, the status quo will not only erode public confidence in the cause of international criminal justice in Darfur but also in the Council itself. We must work together more effectively, within our respective mandates, to ensure full implementation and compliance with Resolution 1593. With over a decade since this Council adopted that Resolution, it is past time that we did just that. We must act collectively and with resolve. My Office remains firm in its commitment and a ready partner in that joint obligation.
40. I thank you, Mr. President, Your Excellencies, for your attention.
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Caroline Hainer
Posted in K Composite Magazine, People on 8 Oct 2012 23 min read
Caroline Anna Sofia Hainer (whose name is pronounced CAR-o-leen HI-ner and whose initials are CASH) is a prolific writer whose smart and uproarious analysis has grappled with the worlds of perfume, relationships, film and pop culture.
She has written exhaustively on the topic of her love/hate relationship with the series 24 and is occasionally consulted by the Swedish media as one of the country’s resident experts on The Simpsons.
Caroline is a blast to talk with, and as a result, what you’re reading here is only a portion of the rollicking conversation we had. We barely touched on the story of how she came to have three framed oil paintings of herself – “Hey, I did not plan this!” – two of which can be seen behind her in the photo below.
When she’s not trying to dress like Sofia Coppola, she can most likely be found wearing one of the way too many denim shirts in her closet.
Born 2 December 1976 in Stockholm, Sweden / 165 cm / 68 kg / Green eyes / Favorite atari game: “I’m guessing Pac Man is an atari game, but I don’t know if I liked it very much.”
PHOTOS BY EMILY DAHL
WHY DO HAVE SO MANY DENIM SHIRTS?
[laughs] Well, I never thought about it. I mean, apart from the fact that I like them and I also like the color. The denim color. But also, I was on a road trip last fall to the southern states.
IN THE U.S.?
Yeah. In the U.S. I was really in my element there. [smiling…] I could wear these denim shirts [laughter] and not feel out of place.
DO YOU WEAR THEM WITH JEANS?
Yeah! That’s a bit of a… I still don’t know if you’re “allowed” to do that. Like, if you wear a dark shirt, are you supposed to match?
WELL, IF YOU WEAR A DENIM SHIRT, JEANS AND A DENIM JACKET, WHERE I COME FROM THAT’S CALLED A “CANADIAN TUXEDO.”
Oh yeah? [laughs] I love that!
SOMETIMES MY DAD DRESSES LIKE THAT. I’M FROM KENTUCKY, YOU KNOW, WHICH IS ALMOST THE SOUTH.
Right. And the pronunciation is “LOO-ah-vull.” Right?
YEAH! GOOD JOB! [laughs] I THINK IT DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU ARE, IF IT’S ACCEPTABLE TO DRESS LIKE THAT.
I did – most of the time – wear jeans, but I was trying to “feel the vibe” if that was alright or not. And also different shades, of course. I could quickly tell that light denim is out, in favor of dark. And that’s fine by me. [laughs]
YEAH, MY DAD WILL USUALLY WEAR A DENIM SHIRT THAT HAS THE NAME OF A CASINO ON IT…
…OR SOMETHING THAT HE GOT AS A “GIFT” SOMEWHERE.
That’s the next level! Well, I think the denim shirt is the ultimate wear, because you’re dressed-up but you’re not really formal. It’s feminine as well as masculine. It’s got everything.
AND JUST LIKE JEANS WHERE YOU CAN WEAR THEM FOR A WEEK OR TWO WEEKS AND NOT WASH THEM.
[laughs] Yeah, yeah. It’s good for everything. But as for me, I like shirts! I don’t know what to compare them with. So denim shirts…
OKAY, SO THE SIMPSONS.
Oh yeah! [laughter] I don’t know what Emily [Dahl] told you, but…
WELL SHE TOLD ME – AND I DID SOME GOOGLING ON YOU ALSO – AND I FOUND THAT YOU ARE A SIMPSONS EXPERT.
That’s what they say. I wouldn’t say so myself, because then you would ask me something like, “What happened in episode 153?” and I wouldn’t be able to answer…
So I wouldn’t say I’m an expert because I’m not one of those people who goes to the conventions and… [laughter] But I do think I’m fairly well oriented in it.
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE… WELL, I’M NOT SURE WHAT MY QUESTION IS, BUT I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE SPRINGFIELD FILM FESTIVAL EPISODE. [laughs]
Oh, right! Yes, yes! [laughter] “The ball! His groin!” Yes, yes.
HANS MOLEMAN PRODUCTIONS…
[laughs] Yes, the Hans Moleman Production is so wonderful, as well as Barney’s epic story. [laughter] It’s so good! It’s so good. And also, I don’t want to draw too big a parallel to my other job, which is writing about film, but sometimes it feels a bit like that. A little bit.
My mom asks me, “What should I see? What’s good now?” And I would tell her something and she would go like, “Naah! I was thinking more like Änglagård 3.” [a popular Swedish drama franchise with light humor] And it would be something that I would give a “1” but it would still be on top of all the ratings.
OH, LIKE COWBOYS AND ALIENS?
Yeah! People still go and see it, so I feel like, “My job is useless!” [laughter] Not even my mom will take my advice.
NOBODY WILL LISTEN TO YOU.
No. Nobody will listen to me. So that episode is excellent.
DID YOU THINK THAT BARNEY HAD THE BEST FILM? OR DID YOU LIKE MISTER BURNS’ FILM?
[laughs] Yes. It is a good question! [laughs] Which one would I have voted for? [laughter]
RIGHT. IF YOU WERE ON THE PANEL… ON THE JURY.
I think that Mister Burns had a lot of good… [three seconds] He had a lot of good effects and he had a good script. He worked with a lot of good writers. Steven Spielbergo. [laughter]
RIGHT, RIGHT!
So maybe I would have voted for him for a lot of reasons, even though it didn’t really touch my heart as much as the Hans Moleman one. [laughter]
WELL, I’M GONNA SKIP THE QUESTION “DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CHARACTER?”
You can ask that!
I FEEL LIKE EVERYONE MUST ASK YOU THAT.
Yeah, but… No, not really. I mean, there are so many characters. They keep adding to the number. I think 80-something are considered the “main” characters that have been recurring. Two of them died. Three, actually.
MAUDE FLANDERS? POOR MAUDE.
Poor Maude! Yeah. She didn’t deserve that. [laughter]
NO, SHE GOT HIT BY A T-SHIRT CANNON. [laughs]
Also, Bleeding Gums Murphy. Then also Bernice, who is… Grandpa Simpson was to marry. They were doing a The Graduate-sort-of-esque episode. [laughter] For my main characters, it’s Lisa, I think (who is my favorite)…
REALLY? [surprised]
…because she’s so true to herself. You know, she doesn’t get all the laughs – like Homer does – but she’s the one with the good heart.
DON’T YOU THINK SHE WAS KIND OF CHEESY IN THE MOVIE?
Of course. For a main character it would be her. But the more interesting ones, of course, are always the ones on the edge, and that would be Kent Brockman. [laughter] Yes. Kent Brockman all the way! And it has been almost from the start.
And it’s funny because I didn’t realize that he was… I mean, I knew he was a parody of something, but now, having watched Fox News… Which I didn’t do in the early days of The Simpsons. I had no idea. I just thought he was a fun parody of what a news anchor could be like. But now I realize how true he his, which makes him even better.
HE REALLY IS GREAT.
He doesn’t have a lot of… There are very few episodes where he is the main character, but he nails them all the time. And he also has some very good one-liners. [laughter] He’s always able to find a story where there isn’t one! [laughter]
EVERY TIME I THINK OF HIM, I THINK OF WHEN HE SAYS, “I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW INSECT OVERLORDS.” [laughter]
Yes. There’s also another one where Flanders’ house is on fire [laughs] and the first line he opens with is, “Fire. Man’s oldest enemy.” [laughter] That’s been a great inspiration to me, you know? [laughs] If there’s no story, just make it bigger!
He’s definitely my favorite. I think he always has been.
ONE MORE SIMPSONS QUESTION AND THEN WE CAN MOVE ON…
Oh, you know… This was not intentional: I just realized I have Simpsons socks on! [laughs]
OH! … I MEAN, D’OH!
It was not planned.
I LIKE THOSE SHOES.
These are new ones. Yes, Dr. Martens shoes.
SO, DID IT BOTHER YOU IN THE SIMPSONS MOVIE THAT THE PRESIDENT IS CALLED ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, WHEN HE IS OBVIOUSLY RANIER WOLFCASTLE?
[distressed] Oh yeah. That’s, uh…
WHY DID THEY DO THAT?
I think because they thought they would approach a bigger audience and the audience would not be as into The Simpsons.
MAYBE. I FOUND IT VERY STRANGE.
But I don’t know. … I have to tell you that I do have an autograph at home from Matt Groening.
Yes! And it’s… I shouldn’t say where I live…
DID HE DRAW A PICTURE?
Yes, he did! It’s Homer. And then he asked me, “Should he say something?” And I was so… I wasn’t nervous, but I was trying to think of something funny for (Homer) to say.
So I said, “Well, he could say, ‘Hello Sweden!’ but he could say it in Swedish,” and then I was supposed to write the letters out but I misspelled it! So he’s supposed to say, “Hej Sverige!” but he says, “Hej
Sver-G-ie!” [laughs] So I got him all confused.
GREAT. YOU’RE MAKING MATT GROENING LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT! [laughter]
Yes, well, I think it makes sense when Homer says it, that he says it all wrong. [laughter]
GOSH, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR HOMER SPEAK SWEDISH. [laughter]
I think they could do a…
HE SPEAKS GERMAN IF YOU GO SEE HIM IN GERMANY.
[laughter] They could do a Swedish episode, I think, because “Simpssons” you could make them all Swedish if you wanted to.
YOU HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT TV SHOWS AND MOVIES AND COSMETICS AND PERFUME… [laughter] WHAT’S THE COMMON LINE BETWEEN THOSE THINGS?
There is none. There is probably like, maybe the glamour side, or trying to be somebody else, or playing with identity or something. Or maybe it’s me… I think I have a big imagination, I think that’s why I like it.
IS IT EASY FOR YOU TO WRITE?
Very. And I think that’s why I’ve done well writing about perfume, because it’s not common knowledge. [laughs] It’s so hard to find good writing about perfume, because you’d have like, [in an airy voice…] “A floral scent for the modern woman” and it wouldn’t tell you anything.
I don’t have a particularly good nose but I have a good imagination. So whenever I smell something I will associate it with something, or I would (imagine) pictures or stories or I would see this person… So that’s how I write about it.
DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE FALLING ASLEEP?
Ahh… I used to have a lot of problems falling asleep. I’m not into aromatherapy or anything like that. [laughter]
NO, I MEAN IN THE WAY THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPER-CREATIVE LIKE THAT, THERE ARE ALWAYS IDEAS COMING AND YOU CAN’T TURN THEM OFF.
Now it’s the other way around… that I’m asleep nine or ten hours. Is that common, too? Because it used to be the other way around.
ON THE WEEKEND, FOR ME, IT’S VERY COMMON. [laughter] I THINK I SLEPT ALL DAY SATURDAY.
Yeah. I have done that.
[going back to the original question…] My perfume writing, which I’ve always been interested in but I thought it would be such an odd combination – you know, you can’t be somebody who writes about movies and perfume [laughs] – so I kind of eased into it a little bit.
It was very successful and now I’ve got this blog on Rodeo Magazine. I get a lot of mails that are like, “Help me find a new perfume! I don’t know where to look. I want to learn!” So that’s pretty cool. [short pause]
THIS IS SOMETHING I’VE ACTUALLY NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE: THE SAME PERFUME WOULD PROBABLY SMELL COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ON THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE.
It does! It does.
IT’S NOT AS SIMPLE AS, “THIS IS A GREAT PERFUME. I LOVE THE WAY IT SMELLS.”
IT’S ALSO THE WAY IT MIXES WITH YOUR OWN… STINK. [laughter]
It’s also very sensitive because – at least for me – smells, I’m always associating with something. Maybe cardamom, for me, might be a comfort smell, and for you, it might remind you of whenever you had to go to your mean grandma’s. [laughter]
I’LL TELL YOU WHAT, I NEVER KNEW ABOUT CARDAMOM UNTIL I MOVED TO SWEDEN.
And had bullar (buns)? [laughter]
MMM HMM. BECAUSE IT’S NOT POPULAR AT ALL IN THE U.S.
I love the smell. Do you like the smell now?
OH YES. I LOVE IT. THERE’S A YOGGI YOGURT DRINK HERE THAT HAS CARDAMOM IN IT AND IT’S AMAZING.
Oh, right. It is good.
YOU HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT…
ABOUT MODERN LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS…
Mmm hmm. That’s true.
IS IT NON-FICTION?
No, it… Well… It is non-fiction. It’s based on a true story. [laughs]
OKAY. IS IT ABOUT YOU?
It is. The thing is, I have a private blog – it’s called Jazzhands – and I’ve had it since 2007. I never advertise it and I’m always surprised when somebody finds it.
I FOUND IT. [laughs]
You found it and, like, two thousand other people found it, and I don’t know how. Because it started out as three friends reading it and I’ve never done anything (to promote) it. You know, I keep it to myself and I write.
And then in January this year, these two very good-looking, nice men from this book company approached me. They’re both married – not to each other – but very solid, nice guys.
They approached me and they said, [enthusiastically] “You’re so good at writing about failing in love!” [laughter] “I don’t even remember what it feels like to be rejected, but then I read (your work) and now I do remember! You’re excellent at writing about failures. You must fail so much!” [laughter]
I ASSUME THEY MEANT THIS AS A COMPLIMENT!
They did! They did!
THEY COULD HAVE JUST LEFT IT AT “YOU’RE VERY GOOD AT WRITING” PERIOD.
[laughter] No, no, it was excellent! We had lunch and they went on and on. They were like, “It happens to you so many times. You must be better and better at it by now.” [laughter]
It was very odd. It was very surreal because these were two so successful… and they’re so good looking and nice. And they looked at me like I was a foreign animal of some sort. They’re like, [tickled] “Tell me, how does it feel to be rejected so many times?” [laughter]
[sarcastically] I HATE THESE GUYS! [laughter]
No, no! [laughter] They’re wonderful. They’re wonderful. They truly meant it as a compliment, even though it was a twisted one, of course. But I was happy to take it.
Anyway, the point was, they said, “Have you ever considered writing about this?” And I said I hadn’t but, “Let me think about it.” Then I came up with an idea and within a month they signed me to a contract.
Yeah. So yes, it is about modern love and it’s actually based on a true story which is this:
I went to a therapist this summer and I said, “What am I doing wrong?” … Around November he forbid me to enter a relationship. And I thought that was great! I was like, “Oh wow, I’m like a menace to society!” [laughter] “I’m the one your mama warned you about!” [laughter] “You shouldn’t mess with me.”
It was really cool that he gave me a relationsförbjud – whatever that is translated to English…
YES, IT’S A RELATIONSHIP BAN.
YOU’RE FORBIDDEN FROM BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP?
Yeah! A ban! I thought it was really cool. I really felt like… Well, I could feel like a failure if I wanted to, but I chose to feel like…
NO, IT SOUNDS AWESOME. [laughs]
Yeah, really!
YOU’RE DANGEROUS!
[laughter] Yeah. I’m dangerous. I’m the guy in… well, you can imagine.
So the book starts out with that – with me getting a relationship ban – which actually happened. … And then after that initial, “Yay, we’re out!” Then it was like, [reflective] “But why?” [laughs] And then, “How did I become this person?” And the rest of the book is just examining that.
It has a Swedish title, which is Inte Helt Hundra. Which is like, “Ehhh….”
“NOT TOTALLY A HUNDRED PERCENT?”
“Not totally a hundred percent?” Yeah. Which is a take on…. It’s a common phrase when you’re talking about somebody or something: “It doesn’t really feel… helt hundra,” or it doesn’t really feel…
IT DOESN’T ADD UP. IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT.
Yeah, it doesn’t add up to total a hundred percent. “He’s cool and all, but… Mmmm… Sorry.”
SO IF SOMEBODY READS THE BOOK WILL THEY KNOW ALL YOUR SECRETS?
[laughs] I LOOK FORWARD TO THAT!
I thought you were going to ask, “If somebody reads it would they recognize themselves?”
MMM! YOU CAN ANSWER THAT, TOO. I’M CURIOUS.
Yes. I have a lot of thoughts about that. I’m going to do a Carly Simon, like “You’re So Vain,” and say, “Well, you’re so vain… [laughter] You think this is about you? Oh, no, no, no, no, no! [laughs] This is somebody else!”
I SEE. SO IT TURNS OUT THAT YOUR BOOK IS ABOUT JAMES TAYLOR. [laughter] HAVE THE NAMES BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT?
[laughs] The names have been changed to protect these innocent “dudes!” [laughs] These innocent douchebags. [laughter]
WHEN YOU CHANGED THEIR NAMES, DID YOU INTENTIONALLY GIVE THEM WORSE NAMES OR COOLER NAMES DEPENDING ON YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THEM?
That is a… That is a brilliant question! I hope nobody thinks as much as you do about it [laughs] because of course I have! [laughter] Oh yeah!
Some of them have ridiculous names! [laughter] And some have really bland names like Martin or Fredrik or any ol’ guy.
ANY RUN-OF-THE MILL SVEN OR MARTIN.
[laughs] Yes.
DO YOU MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS EACH YEAR?
I make two. One solid, concrete one, like, “I’m gonna go to L.A.” or something that can actually be accomplished. And another one that’s more ethereal, like, [faux-thoughtfully] “I should be more graceful.” [laughter] Or something like that.
RIGHT, RIGHT. SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE MEASURED SO PRECISELY.
Something more aspirational. And this year’s one was “take it easy.”
YOU SEEM TO BE TAKING IT PRETTY EASY. [laughter] … SO YOU WERE AN EXCHANGE STUDENT IN CALIFORNIA IN ’94 AND ’95?
Yes! In Fresno! [laughter]
POOR FRESNO!
Everybody laughs about Fresno. [laughter]
YEAH. THIS WAS BEFORE THE INTERNET WAS WIDESPREAD, WHEN INTERNATIONAL PHONE CALLS WERE LIKE A DOLLAR A MINUTE. DO YOU THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE GROWING UP NOW DON’T REALIZE HOW RECENTLY EVERYTHING BECAME FREE AND EASY… AND CONNECTED?
Yeah, and also, I think they should go abroad and just not call home. I phoned home like twice in a year and I think that’s what saved me from homesickness. And that’s what also made that year so wonderful because it was all about being there.
BEING YOU IN A NEW PLACE.
Yeah. And being there, not also “being in Stockholm” trying to keep up with my friends, or whatever. So that was a wonderful year. A truly wonderful experience.
YEAH, IT IS. AND I THINK NOW KIDS ARE JUST LIKE, IF THEY HAVE AN IPHONE AND THEY CAN JUST VIDEO CHAT.
Or Google Earth! Just walk around.
YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO ASK ANYONE FOR DIRECTIONS ANYMORE.
Just realizing also that I could make friends with somebody in another language. Just the very thought of that was amazing, and the discovery of that. [reflecting for a moment]
UM, LOS ANGELES. [laughs]
Yes! [as in she knows that’s a question] I’m very glad that most of my friends don’t really see the appeal.
I HAVE TO SAY…
You don’t either? [laughter]
I LIVED THERE FOR ABOUT A YEAR…
Where did you live?
IN HOLLYWOOD AND IN SILVER LAKE. I LIKED SILVER LAKE BETTER, OF COURSE, BUT IT WAS FUN TO WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND SEE THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN OUT MY WINDOW.
BUT I’VE ALWAYS DESCRIBED LOS ANGELES AS THE MOST AMAZING CITY THAT REALLY SUCKS AT THE SAME TIME. [three-second pause] DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?
[laughs] Yeah, but I mean, the first time I was there it was just incomprehensible… But sure, I mean, probably couldn’t live there but I go there in stints, like a month at a time. The longest I’ve been there was for four months. That was cool.
THAT’S PLENTY, I THINK.
That’s plenty. Yes. And that’s cool. It’s a bit like Vegas, I guess. [laughs] Whereas it’s just so surreal and it’s fun. I always feel like Alice in Wonderland because all these things are happening. Nothing is strange. Nothing is being questioned. You can do whatever! [laughter]
I have a friend and whenever people ask her what she does, she says she’s a rock star, and that’s fine.
[laughs] I SEE.
She does record stuff. So that’s great. I think that’s very Los Angeles.
And then, of course, people would tell me, “Oh, so you don’t like New York because you have to actually show what you are?” [laughter] I do like the plastic part of Los Angeles where you can be whatever you want – really – and then you go home. [laughs]
I’ve had amazing things happen to me in Los Angeles, also because I tend to just say “yes” whenever I’m there. Whatever weird stuff people suggest, I’m like, “Sure!” [laughter]
They were like, “Do you wanna go to a math club?” There was a math party! I was like, “Sure!” [laughter]
So I went there and there was this professor and he looked like Milhouse. [laughter] Naturally! And there was a big projector and he said – and this is true [laughs] – this is absolutely true. He put up a series of numbers and then he said, [as an announcement] “Behold! The great Fibonacci Code!”
[laughter] OF COURSE!
I just love when that happens! Then, I went to the Magic Castle once. They work with close-up magic. I asked this one guy – he did close-up magic – and I asked him if he was an illusionist, and he was really, really offended. It was like calling him a fake! [laughter]
He said, “Magic is what happens. Illusion is when they try to make you think it happens. That’s the difference!”
I just try to jump into things because everything is strange (in Los Angeles) and I love that.
When I stayed there for four months, on my street there was a Chihuahua and she had two wheels instead of her…
OH, SHE WAS MISSING SOME LEGS?
Yes. Instead of her front legs, which was really weird, because I could understand the back legs. If it was her back legs, she could pull herself around.
The place I rented was from a tenor! So he was out in Europe doing shows. It was lovely because he had an opera style (in his place). He had chandeliers, even in the bathroom! [laughter] So I loved that, too, that he was a tenor all the way! [laughter]
During the last week I was there, there was a letter for him and it was from “P. Domingo” in New York.
WHOA. I’D LIKE TO IMAGINE THAT IS WHO WE THINK IT IS.
I don’t know. I never opened it! But, you know, “from one tenor to another,” I’m thinking.
“DEAR FELLOW TENOR…”
Why shouldn’t they know each other? [laughs]
DO YOU THINK IT WAS HATE MAIL? [laughter] “FUCKING STOP YOUR SHITTY SINGING! YOU CALL YOURSELF A TENOR?”
Yes! [laughs]
“YOU’RE THE WORST F’N TENOR I’VE EVER HEARD!”
“Kindly, P. Domingo.” [laughter] I’m not saying, but I’m thinking it.
Emily Dahl Scott Ritcher
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Posts Tagged ‘Turkestan’
What Were Stalin’s Real Crimes? Critique of “A Marxist-Leninist Perspective” on Stalin (Part II/III)
The meaning of forced collectivization: an irrigation project in Fergana, Eastern Kazakhstan, 1935 (courtesy David Goldfrank)
“It is in the nature of ideological politics […] that the real content of the ideology […] which originally had brought about the ‘idea’ […] is devoured by the logic with which the ‘idea’ is carried out.”
– Hannah Arendt1
What’s the biggest problem with the “criticisms” of Stalin raised by the “Proles of the Round Table”? That they are so disingenuous and anemic. One of the three critiques raised—about Spain—in fact isn’t critical of Stalin, while we’ve seen (in part I) how the “criticism” on deportations is entirely misleading. A related question might be to ask how it looks for two presumably white U.S. Americans to criticize Stalin for some (1-2%) of his deportations of ethnic Germans, but not to do so when it comes to the dictator’s mass-deportations of Muslims, Buddhists, and other indigenous peoples. At least Mao Zedong judged Stalin as being “30 percent wrong and 70 percent right.”2 For Jeremy and Justin, though, Stalin appears to have been at least 90%, if not 95%, right. Maybe we can soon expect the “Proles of the Round Table” Patreon to begin selling wearables proclaiming that “Stalin did nothing wrong.”
Besides the aforementioned Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the May Days, and the mass-deportations of ethnic minorities, let’s now consider five of Stalin’s real crimes.
1. “Socialism in One Country”: Stalinist Ideology
His revision, together with fellow Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, of the tradition of socialist internationalism to the reactionary, ultra-nationalist idea of “socialism in one country.” Stalin and Bukharin arrived at this conclusion to compete against Lev Trotsky’s rival concept of “permanent revolution,” which calls first for a European and then global federation of socialist republics. This Stalinist doctrine, which demanded that the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy be considered first within the Third International (or Comintern), can explain both the General Secretary’s demand to crush the anarchists in Spain in 1937 and his effective facilitation of Hitler’s rise to power by means of the disastrous Comintern policy that considered the social-democratic (that is, non-Stalinist) opposition to Hitler to be “social-fascist.” The General Secretary would only reverse course and endorse a “Popular Front” strategy after Hitler had taken power.3 Stalinist ultra-nationalism finds contemporary purchase among neo-fascist, national-Bolshevik movements, whereas—perhaps ironically—the Comintern doctrine on “social fascism” has echoes today among ultra-leftists disdainful of coalition-building with more moderate political forces (e.g., as in the 2016 U.S. presidential election). Moreover, Stalin’s preference for “socialism in one country” can help us understand the Soviet Union’s continued sale of petroleum to Mussolini following this fascist’s military invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935.4 Within this same vein, and anticipating the affinity of today’s neo-Stalinists for campist “analyses” of international relations, Moscow variously supported the feudalist Guo Min Dang (GMD) in China, the Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Afghan King Amanullah Khan, and Ibn al-Sa’ud (founder of Saudi Arabia) during this time on the grounds that these leaders staunchly opposed the West, despite their great distance from any kind of socialist paradigm.5
Courtesy Voline, The Unknown Revolution
2. Stalinist Imperialism
His “Great-Russian” chauvinism, as manifested in his brutally imperialist policies toward ethnic minorities—particularly the deportations of Muslims (as mentioned above in part I)—and other subject-peoples of the former Tsarist empire, whose colonial project Stalin enthusiastically embraced. Though Georgian by origin (his birth name was Ioseb Jughashvili), Stalin (whose Russian nom de guerre means “man of steel”) was “the most ‘Russian’ of the early leaders” who advanced not only “socialism in one country,’ but […] a socialism built on a predominantly Russian foundation.”6 According to Dunayevskaya, Stalin’s “national arrogance” was “as rabid as that of any Tsarist official.”7 In contrast to his mentor and supervisor Vladimir I. Lenin, who at least formally supported the right of self-determination for the oppressed nationalities of the Tsarist empire while greatly violating this principle in practice, Stalin was openly imperialist on the national question: according to the terms of this relationship, the colonies were to be “plundered for raw materials and food to serve the industrialisation of Russia.”8 It therefore remains clear that, under the Soviet Union, “Russia was not a nation state but an empire, an ideological state. Any definition as a nation-state would probably have excluded at least the non-Slavs, and certainly the Muslims.”9 Accordingly, the official history taught in Stalin’s USSR rehabilitated the mythical Tsarist narrative that the Russian “Empire had brought progress and civilisation to backward peoples.”10
Ethnographic map of the former Soviet Union. Date unknown
In Georgia, a former Tsarist-era colony located in the Caucasus Mountains, the social-democratic Menshevik Party declared independence in 1918 to found the Georgian Democratic Republic, otherwise known as the Georgian Commune, wherein parliamentary democracy and a relatively collaborative relationship among the peasantry, proletariat, and political leadership lasted for three years, until Stalin and his fellow Georgian Bolshevik Sergo Ordzhonikidze organized a Red Army invasion in 1921 which crushed this courageous experiment in democratic socialism. The errant ex-colony of Georgia was thus forcibly reincorporated into the ex-Tsarist Empire—by then, the “Transcaucasian Federated Soviet Republic,” part of the Soviet Union.11 Besides Georgia, this “Transcaucasian Federated Soviet Republic” would include Azerbaijan and Armenia, which had also been occupied by the Red Army in 1920.12
In the Muslim-majority provinces of Central Asia, otherwise known as Turkestan, the poorest region of the former Tsarist Empire, Lenin and Stalin sided with the interests of the Russian settlers against the Muslim peasantry.13 In Orientalist fashion, the Bolsheviks considered Central Asia’s “Muslims as culturally backward, not really suitable to be communists and needing to be kept under a kind of tutelage.”14 Yet in light of the sustained Basmachi revolt waged by Muslim guerrillas against Soviet imperialism in the first decade after October 1917, Stalin also recognized the significant threat these colonized Muslims could pose to the Soviet Union—hence his active discouragement of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism by means of cutting off the USSR’s Muslims “subjects,” many of them ethnically and linguistically Turkic, from the rest of the Ummah (Islamic global brotherhood or community) abroad. An early 1930’s law punishing unauthorized exit from the USSR made observation of hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca, quite impossible.15 The expulsion from the Communist Party (1923) and subsequent imprisonment (1928) of the Volga Tatar Sultan Galiev, a pan-Islamist “national-communist” who envisioned organizing the Turkic Muslims into a fighting force against Western imperialism, followed a similar logic.16
In the Stalinist conception, the numerous subject-peoples of the Soviet Union could be classified hierarchically according to their “stage of development,” as based on their mode of production and whether or not they had a written language, such that supposedly more ‘advanced’ peoples would qualify as ‘nations’ that were granted the status of “Soviet Socialist Republic” (SSR), whereas “less developed” peoples would be granted “Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics” (ASSR), while those without written languages would be placed in “Autonomous Regions” (AR), or “National Territories” (NT). In 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, there existed 14 SSR’s, 20 ASSR’s, 8 AR’s, and 10 NT’s in the USSR.17
Map of Soviet administrative subdivisions, 1989. Notice the numerous ASSR subdivisions in Central Asia
This systematic atomization of oppressed nationalities followed Stalin’s “principle of the dual bridgehead,” whereby the State would favor those minorities that could assist the USSR in expanding its reach while repressing other minorities whose existence could serve as a “fifth column” for the USSR’s rivals. In part I of this critique, we saw how this rationale played out in Stalin’s mass-deportations: the General Secretary felt justified in forcibly transferring the Turkic Muslim Meskhetian people, among others, because they were supposedly too close to the Turkish State headed by Kemal Atatürk. Furthermore, this principle can be gleaned in the Soviet Communist Party’s initial favoring of Uzbeks over Tajiks beginning in 1924, followed by a 180° shift in perspective upon the overthrow of Afghanistan’s King Amanullah (a Pashtun) by Bacha-i Saqqao, a Tajik, in 1928—leading to the proclamation of the Tajikistan SSR in 1929.18 The capital city of Dushanbe was subsequently renamed as “Stalinabad.”19 In addition, whereas the Communist Party favored its own Kurdish minority, some of whom included refugees, because it could use them in the future as pawns against Iran and Turkey, it had refused to support Kurdish and Turkmen rebellions abroad against Turkey and Iran in 1925. Above all, Stalin’s nationalities policy achieved its greatest “success” in its complex partition of Turkestan by means of the drawing-up of borders that were defined along ethno-nationalist lines: just look at the region’s current borders (see map above), which are based on those concluded by Stalin’s regime. In thus pitting Central Asia’s mosaic of different ethno-linguistic groups against each other, Stalin definitively laid the pan-Islamist specter to rest.20 Dunayevskaya’s observation here seems apt: it was in Stalin’s “attitude to the many [oppressed] nationalities” that the General Secretary’s “passion for bossing came out in full bloom.”21
A Soviet mosaic in Karaghandy, Kazakhstan (Courtesy The Guardian)
Stalin’s imperialist assertion of power over Central Asia, which imposed the collectivization of cattle herds and the nationalization of bazaars and caravans managed by indigenous peoples while promoting Russian settlements, resulted in famine and revolt.22 It involved a high-modernist assault on Islam in the name of emancipating women and remaking traditional patriarchal Turkic social relations, as we shall examine in more detail in the third part of this response.
Regarding Ukraine, see the section on Jeremy and Justin’s Holodomor denial in the third part of this response. Briefly, Jeremy’s Russian-chauvinist attitude toward all matters Ukrainian comes through at a fundamental linguistical level when he refers to Ukraine as “the Ukraine.” This formulation, like the Russian «на Украине» (“in the Ukraine”), is an imperialist way of referring to the country, which is not just a colony of Russia or the Soviet Union (as in, “the Ukrain[ian province]”). The proper way is to refer just to Ukraine, as in the Russian equivalent «в Украине» (“in Ukraine”).
Such attitudes are shared by Ó Séaghdha, who falsely claims Ukraine today to be a “bastion of the far right and neo-Nazism,” just as Justin compares “Ukrainian nationalists” to the U.S.-based Proud Boys. One’s mind is boggled: as of July 2018, the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party had only 6 seats, or 1.3%, in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, while in both rounds of elections held in 2014, Svoboda and Right Sector alike gained less than 5% of the vote.23 In fact, Ukraine has held its first major LGBT Pride marches following the Euromaidan protests which overthrew the Putin-affiliated President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Meanwhile, by focusing on the supposedly ‘fascist’ Ukrainians,24 Ó Séaghdha and his guests deny the global reach of Putin’s neo-Nazism, from his 2014 occupation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine and his subsequent mass-detention of Crimean Tatar Muslims, including in psychiatric hospitals, to his regime’s criminalization of homosexuality, decriminalization of domestic violence, and genocidal intervention in support of the Assad Regime in Syria—to say nothing of his mutual affinities for the Trump Regime. How ironic is this misrepresentation, then, considering that Ukraine was the “centerpiece of Hitler’s vision of Lebensraum.”25
A typically socialist-realist depiction of a collective farm celebration, by Arkady Plastov (1937): presumably, this is how neo-Stalinists and ‘Marxist-Leninists’ idealize the outcomes of forcible collectivization in the Soviet Union.
3. Stalinist State-Capitalism
His advocacy and implementation of state capitalism in the Soviet Union, whereby the basic relationship of exploitation between capital and labor persisted after the Russian Revolution, with the difference that capital in this case was managed and expanded by the Communist Party bureaucracy rather than the private capitalist class.26 Upheld by the Army and police, the Soviet economy reduced workers to mere slaves: during the existence of the USSR, workers could not regulate, choose, or control their overseers and administrators, much less anticipate not having any, as through anarcho-syndicalist organization, or autogestion (самоуправление). In the USSR,
“[t]he State [wa]s [the worker’s] only employer. Instead of having thousands of ‘choices,’ as is the case in the nations where private capitalism prevails, in the U.S.S.R. (the U.S.C.R. [Union of State-Capitalist Republics: Voline]) the worker ha[d] only one. Any change of employer [wa]s impossible there.”27
Following the Revolution, “[f]or the Russian workers, […] nothing had changed; they were merely faced by another set of bosses, politicians and indoctrinators.”28
Peasants under Stalin were similarly reduced to serfs, particularly during and following the forced collectivization process that began in 1928. Continuing with the precedent of the Bolshevik policy of “War Communism,” which had involved considerable extraction of grain and the conscription of young men from the peasantry, Stalin declared war on the countryside, expropriating all lands held by these peasants and concentrating these into kolkhozi, or “collective possessions,” and sovkhozi, or State farms, which were to be worked by the peasants in the interests of the State.29 This nationalization did not discriminate between “rich” peasant, or kulak, and poor—in contrast to the misleading presentation Jeremy and Justin make of Stalin’s forcible collectivization campaign. The “Proles of the Round Table” deceptively explain the emergence of the “kulaks” by referring to the Tsarist Interior Minister Peter Stolypin’s land reforms of 1906, while saying nothing about Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” of 1921, which formally reintroduced private property. They also completely misrepresent Stalin’s collectivization policy, which proceeded at the points of bayonets, as a natural outgrowth of the traditional peasant commune (mir or obshchina), which had resisted the Tsarist State for centuries. In fact, it was arguably through Stalinist forcible collectivization that the Russian countryside fell under the control for the first time.30 As peasant resistance to this “total reordering of a rural civilization from the top down” mounted, including an estimated 13,000 “mass disturbances” just in 1930, Stalin’s regime resorted to atrocious counter-insurgent tactics to bring the countryside to heel, including mass-executions, reprisals, and the resulting famines of 1931-1933 in Ukraine, South Russia, and Kazakhstan.31 The Stalinist regime conveniently expanded the definition of exactly who was a “kulak” from a class-based to a political definition, such that even poor peasants who opposed forcible collectivization could be labeled “kulaks” and deported to Siberia, the Far North, and Central Asia, as about 1.8 million peasants were in 1930-1931. As during the numerous other episodes of mass-deportations devised by Stalin, mortality rates among “dekulakized” peasants were high.32
Puzzlingly, the “Proles of the Round Table” claim this collectivization to have been “extremely successful” in providing “stability” by the mid-1930’s, the resistance of at least 120 million peasants to the Terror campaign and the “excess mortality” of between 6 and 13 million people such Terror caused during this period notwithstanding. By precisely which standards can this campaign have said to have been “successful”? The historian Catherine Evtuhov observes: “From any humane perspective, the terrible costs were far greater than the rewards.”33 In contrast, Jeremy and Justin either do not recognize the brutality of the Stalinist regime’s campaign, or they simply explain away mass-death during collectivization as resulting from natural disasters—thus ‘naturalizing’ the Soviet regime’s contributions to famines—and/or “kulak resistance.” By so easily dismissing mass-death, they imply that the millions of poor peasants who were destroyed as a result of forcible collectivization deserved such a fate.
Jeremy and Justin are very insistent on arguing that the deaths associated with collectivization were “not due” to Stalin’s policies—against both logic and evidence. They have nothing to say about Stalin’s reconstitution in 1932 of the Tsarist-era internal-passport system, or propiska, in order to tightly control the movements of the Soviet peasantry and proletariat during forced collectivization. Upon its proclamation in December 1932, such “passportization” was effected and mandated in “towns, urban settlements, district centers, and Machine and Tractor Stations, within 100-kilometer radiuses around certain large towns, in frontier zones, on building sites and state farms”: it thus openly revoked the freedom of movement of the majority of the Soviet population, including peasants and ethnic minorities.34 With this in mind, it would appear that the “Proles of the Round Table” do not to want to concede the possibility—and reality—that Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign involved the oppression and dispossession of many poor peasants, whether these were insurgents against whom the State retaliated for defending their communities against Stalinist incursion or simply peasants whom the parasitic bureaucracy considered mere objects of exploitation and either killed outright or left to die during forcible collectivization—thus reflecting the extent to which internal colonialism characterized the Stalinist State.35
Indeed, Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign followed a very clearly state-capitalist rationale, both requiring and (once established) providing mass-labor inputs. Based on the economic theory of Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, Stalin’s massive State project to centralize the peasantry so as to more deeply exploit it represented the phase of “primitive socialist accumulation” that was considered as necessary to finance a rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. In parallel to the colonization of the New World, the enslavement of Africans, and the enclosure of the commons by which capitalism arose as a historical mode of production,36 Preobrazhensky essentially argued that the Soviet State must exploit the peasants and use the surplus value extracted from them to accelerate the growth of capital and industry.37 This brutally mechanistic logic, which has served as the model for similar industrialization processes in countries led by Stalinist bureaucracies such as Maoist China and Ethiopia under the Derg,38 openly exhibits Marxist-Leninism’s fundamental bias against the peasantry, whether “kulak” or otherwise. Such bias was clearly on display on Ó Séaghdha’s podcast, given the embarrassing side-comments about “comrades cuddling” during the horrors of forced collectivization, and Jeremy and Justin’s astonishing conclusion that this collectivization which took the lives of millions of poor peasants had been “extremely successful.” These Stalinists thus appear to have no class analysis of the peasantry, instead considering them all as reactionaries and “capitalists” whose oppression and destruction signifies progress. They malign the peasants and laugh over their corpses while saying nothing about the conditions of “second serfdom”—represented by barshchina (State labor requirements), extraction, and low pay—that formed the basis of Stalinist industrialization.39
Within Soviet class society, according to Voline (writing in 1947), there existed approximately 10 million privileged workers, peasants, functionaries, Bolshevik Party members, police, and soldiers (comprising approximately 6% of the population of the USSR/USCR), as against 160 million effectively enslaved workers and peasants (or 94% of the USSR/USCR’s population).40 The basic structure of the Soviet Union, on Paul Mattick’s account, was “a centrally-directed social order for the perpetuation of the capitalistic divorce of the workers from the means of production and the consequent restoration of Russia as a competing imperialist power.”41 This ‘total State’ “resembled an army in terms of rank and discipline,” and atop it all “lived Stalin, moving between his Kremlin apartment and his heavily guarded dachas. He and his cronies indulged themselves night after night, in between issuing commands and execution orders, feasting and toasting in the manner of gangland chiefs.”42
The meaning of forcible collectivization: child labor on an irrigation project in Fergana, Eastern Kazakhstan, 1935 (courtesy David Goldfrank)
4. The GULAG Slave-Labor Camp System
“The deaths of the conquered are necessary for the conqueror’s peace of mind.” – Chinggis Khan: a phrase of which Stalin was fond (Evtuhov 676)
His regime’s founding (in 1930), mass-expansion, and vast utilization of the GULAG slave-labor camp system, known officially as the “State Camp Administration,” which played a central role in the General Secretary’s “Great Purge,” otherwise known as his “Terror.” These purges served the goal of “ensur[ing] the survival of the regime and Stalin’s position as its supreme leader” by eliminating the remaining “General Staff of the [Russian] Revolution” as well as the workers, peasants, and intellectuals who resisted Stalin’s state-capitalist plans.43 The General Secretary’s insistence on obedience, his paranoid vengefulness, his equation of any kind of opposition with treason, and the fear felt by Communists that the Soviet Union was militarily encircled, particularly in light of a newly remilitarized and fascist Germany, can help explain the Terror, which involved the arrest of at least 1.5 million people, the deportation of a half-million to camps, and the execution of hundreds of thousands. The total camp population reached 2.5 million in 1950.44
As Yevgenia Semënovna Ginzburg’s memoir Journey into the Whirlwind attests to, the GULAG system was designed in such a way as to partially recoup the financial losses involved in the mass-imprisonments which followed from Stalin’s Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: instead of summarily being executed or idly rotting away in prison, many detainees were forced to work for the State with little to no material compensation. Ginzburg shows as well that political prisoners suffered greater discrimination in access to health services, nutritional intake, shelter, and types of labor performed in the GULAG, relative to other convict groups: the ‘politicals’ were always assigned hard labor. Many GULAG prisoners died performing slave-labor, whether clearing forests or constructing railroads: such was the fate of numerous enslaved prisoners forced to construct the Moscow-Volga Canal from 1932-1937.45 Within the Magadan camp located in Eastern Siberia where Ginzburg was held, the discrepancy between the housing conditions of Hut No. 8, a “freezing cold” “wild animals’ den” where the female political prisoners lived, and the abodes of those convicted for lesser offenses, in which lived individuals with “healthy complexions and lively faces” enjoying “blankets in check patterns” and “pillows with hemstitched linen covers,” clearly illustrates the discrimination.46 This same dynamic seems to explain the contrast in appearance—and physical comfort—among the female slave-labor teams assigned to the Kilometer 7 work site: the “peasant women” “had managed to keep their own coarse scarves” and some of the “ordinary criminals” had sheepskin coats, while the political prisoners “had not a rag of [their own]” and wore footwear which was “full of holes [and] let in the snow.”47 Ginzburg’s fellow inmate Olga was therefore right to anticipate that Stalin’s regime would expand the use of “hard-labor camps” in the wake of the downfall of NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov in 1939, especially considering that the majority of those imprisoned by Stalin were of prime working age.48
In a reflection of the maxims of Stalinist state-capitalism, Ginzburg reports that the slave-labor system to which she was subjected in the GULAG would dole out food only in proportion to the output that a given team would achieve. For teams like hers comprised of intellectuals and ex-Party officials who lacked experience with manual labor, then, this dynamic would result in a downward spiral of production—and welfare, since they were unable to achieve a basic threshold for production which would allow them access to the very food they needed to maintain and increase production in the future.49 Yet slave-laborers were sometimes provided with food relief if mortality rates were deemed ‘excessive.’50 Ginzburg’s memoirs thus suggest that, as far as political prisoners were concerned, the GULAG system was designed to torment such ‘politicals’ by maintaining them at a minimal level of sustenance, rather than starving or otherwise killing them outright.
On a more positive note, Stalin’s death in March 1953 brought “hope [to] the [inmates of the GULAG] camps,” inspiring both the June 1953 workers’ uprising against Stalinism, which not only overthrew State power in several cities and work-sites in East Germany but also involved workers’ liberation of prisons and concentration camps, and the unprecedented strike by political prisoners at the Vorkuta slave-labor camp which followed just two weeks later.51 Dunayevskaya comments in a manner that remains completely germane today that both of these episodes represented an “unmistakable affirmative” response to the question of whether humanity can “achieve freedom out of the totalitarianism of our age.”52
5. Assassination of Trotsky
“What specific characteristics in a man enable him to become the receptacle and the executor of class impulses from an alien class[…]?” – Raya Dunayevskaya53
His ordering of the assassination of Lev Trotsky, as carried out by the Spanish NKVD agent Ramón Mercader in Trotsky’s residence in Coyoacán, Mexico, in August 1940. Whereas there is little love lost between us and the “Old Man,” as Trotsky was known, given his status as the butcher of the Kronstadt Commune, the would-be executioner of Nestor Makhno, an advocate of the militarization of labor, and an apologist for State slavery54—still, Stalin’s brazen attempts to assassinate him in Mexico City not once but twice remain shocking in their brutality to this day. They may well have inspired the commission of similar atrocities on the part of the C.I.A.,55 the Israeli Mossad, and even Mohammed bin Salman’s recent murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
First, on May 24, 1940, the Mexican surrealist and muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros led an assassination-squad in an assault on Trotsky’s fortified family residence, which the exiled Bolshevik leader had been granted by Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, who had afforded him asylum and personal protection. Mercader represented Stalin’s back-up plan. Having adopted an elaborate “deep-cover” false identity as “Jacques Mornard,” a Belgian aristocrat unconcerned with political questions, Mercader had seduced and used Sylvia Ageloff, herself a leftist Jewish intellectual from Brooklyn connected through her sisters to Trotsky, for two years to get close enough to facilitate both assassination attempts. While the complicity of “Jacques” in the first plot remained undetected, this was only possible because Siqueiros’ team captured and murdered Trotsky’s young American security guard Robert Sheldon Harte, whom Mercader knew and also used to gain access to Trotsky’s residence in the early morning of May 24. Yet a combination of luck; quick-thinking by Natalia Sedova, Trotsky’s wife, who isolated and shielded her partner’s body from the would-be assassin’s bullets; and the imprecise strategy to kill Trotsky that morning ensured his survival.56 Nevertheless, following a dry-run to assassinate Trotsky in his study using an ice-pick on the pretext of discussing a political article he had begun to write, Mercader invited himself back to Trotsky’s residence on the hot summer day of August 20, 1940, to discuss some revisions he had supposedly made to improve the same article. Concealing his ice-pick under a heavy raincoat, Mercader provoked Natalia Sedova’s suspicions about his presentation:
“Yes, you don’t look well. Not well at all. Why are you wearing your hat and raincoat? You never wear a hat, and the sun is shining.”57
Nevertheless, despite Natalia Sedova and Trotsky’s own intuitive misgivings, this Stalinist agent did ‘succeed’ in assassinating the exiled Bolshevik that day—precisely by burying an ice-pick into Trotsky’s head from behind, as the “Old Man” was distracted turning the page while reading the very essay Mercader had brought him:
“The moment was rehearsed. Wait until he finishes the first page, [NKVD officer] Eitington had coached. Wait until he is turning the page, when he will be most distracted.”58
What a fitting allegory for Leninism and Stalinism: conflict-resolution according to the principle of “might makes right.”59 Trotsky’s fate also openly displays Stalin’s anti-Semitism: in so ruthlessly murdering his primary political rival, a world-renowned Bolshevik leader and Jewish dissident,60 in Coyoacán, which lies approximately 6,000 miles (or 10,000 kilometers) from Moscow—after having exploited Sylvia Ageloff, a fellow Jewish intellectual, to gain access to the desired target—the “Man of Steel” flaunts his attitude toward the relationship between Jews and his false “Revolution.” Mercader’s assassination of Trotsky therefore illuminates the clear continuities between Stalin and the bourgeoisie, in terms of their shared instrumentalization of human life, and the “full-circle” development of the Russian Revolution, proving Voline’s point that “Lenin, Trotsky, and their colleagues [as Stalin’s predecessors] were never revolutionaries. They were only rather brutal reformers, and like all reformers and politicians, always had recourse to the old bourgeois methods, in dealing with both internal and military problems.”61
2Elliott Liu, Maoism and the Chinese Revolution (Oakland: PM Press, 2016), 68).
4Henry Wolfe, The Imperial Soviets (New York: Doubleday, 1940).
5Alfred Meyer, Communism (New York: Random House, 1984), 92-93.
6E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 195-196.
7Dunayevskaya 318.
8Hensman 36.
9Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 52.
10Hensman 53-60.
11Eric Lee, The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution, 1918-1921 (London, Zed Books, 2017). See a review here.
13Roy 50-51, 83.
16Roy 45-46, 52-53, 66.
18Roy 67.
20Roy 46, 68, 73.
21Dunayevskaya 318.
24This line is disturbingly close to that of the neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin, who welcomed Russia’s 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine by calling for “genocide… of the race of Ukrainian bastards [sic].” Alexander Reid Ross, Against the Fascist Creep (Chico, Calif.: AK Press, 2017), 233.
25Plokhy 259.
26Wayne Price, Anarchism and Socialism: Reformism or Revolution? 3rd ed. (Edmonton, Alberta: Thoughtcrime, 2010), 186-189; Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of the Bureaucracy,” in Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution, eds. Friends of Aron Baron (Chicago, Calif.: AK Press, 2017), 282.
27Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1975), 359-361.
28Paul Mattick, “Bolshevism and Stalinism,” in Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution, eds. Friends of Aron Baron (Chicago, Calif.: AK Press, 2017), 271.
29Voline 372-375.
31Ibid 668; Voline 374.
34For a translation of the text of the December, 1932 decree of the USSR Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars, see M. Matthews, Soviet Government: a Selection of Official Documents on Internal Policy, J. Cape, 1974, 74-77.
35Hensman 34-35; Plokhy 249-250.
36Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Penguin: London, 1976), 873-904.
38Jason W. Clay and Bonnie K. Holcomb, Politics and Famine in Ethiopia (Cambridge, Mass.: Cultural Survival, 1985).
40Voline 380, 388.
41Mattick 264.
42Evtuhov 688, 730.
43Plokhy 255; Dunayevskaya 320.
44Evtuhov 671, 676, 693, 730.
45Ibid 675, 688.
46Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, trans. Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (San Diego: Harcourt, 1967), 366, 368.
51Dunayaevskaya 325-329.
54Ida Mett, “The Kronstadt Commune,” in Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution, eds. Friends of Aron Baron (Chicago, Calif.: AK Press, 2017), 185-190; Voline 592-600; Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control (London: Solidarity, 1970).
55Arendt xxn4.
56John P. Davidson, The Obedient Assassin (Harrison, NY: Delphinium Books, 2014), 48, 193-199.
59Voline 374.
60A dissident relative to Stalinism in power, that is, but not relative to anarchism or libertarian communism.
61Voline 431-432 (emphasis added).
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Red and Black October: An Anarchist Perspective on the Russian Revolution for its 100th Anniversary
A hundred years [correction: 100 years and 37 days] from the day that the Winter Palace fell in Petrograd—October 25 in the Julian calendar, November 7 in the Gregorian—we present an anarchist perspective on the Russian Revolution, which began in February 1917 with a mass-mobilization and mutinies that deposed Tsar Nicholas II. Though the Revolution contained an awesome amount of liberatory potential as reflected in workers’ self-management and peasant land-seizures, it took a fatal turn with the seizure of power by the authoritarian Bolshevik Party. #RussianRev100Years #1917LIVE #1917CROWD #1917UNDEAD
What precipitated the crisis and revolutionary events of 1917?
What helped propel the Revolution?
What was the anarchist role in the Revolution?
How did the events beginning in 1917 present two opposing conceptions of social revolution?
How did the Revolution go wrong?
What was the role of the Bolshevik Party?
What was the Red Terror?
What was the Russian Civil War?
What about the imperialists?
What happened in Ukraine?
Were Makhno and his followers anti-Semitic?
What happened at Kronstadt in 1921?
How did Lenin contradict his supposed anti-imperialist principles while in power?
How did Red October, the Red Terror, and the Civil War lead to Stalin’s rule?
What lessons should we take from the Revolution?
Recommended Statements and Memoirs
Recommended Films
A map of the former Russian Empire using current borders, with important cities, sites, and regions for the Revolution indicated. The black star just west of St. Petersburg corresponds to Kronstadt. Key: red/maroon = Bolshevik control or influence; black = anarchist control or influence; green = Greens or Basmachi presence; pink = Menshevik control or influence
A map of western Russia and Eastern Europe using current borders indicating important cities and sites for the Revolution. The black star just west of St. Petersburg corresponds to Kronstadt.
Two factors were decisive in the emergence of the Russian Revolution of 1917: the Tsar’s forcible participation in the ongoing First World War, and widespread economic crisis, including near-famine conditions for urban workers. The disorganization of economic life during the war led to critical shortages for both the cities and the Army, thus making the continuation of the war-effort quite impossible. It was in the cities that the Revolution began in early 1917, spreading to the war-front by summer, provoking mass-desertions by conscripted soldiers who had experienced the utter pointlessness of the war firsthand. In fact, the Russian Revolution can in some ways be considered one of the greatest popular anti-militarist uprisings in history.
In February 1917 (March by the Gregorian calendar), starving masses rose up in Petrograd (previously and subsequently again known as St. Petersburg). On the first day of demonstrations, February 24 (Julian calendar), soldiers—perhaps in part with Bloody Sunday in mind—refused to fire on the striking workers and starving women, and the Petrograd garrison increasingly mutinied against the Tsar. Even the Imperial Guards turned on the tsarist police. The regiments in mutiny soon defeated all remaining tsarist forces in the capital, and railway workers defended the revolutionary city by refusing to transport loyalist forces to Petrograd. Finally acknowledging the reality of the situation, Nicholas II abdicated on March 2, ending three centuries of despotism by the Romanov dynasty. The Revolution had begun!
As Voline writes, the February Revolution, “the action of the masses[,] was spontaneous, logically climaxing a long period of concrete experience and moral preparation. This action was neither organized nor guided by any political party. Supported by the people in arms—the Army—it was victorious” (emphasis in original). He clarifies that this incredible historical progression was achieved by the people without leaders, for Yuli Martov (Menshevik) and Vladimir Lenin, Lev Trotsky, and Nikolai Bukharin (Bolsheviks) were all exiled at this time, only to return after February.
Though the February Revolution gave rise to a bourgeois Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky, a social-democratic member of the Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Party, the emancipatory spirit of the Revolution was carried on by the insurgent peasantry and proletariat. The peasants, who made up 85% of Russia’s population at the time, immediately set about expropriating the land after the fall of the Tsar, and the Petrograd Soviet was resurrected from the 1905 Revolution, once again becoming a trusted voice of the working class and ever-greater segments of the Army. Nonetheless, the Provisional Government perpetuated Russia’s participation in the war, a decisive factor impelling the fall of the Romanov dynasty, and Kerensky even re-established the death penalty at the front. He also ordered a disastrous offensive on the Austro-German lines in June 1917.
In August, the White General Kornilov attempted to crush the Revolution in the name of the Provisional Government, but the workers of Petrograd once again mobilized as they had in February to defend the city with arms and by rerouting forces sent via rail to support Kornilov’s putsch attempt. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks won majorities in the soviets, factory committees, and soldiers’ committees, and in light of the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries’ decision to affiliate with them, the Party gained much sympathy among workers and peasants alike. Thanks to its heroic past, the SR Party, which represented the cause of agrarian socialism, had become the strongest party after February 1917, taking the majority of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, and enjoying the support of the majority of the population due to its “solid backing in the villages as a result of its pre-revolutionary activity and its work in promoting peasant cooperatives” (Maximov 50). This arrangement between the Bolsheviks and Left-SR’s would continue until July 1918, when the latter attempted to overthrow the Red State. Following the Provisional Government’s release of an arrest warrant against Lenin on July 6, 1917, the Red leader went underground to plan an insurrection against Kerensky.
“Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution” (Rod Jones)
“Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution” (Peter Rachleff)
“Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (Maurice Brinton)
“Russian Factory Committees” (Paul Avrich)
Numerically, self-described anarchists in Russia at the time of the February Revolution were not particularly strong, as the movement was just beginning, while revolutionary syndicalism was similarly germinating, and the most radical element of party politics, the Left-SR’s, was relatively weak in comparison to the Bolsheviks. Besides that, the Left-SR’s were actually in coalition with the ruling Bolshevik Party from Red October until July 1918, when they attempted to overthrow their erstwhile allies. Voline emphasizes that, had the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists had more time than they were given before the Bolshevik assault of April 1918, they could likely have influenced the masses to boldly carry on with the project of free initiative and self-organization made possible by the Revolution. Yet he remarks with disappointment upon his return to Petrograd from exile in July 1917 that, “[i]n the fifth month of a great revolution, no Anarchist newspaper, no Anarchist voice was making itself heard in the capital of the country. And this in the face of the almost unlimited activity of the Bolsheviki!” (emphasis in original).
Between May and October 1917, some anarcho-syndicalists voted with the Reds in factory committees in favor of workers’ control, and the resurgent anti-authoritarianism of the Russian masses after February to some extent led the Bolsheviks to converge opportunistically with anti-statist and federalist critiques, thus misrepresenting their own politics (Goodwin 45-6). While the Bolsheviks did want to end Russian participation in World War I and have the land be returned to the peasantry, it is also true that the Bolsheviks ultimately crushed soviet-based democracy—thus contradicting their rhetorical commitment to have “all power” be devolved “to the soviets”—and only retroactively acknowledged the peasantry’s expropriation of private property since February with their Land Decree, proclaimed on October 26, 1917, the day after the fall of the Winter Palace. Additionally, as shall be described more below, the Reds had a prejudiced, authoritarian view of the peasants in line with Marxist ideology which rationalized the commission of several atrocities against them.
Ironically, then, anarchist sailors from Kronstadt played an important role in the insurrection to capture the Winter Palace. The Dvintsi (from Dvinsk) regiment, both comprised of and commanded by anarchists, was similarly critical in the struggle against Kerensky’s forces. Their commander, Gratchov, distributed arms and ammunition to the workers shortly after the October seizure of power, anticipating the danger this posed to the Revolution, but was killed under mysterious circumstances soon after having reported to the Bolshevik authorities. Anatoli Jelezniakov, an anarchist Kronstadter, was the one who ordered the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, announcing that the parliamentarians had “prattled long enough!” Anarchists also participated in the defense against General Kornilov’s coup attempt of August 1917 and organized libertarian-oriented partisan groups, such as the “M. A. Bakunin Partisan Detachment” of Yekaterinoslav or the Black Guards detachments commanded by Maria Nikiforova in Ukraine. Anarchists were moreover critical to the defense against Admiral Kolchak’s White forces in eastern Russia and Siberia.
Grimly, the Red authorities used the pretext of the Moscow Black Guards’ supposed plans for an “anarchist counter-revolution” to suppress the movement in April 1918, by which time the movement in Russia had numbered an estimated 10,000 individuals (Goodwin 48). In parallel, Nestor Makhno’s Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine was organized on anarchist principles, and the Makhnovists played a crucial role in defending the Revolution from the reactionary White Armies led by Generals Denikin and Wrangel during 1919-1920—before they, too, were suppressed by the Bolsheviks. The Greens, a powerful guerrilla movement spearheaded by deserting ex-conscripts, successfully defended the autonomous peasant revolution against Whites and Reds alike in the Civil War (1918-20) until their eventual defeat by the centralizing Bolshevik State.
The Union for Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda began publishing Golos Truda (“The Voice of Labor”) in Petrograd as a weekly in summer 1917, continuing until spring 1918 and then restarting later in Moscow. The Union also founded an Anarcho-Syndicalist publishing house, but both the press and the Union were shut down by the Reds in 1919. Meanwhile, the Federation of Anarchist Groups of Moscow published the daily Anarchy, with an anarcho-communist perspective, carrying on intensive propaganda work from 1917-18. Though Federation members participated with the Dvintsi in the struggle against Kerensky, the Reds repressed the Federation in April 1918, eliminating the last of its militants by 1921. In Ukraine, Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov, Voline, and others were involved in the founding in late 1918 of the Nabat (“Tocsin”) Confederation, which sought a unified anarchist movement, proclaimed the necessity of libertarian social revolution through its Nabat newspaper, and tried to organize a Pan-Russian Anarchist Confederation—a project that was directly stifled by Trotsky. Like the Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, all these anarchist organizations “eventually met with the same fate: brutal suppression by the ‘Soviet’ authority.”
The editors of Golos Truda, who included Voline and Maximov, among others, denounced the ongoing war and called on Russian conscripts to desert the war-effort, thus providing the possibility of an example to the rest of the world’s soldiers, who in unison could ignite a world revolution. The editors considered it their “first duty, our most sacred task, to take up this work immediately in our own land […by ] open[ing] new horizons for the laboring masses, [and] help[ing] them in their quest.” In their initial issues, they emphasized the importance of continuing and deepening the Revolution:
We say to the Russian workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionists: Above all, continue the Revolution. Continue to organize yourselves solidly and to unite your new organizations: your communes, your unions, your committees, your Soviets. Continue—with firmness and perseverance, always and everywhere—to participate more and more extensively and more and more effectively, in the economic activity of the country. Continue to take into your hands, that is, into the hands of your organizations, all the raw materials and all the instruments indispensable to your labor. Continue to eliminate private enterprises.
Continue the Revolution! Do not hesitate to face the solution of all the burning questions of the present. Create everywhere the necessary organizations to achieve those solutions. Peasants, take the land and put it at the disposal of your committees. Workers, proceed to put in the hands of and at the disposal of your own social organizations—everywhere on the spot—the mines and the subsoil, the enterprises and establishments of airports, the works and factories, the workshops, and the machines.
Golos Truda’s editors stress the need for workers and peasants to create autonomous class organizations in order to press forward with the reconstruction of the economy from below, and the need for intellectuals to focus their efforts in helping the masses prepare for the “real Revolution” of socializing production. By means of such class organizations could the economic system realistically transition into serving popular interests. Demarcating their position from all statists, the editors observe that political parties are required for the task of taking power, but,
To take over the economy, a political party is not indispensable. But indispensable to that action are the organizations of the masses, independent organizations remaining outside of all political parties. It is upon these organizations that falls, at the moment of the Revolution, the task of building the new social and economic system.
That is why the Anarchists do not form a political party. They agitate, either directly in the mass organizations or—as propagandists—in groups and ideological unions.
As an illustration of the same, consider the fate of the Nobel refinery in Petrograd: in late 1917, the refinery’s workers decided to manage the site collectively in the wake of its abandonment by the owners during the Revolution, yet the Red authorities completely ignored their will and shuttered it anyway, laying off all the workers. The situation was generally very similar throughout much of Russia and Ukraine, for the Bolshevik authorities prohibited the masses from independent action, maligning such initiative as a “breach of discipline,” and actively suppressed autonomous social movements like those of the anarchists, the Makhnovists, and the Greens, as well as cooperatives, workers on strike, and peasants in revolt.
Golos Truda’s editors summarize it well:
Anarchism is not only an idea, a goal; it is, before anything else, also a method, a means of struggling for the emancipation of [humanity] […]. One cannot achieve Anarchism in any way except by going straight to the goal, by the direct Anarchist road. Otherwise one never will arrive (emphasis in original).
Anarchists in the Russian Revolution (Paul Avrich)
The Russian Revolution (ed. Robert Graham)
Timeline of Russian Anarchism, 1921-1953
Voline emphasizes that, in spite of the “victory” of Bolshevism in power, anarchism represented a real alternative that envisaged “a full and integral social revolution” after February 1917. In 1918, this liberatory alternative posed such a threat to the Red State that the Bolsheviks felt compelled to utterly crush it by means of terror. It was thus through force rather than via discussion or debate that the Reds suppressed the anarchist alternative, initially in April 1918 through outright repression of anarchist individuals and collectives and the shuttering of libertarian social centers and presses, and evermore so between 1919-1921, particularly in Ukraine, where the Makhnovists struggled against White reaction and subsequently against Red betrayal. Voline writes that the period between Red October and the end of 1918 was “significant and decisive, and that it “was in the course of those months that the fate of the Revolution was decided.” Still, it was not until they had suppressed the Kronstadt Commune and otherwise eliminated the libertarian movement by the end of 1921 that the Reds became masters of the political situation, although even then their authority had in reality been destroyed throughout vast swathes of rural regions, as peasants set off mass-rebellions against conscription and the grain-requisition regimes imposed by the Reds.
Whereas the Bolsheviks implemented statist-authoritarian means as their revolutionary strategy, Russian and Ukrainian anarchists followed Proudhon and Bakunin’s vision of “direct and federative alliance[s]” among the associated workers and peasants with their unions, communes, and cooperatives organized non-hierarchically along local, regional, and international lines. In contrast to the Marxist view of centralization first, followed in theory by an eventual “withering away of the State,” the anarchists stressed the importance of an immediate rather than delayed socialization of the means of production by the working classes. It is therefore untrue that anarchists had no vision for social organization after the Revolution. On the contrary, we see two contrasting principles of organization: namely, the Bolsheviks’ centralist-authoritarian principles versus the anarchists’ libertarian and federative ones. In Voline’s words, “Naturally, the Anarchists say, it is necessary that society be organized. But this new organization should be done freely, socially, and, certainly, from the bottom [up].”
Like Bakunin, Voline sees a role for an “elite” to organize the libertarian social revolution, but such revolutionary organizers must be “true collaborators” with the people, who help them, “enlighten them, teach them, […] impel them to take the initiative, […] and support them in their action,” not “dictators” who hold power dominate, subjugate, or oppress them. This is another key difference with Bolshevism, which prescribes an elite that is to be aided by the masses and armed forces through blind obedience. In contrast, anarchism envisions that, through
The natural interplay of their economic, technical, and social organizations, [and] with the help of the “elite” and, in case of need, under the protection of their freely organized armed forces, the labouring masses should […] be able to carry the Revolution effectively forward and progressively arrive at the practical achievement of all of its tasks.
Against the Reds’ interest in the “organization of power,” anarchists counterposed the project of “organizing the Revolution.” For Voline, there exists “an explicit and irreconcilable contradiction” between the true libertarian social revolution and “the theory and practice” of statism and authoritarianism.
“the forward march of the revolutionary masses toward real emancipation, toward the creation of new forms of social life, is incompatible with the very principle of State power” (Voline).
In contrast to Trotsky’s well-known hypothesis set forth in The Revolution Betrayed (1937), that the “degeneration” of the Russian Revolution came about only with the rise of Stalin in 1924, the Bolshevik seizure of power on October 25-26, 1917, arguably can be considered the beginning of its corruption. Voline describes the storming of the Winter Palace as amounting “virtually [to] a palace revolution” that gave the Reds a clear tactical advantage over the anarchists. That the Russian masses entrusted the fate of the Revolution to the Bolsheviks reflected both the hegemony of statism in the Russian popular imagination as well as the “insufficiency of the preliminary destruction” achieved in the February Revolution. Voline means to say that the people’s toleration of the continued existence of the State after the fall of Tsarism set the stage for the Bolshevik seizure of power and the subsequent deviation and destruction of the Revolution. Instead of the left-wing coalition government favored by the Menshevik Yuli Martov or any sense of direct democracy based on the soviets, the victorious Bolsheviks effectively instituted a one-party dictatorship which claimed baselessly to represent the interests of the proletariat. Subsequently adopting a perspective that in a way anticipated the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s distinction between “friends” and “enemies,” the Reds forcibly disarmed the workers and their organizations and suppressed all alternative factions through the use of terror. As the publisher of Gregori Maximov’s The Guillotine at Work explains, during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920):
all-non Bolshevik elements were dubbed ‘petty-bourgeois and counter-revolutionary elements.’ Right and Left Social-Revolutionists, Social-Democrat[s] of all Shades, Maximalists, Anarchists of every tendency—all were placed in the same category of ‘counter-revolutionists.’ Soon these elements began to crowd not only the Tzar’s empty prisons but the vast number of private buildings converted by the Bolsheviks into prisons. Newly built ‘concentration camps,’ which were unknown to the Tzar’s government, were quickly filled (5-6).
In this way, the Bolshevik regime effectively instituted state slavery to defend its hegemony—such was the conclusion reached by Karl Kautsky, “the most prominent leader of world Social-Democracy,” while Lenin still lived (Maximov 20).
It is therefore highly ironic yet also revealing to consider that Lenin’s popularity after the February Revolution followed in large part from the entirely misleading vision he sets forth in the “April Theses” (1917), which argue that the Bolsheviks seek a “second revolution” that would overthrow the Provisional Government; abolish the police, military, and bourgeois State apparatus; and champion soviet power in its place. Acutely aware of the strong libertarian-humanist element in Russian socialism, the former exile knew that openly presenting his political project as Marxian centralism would be a non-starter in the motherland (21-3). Instead, he would attract the masses by appealing to the liberatory memory of the 1871 Paris Commune (31). In fact, such rhetorical “deviations” led several more moderate Russian Social Democrats to criticize Lenin’s call for immediate revolution as a reversion from Marxism to “Bakuninism”: Georgii Plekhanov especially made this connection, judging Lenin’s advocacy of the overthrow of the Provisional Government as “an insane and extremely harmful attempt to sow anarchist turmoil on the Russian Earth” (emphasis in original). In parallel, the Menshevik Martov considered Lenin’s advocacy of bypassing the “objectively necessary” historical stage of bourgeois democracy as a dangerous reorientation of the struggle from Marx to Bakunin (Goodwin 45-7).
Nevertheless, this feigned affinity with anarchism was purely instrumental and opportunistic: while in opposition to the Provisional Government, Lenin had militated greatly against the reinstatement of the death penalty in the Army, immediately upon taking power in October, he took steps to ensure that the revolutionary announcement abolishing the death penalty made on October 26, 1917—the day after the Winter Palace had fallen—was a mere formality. Instead, Lenin greatly impressed the need for the persistence of capital punishment. The appeal to the Paris Commune, therefore, was mere “bait,” a “weapon clearing the road to power” (Maximov 28-34). As the Red leader himself put it, “Do you really believe we shall be able to come out triumphant without the most drastic revolutionary terror?” (29).
Like his lieutenant Trotsky, then, Lenin was a State Terrorist, the “initiator and ideologist of terror in the Russian Revolution modeled upon the terror of the French Revolution” (Maximov 30). By suppressing not only the capitalists but also the rest of the non-Bolshevik left after October, these two figures bear principal responsibility for the vast suffering and death brought about by the Civil War. In targeting socialist-democratic forces of the Revolution for destruction, the Reds similarly targeted the masses of workers and peasants who supported these forces. In contrast, Maximov speculates that, had the broad Russian left been united rather than dealing with a treacherous war launched on it by the Bolsheviks, the “resistance” of the landowners and reactionaries who would go on to comprise the White Armies would have been easily defeated, and the need to resort to terror quite baseless (32-3). Instead, a myriad of socialist and anarchist groups, trade unions, and cooperatives became the regime’s adversaries (37). In parallel, workers and peasants who resisted Bolshevik policies—such as in the case of the latter, vast grain requisitions taken indiscriminately by the Red Army from rich and poor peasants alike to feed the cities—were depicted as “enemies of the people” (39). For this reason, many were targeted for arrest or assassination by the CheKa, or the Extraordinary Committee, which Lenin established in December 1917 (54-6).
For Maximov, then, the Marxist-Leninist centralized State views virtually the entire population as its enemy, with its only “friend” being the minority of pro-Bolshevik workers. This political strategy of championing the dictatorship of the proletariat—or really, the Party over the proletariat and the peasantry—hence inevitably becomes “a slaveholders democracy, which, as distinguished from the one of the ancient world, has for its aim freedom, economic equality, freeing the entire population from slavery, and all this is to be realized… by enslaving the entire population! Could there be a more absurd theory?” (41). Maximov here echoes Bakunin’s prescient warnings about the the risks associated with a Red bureaucracy: “Take the fiercest revolutionary and put him on the All-Russian throne or give him dictatorial power, […] and he will become worse than Alexander Nikolaevich [Alexander II] himself in a year.”
In light of the constellation of forces after Red October, it is quite unsurprising that freedom and equality came to be associated under Lenin with bourgeois delusions, and the critical victories over Tsarism represented by the securing of the freedom of the press, association, and organization in February thus easily rolled back (Maximov 42-3). Voline observes with reason that this suppression of freedom of speech, press, organization, and action “is fatal to true revolution.” Indeed, the Bolshevik regime revealed its autocratic character through its mass-violation of the formal abolition of capital punishment that had been decreed the day of the fall of the Winter Palace in October 1917 (55). The regime even wantonly executed followers of Tolstoy for observing their religious beliefs regarding non-cooperation with war in refusing conscription for the Red Army (10, 195). Ultimately, Lenin’s terroristic employment of the CheKa was in no way accountable to the soviets but rather a consciously elitist effort to “direct” the Revolution toward the Reds’ consolidation of power by means of the suppression of various rivals on left and right (57-8). In specifically targeting the libertarian movement, the Bolsheviks suppressed the Revolution itself. As Voline recounts:
Thus, inch by inch, the rulers become the absolute masters of the country. They create privileged classes on which they base themselves. They organize forces capable of sustaining them, and defend themselves fiercely against all opposition, all contradiction, all independent initiative. Monopolizing everything, they take over the whole life and activity of the country. And having no other way of acting, they oppress, subjugate, enslave, exploit. They repress all resistance. They persecute and wipe out, in the name of the Revolution, everyone who will not bend to their will.
To justify themselves, they lie, deceive, slander.
To stifle the truth, they are brutal. They fill the prisons and places of exile; they torture, kill, execute, assassinate.
That is what happened, exactly and inevitably, to the Russian Revolution.
“The Russian Revolution” (Anarchist FAQ)
“The Bolsheviks and Workers Control” (Maurice Brinton, Solidarity)
“Lenin and Workers Control” (Tom Brown, SWF)
“How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?”
“Organizational Platform for a General Union of Anarchists” (Makhno, Arshinov, et al.)
The Bolsheviks, the supposed “majority” faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party, agitated and organized against the Provisional Government and Russia’s ongoing participation in World War I following the February 1917 Revolution. Yet as Voline observes, the Reds’ most popular slogans—Long live the Revolution! Down with the war! The land to the peasants! The factories to the workers!—were in fact appropriated from the anarchists. As discussed above, moreover, Lenin’s public program, as based on the April theses, invoked the liberatory model of the Paris Commune, thus gravely deceiving the Russian masses as to the Reds’ actual political project: the imposition of State capitalism in the name of communism. Consider Lenin’s comments from “The Tax in Kind” (1921), that,
[w]hile the revolution in Germany still tarries, our task should be to learn from the Germans how to run state capitalism, by all means to copy it from them and not to spare dictatorial methods in order to accelerate this process of taking over from the Germans, doing it at an even more rapid pace than the one followed by Peter the First in Westernizing barbarous Russia […] (emphasis added).
Wrongly considered the “leaders” of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks in fact usurped power from the soviets and thus from the people through their October 1917 seizure of power, completely deviating the course of the Revolution. Even in November 1917, the editors of Golos Truda had anticipated that the soviets could well become merely executive organs of the nascent Red State; this is unfortunately what happened rather soon after Red October. Besides this, the Bolsheviks’ first major imposition on the masses came with the new authorities’ signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany (negotiations for which began in November 1917, with its ratification coming in March 1918), an accord that exchanged control over the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Belarus to the Central Powers for Russia’s withdrawal from the conflict. This deal, the invention of Lenin and Trotsky, greatly contradicted the wishes of the Russian masses, the Left SR’s, the Maximalists, the anarchists, and even the majority of the members of the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee, who preferred to continue a revolutionary war against the Austro-Hungarian and German imperialists. Lenin’s self-assertion here presages the ruthless centralism that would govern the Reds’ consolidation of power through the terroristic elimination of political rivals and enemies, and it would serve as the grounds for the Left-SR’s attempt at their overthrow (July 1918).
The Bolshevik Party carried out one of the most disastrous examples of substitutionism in history: that is, the substitution of the autonomous, independent action of the people by the centralized rule of dictatorship. While they claimed to represent the interests of the workers and peasants, the Reds, “a government [comprised] of intellectuals, of Marxist doctrinaires,” in fact greatly oppressed them by means of their imposition of State capitalism over them. Through the Red Terror and during the Civil War, the Bolsheviks practiced self-preservation at the expense of millions of lives of workers and peasants and the very Revolution itself (Maximov 149, 185). The “bourgeois statist-reformers” Lenin and Trotsky essentially employed instrumental thinking and oppression in their own supposed struggle against oppression, which in effect was quite enslaving, and demonstrated clearly for all “how not to wage a revolution.”
The reactionary meaning of Bolshevik rule is illuminated well by the proletarian Communist Party member Gavril Miasnikov, who was expelled from the Party in 1922, effectively for thoughtcrime. Reflecting on the meaning of the Russian Revolution to date, Miasnikov addresses Lenin directly, observing, “To break the jaws of the international bourgeoisie is all very well, but the trouble is that you lift your hand against the bourgeoisie and you strike at the worker. Which class now supplies the greatest number of people arrested on charges of counter-revolution? Peasants and workers, to be sure” (Maximov 271, emphasis added).
“A Fresh Look at Lenin” (Andy Brown)
“The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party” (Alexander Berkman)
“Lenin’s mind, like the mind of any partisan of dictatorship, of any dictatorship, works only along a single track—the police” (Maximov 150).
The infamous Red Terror launched by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in April 1918 sought to resolve the contradiction between the profoundly libertarian progress seen since February with the Bolsheviks’ authoritarian vision for the region. The Terror is outlined in Lenin’s address on April 29, 1918, “The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power,” which stresses the putative necessity of “halting the offensive upon capital” waged by striking workers and those engaged in self-management and industrial democracy (Maximov 59-62). Acknowledging the “great deal of elemental Anarchism” evident throughout the former Empire, Lenin insists in parallel on the need for an “iron power” to keep the anarchic peasantry under control (63-66). According to Voline, the Bolsheviks saw clearly that allowing anarchists freedom would be equivalent to political suicide. Soon after publishing “The Immediate Tasks,” Lenin reiterated the necessity of an “iron order” and announced a “great crusade” to be comprised of urban workers’ brigades against “grain speculators, Kulaks, village usurers, disorganizers, grafters [… and all] those who violate the strict order established by the State” in the countryside (Maximov 68). The plundering and murders engaged in by Red grain-requisitioners provoked a vast uprising of the peasantry throughout much of Russia and Ukraine—yet rather than lament such a turn of events, Lenin considered it a “merit” that “we [had] brought civil war to the village” (69-71).
The second stage of the Terror, an intensification of the same, began after the Left-SR and ex-anarchist Dora Kaplan’s attempt on Lenin’s life in August 1918. By means of these two stages, by the end of 1918, the Reds had suppressed civil liberties and banned all non-Communist publications, broken up anarchist collectives and murdered individual anarchists, outlawed the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, suppressed the Left-SR’s, executed a countless number, and incarcerated tens of thousands (Maximov 84). In parallel, the peasantry was used as a target for exploitation and regimentation. Consider this testimony by a Left-SR about the scorched-earth tactics employed by the Reds against the peasants of Tambov:
I was arrested not in January 1921, but in September 1920. There was no wide insurrectionary movement in the government of Tambov, although there were detached cases of armed resistance on the part of the peasants to the requisitioning detachments who were shamelessly looting the villages. On the day of my arrival in Tambov the Central Executive Committee of Tambov Soviets hung out the following announcement, declaring that ‘because of their attempt to disrupt the campaign of grain collecting, the villages Verkhne-Spasskoye (ten thousand population), Koziri (six thousand), and four other villages were burnt, hundreds of peasants were shot, and their property was looted.’ During my six months of confinement in the prisons of the Tambov CheKa I had a chance to see for myself the nightmarish picture of mass-annihilation and ruination of the toiling peasants of the government of Tambov which was carried on by the Communist authorities: hundreds of peasants were shot by the Revolutionary Circuit Courts and the Tambov CheKa; thousands of unarmed peasants were mowed down by the machine guns of the students of military schools and Communists, and tens of thousands were exiled to the far away North, while their property was burned or looted. The same picture, according to the data which the party of Left-Social-Revolutionaries has at its disposal, can be drawn for a number of other provinces: the government of Samara, Kazan, Saratov, in Ukraine, Siberia, etc. (Maximov 87-8).
Official statistics show that there were at least 245 peasant uprisings in 1918, and 99 in the first half of 1919 (Maximov 91). These were cruelly suppressed by the Reds, and such suppression in turn catalyzed further rebellions. Indeed, echoing the Left-SR’s testimony cited above, the CheKa gave explicit orders for the utilization of “mass terror” against villages considered to be supportive of the Green guerrillas, who defended the local peasant revolution (122-3). Additionally, the Reds in 1919-1920 destroyed the Russian cooperative movement due to its ties to non-Bolshevik socialists; as Maximov writes, “the cooperatives furnished an abundant and ever-renewed supply of inmates for the prisons and concentration camps” (132-3). By thus “ruthlessly persecuting all those who differed with them in opinion,” Lenin and Trotsky are clearly responsible for the vast crimes of the Terror, as for preparing the conditions for the 1921 famine, which took the lives of over 5 million people, in accordance with official statistics (96, 185). While 1921 did see drought and a resulting poor harvest, that the peasantry lacked accumulated stock due to the Reds’ grain-requisition regime can explain the breadth and depth of the famine (183-4).
Yet, by this time, Lenin would rationalize such State Terror by saying that the alternative of equality and democracy advocated by Left-SR’s, anarchists, and other democratic critics would necessarily allow the White reaction victory in the Civil War, such that, according to this thought process, Left-SR’s, anarchists, and democrats effectively became imperialist stooges and agents for the “restoration of capitalism.” Lenin explicitly says as much, calling those who “continue to struggle for the ‘equality of labor democracy’ […] partisans of Kolchak,” the leader of the Whites (Maximov 94). In this way, the emergence of the Civil War and the White reaction was utilized as a new and retroactive rationalization of the pre-existing Terror, and grounds for its expansion, as in Petrograd and Astrakhan, where the CheKa in 1919 forcibly suppressed striking workers (99-103). Maximov estimates that in 1919 alone, the Chekist terror took the lives of 25,000, with some 44,000 imprisoned and subjected to starvation, forced labor, torture, and rampant disease (111-2). In the provinces ruled by Trotsky, workers were often shot for “violating labor discipline” (136). This follows from the demand he made at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions (1920) for the “militarization of labor,” and his deluded sense that, the Soviet Union supposedly having become a “Workers’ State,” labor no longer had any need to organize independently of the State.
In February 1920, the CheKa announced the formal abolition of the death penalty in Russia with the exception of the war front, yet in May it was re-established by official decree. Just before the ban came into effect in February, however, CheKa head Felix Dzherzhinsky ordered the mass-execution of those sentenced to death, with the Left-SR A. Izmaylovich recalling the shooting of 150 prisoners in Moscow on the eve of the decree’s proclamation (Maximov 119-20). Red authoritarianism only burgeoned more: in “The Party Crisis” (January 1921), Lenin defended labor’s militarization, dismissed talk of industrial democracy, and identified the heresy of “syndicalist deviation” as something to be extirpated (Maximov 144-5). Whereas the policies of forcible grain requisitions in large part had triggered the 1921-1922 famine, Lenin in no way relieved the peasantry of this yoke but instead continued to demand further extraction, wielding terror against peasants who resisted and restricting the movement of starving peasants to other provinces in search of food by means of military cordons (149-50).
Thus, in contrast to the political opening expected by many leftists, workers, and peasants following the victory over the Whites in the Civil War—the hopes of getting on with the project of instituting a new Paris Commune in Russia, as falsely projected by Lenin in 1917 and 1918—the Reds showed that they were fully prepared to continue using State Terror to hold on to power. Alongside the fate of the Makhnovists, the suppression of the Kronstadt Commune is the best evidence for this sad reality, accounting for a quarter of the estimated 70,000 lives taken by the Red Terror in the year 1921 (Maximov 199).
Altogether, from 1917 to 1924, Maximov estimates that 200,000 lives were taken directly by the Red Terror, and that the Bolshevik experiment overall cost between 8 and 10 million lives, if we factor in victims of the Civil War and the 1921 famine, or between 10 and 13 million, if we incorporate the deaths attributable to the White Terror and reaction as well as the 1924 famine (Maximov 240-1).
“Bolshevism: Promises and Realities” (Gregori Maximov)
The Russian Civil War, launched by the top-heavy White Army against the Revolution in 1918 with the forces of international reaction behind it, centrally pitted Reds against Whites but also saw important liberatory roles played by the Greens, the Left-SR’s, and the Makhnovists, all of whom opposed Whites and Reds alike. White Armies led variously by Generals Denikin and Wrangel as well as Admiral Kolchak were defeated by the joint action of the people in the revolt, the Makhnovists, the Greens, and the Red Army by 1920. Voline points out that some of this counter-revolutionary militarism was actually supported by Right-SR’s and Mensheviks. Yet by the end of 1919, with “Kolchak and Denikin […] defeated and the movements headed by them […] virtually liquidated,” much of Russia and Ukraine had been “cleared of white guardist bands” (Maximov 113). According to Maximov, irregular libertarian partisans of Russia’s Far East were decisive in the defeat of the Whites in that region (236).
The Greens, so named thanks to their forest and marshland hideouts, united many “deserter comrades” with disaffected peasants impelled by hatred of State exploitation into rural partisan armies that defended the Revolution from Red and White alike in Ukraine, the Volga and Urals regions, Siberia, and some central Russian provinces (Posadskii 8, 11). Makhno, himself a peasant, led the Insurgent Army through Ukraine, inflicting devastating losses on Whites as his liberatory forces went. Influenced by anarchism, Makhno hoped to create a peasant utopia on the land; unlike many Greens, who opposed both Reds and Whites, Makhno engaged in tactical alliances with the Reds until 1920, when the latter betrayed the Makhnovists following their vital services rendered to the defense of the Revolution. Whereas Makhno and his followers together with the Siberian Greens favored free soviets and free federations, the Greens met with a similar fate at the hands of the victorious Bolsheviks: the Red Army engaged in scorched-earth tactics against peasant communities considered to be supportive of the guerrilla movement, specifically targeting family members of known Greens for reprisal in Caucasia, Crimea, and the Don basin (Posadskii 4-14; Maximov 176-7, 194-5).
In response to their perception of the Bolsheviks’ capitulation to imperialism with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Left-SR’s assassinated the German ambassador and a high-ranking German officer in July 1918, and they spearheaded a short-lived uprising against the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Later, from 1920-1921, the Left-SR Alexander Antonov led a major Green uprising in the Tambov region, one so menacing Lenin would consider it the single greatest threat to his rule. Yet the Tambov Rebellion, too, was put down using overwhelming force, as detailed above.
The flag of the Green Armies of the Russian Revolution
There is no doubt that the capitalist powers intervened on the side of the Whites against the Revolution in the Russian Civil War. The infamous Czech Legion, for example, seized control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (completed under Nicholas II) during part of the Civil War, and imperialist governments supplied the Whites heavily with arms and ammunition. The “North Russia” campaign by U.S., British, French, and Polish forces captured the key port city of Arkhangelsk from the Reds in 1918. Nonetheless, such imperialist intervention cannot explain or rationalize the depravity of Bolshevik rule. As Lenin and company often blamed the shortcomings of the Revolution on “capitalist encirclement” and the “inaction” of the global proletariat, they assumed that the success of the Russian Revolution depended on the spread of social revolution to other countries, yet did not stop to think that the very opposite might be true: that the “extension of the Revolution depended upon the results of the revolution in Russia.” In this sense, the lack of an expanding global Bolshevik upheaval perhaps reflected workers’ ambiguities about the meaning of the Russian Revolution after its deviation by the Reds. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks would see the repercussions of their negotiating a peace with the German and Austro-Hungarian imperialists, when the Left-SR’s attempted an abortive uprising to overthrow Lenin and his colleagues due to their desire to defend the Revolution by continuing the war against imperialism.
Soldiers from the counter-revolutionary Czech Legion
In Ukraine, Makhno, Arshinov, and Voline worked with the syndicalist Nabat (“Alarm”) confederation once the Revolution broke out. The Makhnovists proclaimed “Land and Liberty,” expropriated the land, and promoted soviet-based democracy in the regions they liberated. In 1919, the Insurrectionary Army led by Makhno hailed the Third Revolution against the Bolsheviks and called for land to be transferred from the Red State directly to the peasantry itself.
In 1919, the Reds conspired to crush the Makhnovists, even as the Insurrectionary Army was holding the line against the White General Denikin’s forces invading from the south. The Bolsheviks’ calculus was that Denikin would annihilate Makhno’s forces, thus eliminating a major rival to their rule, and then the Ukrainian peasantry would rebel against the occupying Whites and so weaken it before a victorious Red Army counter-offensive. Toward this end, in June Trotsky declared illegal the Fourth Extraordinary Convention being organized by the Makhnovists and ordered the arrest and execution of a number of commanders, though Makhno escaped unharmed.
Thereafter, the Insurrectionary Army regrouped and rallied to the defense of the Revolution, wreaking havoc in the rear of Denikin’s forces, which were thereafter easily defeated en route to Moscow by the Red Army (Maximov 108-111). The Reds then re-entered into a tactical military alliance with the Makhnovists to rout the White General Wrangel’s forces in Crimea. Importantly, the text of this pact stipulates that those regions in which the Makhnovists have presence are to be governed by the principles of “autonomy, federalism, and free agreement” in their relations with the Reds (126). Yet once Wrangel too had been defeated, Red Army commanders ordered the Insurrectionary Army to incorporate itself into the Red Army (127-8); when they refused to do so, they were criminalized as “bandits,” and the Reds banned their planned 1920 pan-Russian anarchist congress in Kharkov, ordering Makhno’s arrest as a “counter-revolutionary.” The militants were crushed, and the leadership driven into exile (Avrich 60).
The fate of the Makhnovists followed from the Reds’ premeditated policy of physically destroying popular insurgent movements, both “those that were hostile to them as well as those that fought together with them against Kolchak and Denikin” (173-4). How ironic that the anarchists’ heroic defense of the Southern line against the Whites only facilitated the Reds’ repression of the libertarian movement throughout Russia!
A similar story is seen in Russia’s Far East, where the Reds suppressed anarchists, Maximalists, and Left-SR’s after their critical contributions to the defeat of the White reaction in the region (Maximov 237-8).
“The Russian Revolution in the Ukraine” (Nestor Makhno)
“History of the Makhnovist Movement” (Peter Arshinov)
“Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War” (Michael Malet)
No, though Red apologists such as Trotsky like to claim that the Makhnovists hated Jews. Against such slanderous charges, Voline cites the example of Grigoriev, an ex-tsarist officer who led a reactionary peasant movement in Ukraine in 1919 that did engage in pogroms: “One of the reasons for the execution of Grigoriev by the Makhnovists was his anti-semitism and the immense pogrom he organised at Elizabethgrad, which cost the lives of nearly three thousand persons.”
He adds several other reasons showing the Makhnovists’ opposition to anti-Semitism, including the facts that a “fairly important part in the Makhnovist Army was played by revolutionists of Jewish origin,” that the Insurrectionary Army counted with several Jewish combatants and contained entirely Jewish fighting units, that Ukrainian Jewish communities provided many volunteers to the Army, and that “the Jewish population, which was very numerous in the Ukraine, took an active part in all the activities of the movement.”
Thus we see that the Makhnovist movement, though greatly inspired politically by the example of Mikhail Bakunin, progressed beyond this anarchist militant’s conspiratorial anti-Semitism to strictly punish chauvinistic acts inspired by such prejudice. For his part, Bakunin believed in the fantasy of universal Jewish power, and he conflates the power of finance capital with delusions about Jewish domination. See Statism and Anarchy.
The Kronstadt Commune of March 1921 was preceded by strike movements among workers in Petrograd and Moscow who demanded resolution to their starvation conditions as well as a halt to the terror and free soviet elections. The Reds met these striking workers with mass-arrests, lockouts, the declaration of martial law in Petrograd, and ultimately the armed suppression of workers in the city. As Maximov writes, whether ironically or not, “[t]the Petrograd scene strikingly resembled the last week of the Tzar’s absolutist regime” on the eve of the conflict (160). The sailors of Kronstadt echoed their fellow workers’ demands from across the bay, outlining in the Petropavlovsk resolution of February 28, 1921, fifteen demands, including the re-establishment of civil liberties, free elections to the soviets, the release of political prisoners, the review of all cases of those imprisoned and held in concentration camps, the right to organize labor unions, the immediate abolition of grain-requisitions, the liberation of the peasantry, and the abolition of Bolshevik commissars in the military and overseeing workplaces. While the resolution affirmed its demands within the parameters of the Soviet Constitution, Lenin and Trotsky found it profoundly threatening. They feared that its spirit could spread quickly within the armed forces—that the “petty-bourgeois [sic] Anarchist elemental forces [were] the most dangerous enemy, which might draw many sympathizers and partisans, which might obtain strong backing in the country and change the sentiments of the great masses of people” (Maximov 175). As such, they slandered the Kronstadt sailors, insulting them as being the dupes of Socialist Revolutionaries, a former tsarist general known as Kozlovsky, and the proto-fascist Black Hundreds.
The Bolsheviks then declared a state of emergency in Petrograd, clarifying that any crowds “congregating in the streets” were to be immediately shot, with any soldiers resisting such orders themselves to be summarily executed. The Reds also took several relatives of the sailors hostage (Maximov 165). In response, the Kronstadters took up arms to defend themselves and declared the abolition of the death penalty while themselves taking some 280 Reds hostage. Unfortunately, however, the weather was still cold enough to allow for the bay to be frozen over, thus facilitating a ground invasion of the island-fortress. Ultimately, after more than 10 days of artillery bombardment, Trotsky’s battalions, aided by ex-tsarist generals and supported by Chinese and Bashkir reinforcements, overwhelmed the Kronstadters and retook the island on March 17. An estimated 18,000 insurgents were killed in the fighting and executed shortly after their defeat (Maximov 164-8).
On March 18, the Reds held a public celebration in Petrograd marking fifty years since the beginning of the Paris Commune—this, as Kronstadt lay visibly in ruins. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who had attempted to intercede before the Bolsheviks to avert the Commune’s violent suppression, listened aghastly to Bolshevik military bands playing “The Internationale” in the streets. Goldman writes that “[i]ts strains, once jubilant to my ears, now sounded like a funeral dirge for humanity’s flaming hope,” while Berkman caustically observes that “Trotsky and Zinoviev denounce Thiers and Gallifet for the slaughter of the Paris rebels.”
Lenin is known for his supposedly innovative characterization of imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism,” and his view that capitalism will be taken down by the revolt of peoples oppressed by imperialism. Lenin expressed concern for the persistence of “Great Russian chauvinism” over the former Russian Empire’s numerous minorities and oppressed nationalities. So what was his relationship to such principles after he seized power over the Russian Empire?
See above. The Bolsheviks clearly did not favor Ukrainian self-determination.
In February 1921, the Red Army invaded and occupied its southern neighbor Georgia from Armenia, reproducing the Red Terror in the newly conquered country. This imperialistic venture followed from the general maxim of the Terror: As Georgian Mensheviks had declared independence in October 1917, this renegade province of the Russian Empire required a coercive corrective to its course. An appeal from Tiflis (Tbilisi) workers to the workers of Western Europe from August 1921 speaks to the repression imposed by the foreign Red rulers:
From the very first days Georgia was conquered, we were placed in the position of and treated as slaves. We were deprived of freedom of speech, of press, assembly, and the right of free association. A regime of military labor service has been imposed upon all the workers of Georgia, irrespective of their occupation. Everywhere Extraordinary Committees (CheKa) have been set up […]. The advanced workers of Georgia, irrespective of their party affiliation, are thrown into prison where they are being decimated by hunger and diseases. Human life has become of no value. Innocent people are shot, even those who never mixed into politics, who never took part in any political struggle. People were shot because they served the democratic government, the State; because in open war they defended their native country from the invasion of foreign troops (Maximov 171-2).
Alongside Mensheviks, then, Georgian national-liberation fighters were targeted for elimination by the occupying Reds (236).
Central Asia: Kirghiz-Kazakh Steppe and Turkestan
A map of Turkestan/Central Asia using current borders
Larger map situating Turkestan in relation to western Russia (using current borders)
In Central Asia, the Reds’ desire to maintain imperial hegemony over the region led it to support Tsarist-era settler-colonists against the indigenous populations, resulting in a popular resistance movement known as the Basmachi (Russian for “raiders”), and subsequently intensify the conflict and ultimately accommodate the resistance movement.
Both armed rebellion in the late Tsarist era and the emergence of the Basmachi movement in Soviet Turkestan had important bases in the colonization of the Central Asian steppe during the Tsarist period. This colonization, greatly enhanced by the onset of the Stolypin reforms (1901-3), which effectively targeted the rural commune for elimination, expelled the indigenous Kirghiz-Kazakh people from the best grazing lands and disrupted their traditional way of life, resulting in annual famines from 1910 to 1913 (Pipes 83; Rywkin 16). Increasingly greater stresses on the Kirghiz-Kazakh caused them to revolt in 1916 after they were targeted for conscription during World War I. One important factor that contributed to the popular resistance to this measure was that these Muslims would be conscripted to fight alongside non-Muslims against the Ottoman Caliph (Pipes 83; Olcott 353). Following repression of the revolt, many Kirghiz-Kazakh fled to Turkestan, and this together with the entirety of the travails experienced by the indigenous peoples during the late Tsarist period caused Kirghiz-Kazakh political leaders to seek the definitive termination of Russian settlement of the region (Rywkin 17). To this end, the Kirghiz-Kazakh had, before the 1917 Revolution, begun to demand territorial autonomy above all else, in the hope that self-rule would allow them to legislate in favor of indigenous peoples and reverse the excesses of Russian colonization (Pipes 85).
Following the Revolution and further armed conflict with Kirghiz-Kazakhs returning from exile, the Russian settler-colonists increasingly came to side with the Bolsheviks, hoping to use the rhetoric of proletarian dictatorship against the indigenous Muslims: Bolshevism, in this sense, was to mean the rule of workers, soldiers, and peasants, and since the Kirghiz-Kazakh supposedly had no such organized classes or groups, they were “not to rule but be ruled” (Pipes 86). Delegates to the 1917 Congress of Soviets, fearful of losing control over the empire’s many disparate nationalities and Central Asia’s lucrative cotton production, voted against any consideration of autonomy for Turkestan and the participation of Muslims in the Soviet administration in Central Asia (Pipes 91; Olcott 359-60).
Following up such rhetoric, the Reds, after their occupation of Turkestan in 1919, excluded local nationalists from political power. Even when the Kirghiz republic was allowed autonomy a few years later, Russian settler-colonists in the area refused to accept its sovereignty and worked to undermine it, and the Kirghiz-Kazakh nationalists, without an army, political organizations, or connections in Moscow, could do little to effectively liberate the region. The 1921 and 1922 famines that struck the Kirghiz-Kazakh steppe affected the indigenous populations significantly, as they had lost much of their livestock following the 1916 rebellion and disproportionately received less food from government distributions. The profound effects of this famine can explain the subsequent lack of indigenous popular resistance to the Soviet regime in the Kirghiz-Kazakh region, in contrast to the case of Turkestan (Pipes 174).
The Basmachi
Soviet rule in Turkestan met with greater challenges than that over the Kirghiz-Kazakh region. Though Soviet rule greatly discounted indigenous interests here as it did in the Kirghiz-Kazakh steppe, it met with opposition from an indigenous Muslim government based in Kokand and, following the breakdown of the Kokand regime, an emerging popular resistance movement known as the Basmachi (Russian for “raiders”). As in the Kirghiz-Kazakh region, Soviet power found support from settler-colonial elements, but here it met opposition from the autonomy-seeking Kokand government, supported by the politically-inclined segments of the indigenous populations and anti-Communist elements. The Tashkent Soviet, in an effort to extend control over rural Turkestan, supported persecutions, expulsions from the land, and looting of the indigenous Muslims, creating a situation which one contemporary Soviet official equated with the “feudal exploitation of the broad masses of the indigenous population by the Russian Red Army man, colonist, and official” (Pipes 177-8, emphasis added). Though the Tashkent Soviet firmly controlled urban areas, it had little authority over the countryside, where the populace had been alienated by Soviet cooperation in what it deemed a continued colonization. Tensions at this time between the two rival governments came to a head, and the Tashkent Soviet, fearful of the Kokand government’s emphasis on national self-determination, ordered the city of Kokand destroyed, its government overthrown (Pipes 174-8).
Following this brazen dismissal of indigenous interests, the Tashkent Soviet made little effort to win back the allegiance of its Muslims subjects and made little effort to relieve those affected by the winter famine of 1917-18, thus pushing more Muslims into supporting and joining the Basmachi movement (Rywkin 22-3). To some, the destruction of the Kokand Islamic government and its replacement with a secular, anti-religious State constituted blasphemy and can explain emergent cooperation with the developing Basmachi movement (Olcott 358). The Tashkent Soviet’s efforts at confiscating waqf, or clerical lands, for the benefit of the regime; the closing of religious schools; and the discontinuation of shari’at courts further contributed to popular opposition to the Soviet regime (Pipes 259).
The emergence of the popular resistance movement known as the Basmachi constituted a reaction to perceived Soviet abuses and excesses which, gathering support from the general populace, struggled violently against foreign occupation and resulted in an escalation and intensification of counter-insurgency efforts. In contrast to the later occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989), the Soviets eventually came to realize that brute force itself would not succeed in bringing an end to popular insurrection in Turkestan, and so they successfully co-opted the Basmachi movement from below by responding to the needs and desires of the populace supporting the movement.
Following the fall of Kokand, many indigenous individuals involved in the government, along with others suffering under the requisitions and looting attendant with the Soviet regime, joined the Basmachi, who previously had been feared by the population at large as bandits and common criminals. The group came to represent the struggle for liberation from Soviet rule (Pipes 178; Rywkin 33). The Basmachi soon grew to control the Turkestani countryside, generally enjoying the support of the population and, by violently punishing collaboration with the Soviet regime, coercing those who would think twice about backing them (Rywkin 35; Haugen 89). Though targeted at Bolshevik rule, the Basmachi resistance increasingly came to represent a Muslim struggle against Russians rather than an anti-communist campaign (Rywkin 38). The movement, plagued by lack of unity among its leaders, hoped to overcome these difficulties and approach victory with the defection of Enver Pasha, a former ruler of Turkey whom Lenin had sent to quell the insurgency, yet who ended up joining it himself. Enver’s integration into the Basmachi strengthened the movement, increasing its numbers to twenty thousand members who now could count a number of victories under their belts. Nonetheless, Enver failed to unify the resistance, having antagonized other Basmachi commanders with his vision of a pan-Turkic Muslim empire (Pipes 258; Rywkin 39). With his death in battle against the Reds in 1922, all hopes to consolidate the resistance movement ended (Pipes 259).
The Soviet regime coupled military escalation in response to Basmachi with political concessions. The combination of these two factors undermine popular support for the Basmachi and thus their effectiveness. Moscow saw in the emergence and perpetuation of the Basmachi movement the persistent refusal of the Tashkent Soviet to grant autonomy to indigenous peoples, such that, in 1918, Stalin ordered Turkestan autonomous. However, the non-cooperation of local communists with this directive caused it to be irrelevant until Lenin later intensified central pressure on the Tashkent communists (Pipes Ibid 179, 183). The result of heavy pressuring, the 1920 Seventh Congress of Soviets was the first to allow Muslim participation, but few would-be delegates attended for fear of reprisals from the then-raging Basmachi movement (Rywkin 26). The Eighth Congress, though, yielded an indigenous majority in the Tashkent government, thus arousing the hopes of Turkestani intellectuals for self-determination. Although Lenin, in contrast to the Russian settler-colonists in Turkestan, may have favored real autonomy for the Muslim peoples of the region in theory, he was not willing to countenance an autonomy that would threaten the unity of the Soviet regime and the centralized rule of the Communist Party (Rywkin 32).
Following these political concessions came a burgeoning Soviet military presence in Turkestan. Eventually, Soviet and local leaders increasingly came to realize that the coupling of military escalation with political half-measures would not bring order to the region. To this end, the administration overturned the most unpopular reforms: the waqf was returned, Koranic schools were legalized, shari’a courts were granted increased autonomy, taxes were cut by half, and food supplies to indigenous peoples were increased (Pipes 259; Rywkin 41; Olcott 360). Moreover, the introduction of the New Economic Policy permitted a return to private trade, and ended the forced requisitions of food and cotton, the origin of much resentment toward the Soviet regime (Pipes 259; Rywkin 41). Given these substantial concessions, much of the previous support for the Basmachi dissipated, and order was restored for the Communist Party in much of the region.
As we have seen, the Bolshevik seizure of power gave rise to the Red Terror and the Civil War. According to Maximov, the “entire country was turned into a prison” so that Bolshevik control of the State would persist (192, emphasis in original). The Reds never once tried to negotiate peaceful settlement of conflicts during the Civil War or thereafter, but simply resorted to intimidation as based on the real threat of physical annihilation by means of the Red Army and the CheKa plus its successor, the GPU (State Political Administration) (179, 207). In quashing all alternatives to Bolshevik hegemony, including striking workers and peasants in revolt, the Reds exhausted the sources of resistance that could have averted Stalin’s rise or reversed it shortly after its emergence. By 1922, the rate of State repression against socialists and anarchists lessened to some degree simply because most of them had by this time already been suppressed (213-223). In cultural terms, Lenin’s partner, N. K. Krupskaya, circulated a list of forbidden literature that included Kant, Plato, the Gospels, Schopenhauer, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, and Bakunin in 1923, demanding that libraries remove these authors and works from circulation immediately (221-2). Of course, the Nazis would publicly burn books by many of these same authors in the years to come.
As Paul Mattick argues, there is very little in Stalinism that did not also exist in Leninism or Trotskyism. Indeed, it is quite telling that a variation on the same boast Trotsky would make after the April 1918 raids against the anarchists—that “At last the Soviet government, with an iron broom, has rid Russia of Anarchism”—would be used by Stalin’s hangmen to hail the purges against Trotskyists and Old Bolsheviks fifteen years later.
“How Lenin Led to Stalin” (WSM)
“Stalin Did Not Fall From the Moon” (WSM)
“From the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Stalinist Totalitarianism” (Agustin Guillamon)
What lessons should we take from the Russian Revolution?
Metaphorically, the Russian Revolution illustrates “the resplendent rays of freedom” melting away an ossified despotism, thanks to the action of “the common people [who] swept over the land like spring floods and washed away the debris of the old regime” (Maximov 336). The heroic, libertarian mass-mobilizations of February 1917 opened the horizon of possibility, astonishing the rest of the world through the suddenness of their overthrow of the Tsar. In this Revolution, the peasantry retook the land and many workers engaged in cooperative self-management of production. Yet the historical burdens of Tsarism put the working classes at a disadvantage, in the sense that they could not self-organize openly as long as Nicholas II ruled. Following his abdication, the absence of workers’ class-organizations which could serve as “receiving sets” for the implementation of anarchism in Russia and throughout the former Empire greatly hampered the cause in the struggle between libertarian and authoritarian socialism that characterized the years 1917-1921. To a considerable extent, this lack can explain the defeat of the anarchists by the Reds in the Red Terror and Civil War.
The anarchist Revolution, of course, can only begin through the action of the masses in conjunction with specifically anarchist militants, who must not be allowed to hold coercive power over the people. The success of this Revolution depends ultimately on whether its emancipatory nature can win over the “neutral” mass through its positive results. A final essential element is working toward the ideological destruction of what Voline terms the “political principle”: statism and authoritarianism.
We close with the most hopeful interpretation of the tragedy of the Russian Revolution, one that is not specific to this event but rather to all other major historical setbacks: “Let Russia serve as a lesson to all other nations. Let the mountains of corpses and the oceans of blood shed by its people be a redeeming sacrifice for all nations, for the toilers of all countries” (Maximov 334).
Avrich, Paul. Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
Bakunin, Mikhail. Statism and Anarchy, trans. and ed. Marshall Shatz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counter-Revolution, ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, California: AK Press, 2017).
Goodwin, James. Confronting Dostoevsky’s Demons (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).
Haugen, Arne. The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
Maximov, G. P. The Guillotine at Work: Twenty Years of Terror in Russia (Chicago: Globus Printing, 1979 [1940]).
Olcott, Martha B. “The Basmachi or Freeman’s Revolt in Turkestan 1918-24.” Soviet Studies 33.3 (July 1981): 352-69.
Pipes, Richard. The Formation of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Posadskii, A. V. Девятнадцатый, зеленый… («Зеленое» движение в годы Гражданской войны в России) (Saratov: Publikatsiya RFFI, 2016).
Rywkin, Michael. Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1990).
Skirda, Alexandre. Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack, trans. Paul Sharkey (Oakland: AK Press, 2004).
Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1975 [1947]).
Mollie Steimer, “On Leaving Russia” (1923)
Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)
Alexander Berkman, The Russian Tragedy (1922)
Memoirs of Peasant Tolstoyans in Soviet Russia, trans. and ed. William Edgerton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
Battleship Potëmkin, dir. Sergei Eisenstein (1925)
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, dir. Esfir Shub (1927)
October, dir. Sergei Eisenstein (1928)
From Tsar to Lenin, dir. Herman Axelbank (1937)
Doctor Zhivago, dir. David Lean (1965)
Reds, dir. Warren Beatty (1981)
Red in Blue, dir. Thibout Bertrand (2017)
Tags:A. Izmaylovic, Admiral Kolchak, Alexander Antonov, Alexander Berkman, anarchism, anarchists, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, Anatoli Jelezniakov, anti-imperialism, anti-Semitism, April Theses, Arkhangelsk, Arthur Schopenhauer, authoritarianism, Bakunin, Basmachi, Belarus, Black Hundreds, Bolsheviks, Bolshevism, Brest-Litovsk, capitalism, Carl Schmitt, Caucasia, centralism, CheKa, conscription, cooperatives, Crimea, Czech Legion, death penalty, Denikin, desertion, dictatorship, Don basin, Dora Kaplan, Dvintsi, Elizabethgrad, Emma Goldman, Enver Pasha, famine, Federation of Anarchist Groups of Moscow, Felix Dzherzhinsky, French Revolution, Gallifet, Gavril Miasnikov, Georgia, Golos Truda, Gospels, grain requisition, Gratchov, Greens, Gregori Maximov, Grigoriev, imperialism, Insurrectionary Army, Kant, Karl Kautsky, Kerensky, Kharkov, Kirghiz-Kazakh, Kokand, Kornilov, Kozlovsky, Kronstadt, Kronstadt Commune, Kropotkin, Land Decree, Left-SR's, Lenin, Lev Trotsky, Maria Nikiforova, Martov, Marxism, Maximalists, Maximov, Mensheviks, militarism, Moscow, N. K. Krupskaya, Nabat, Nazis, Nestor Makhno, Nikolai Bukharin, Nobel refinery, oppression, Paris Commune, peasantry, Peter Arshinov, Petrograd, Petropavlovsk resolution, Plato, Plekhanov, police, proletariat, Provisional Government, Red October, Red Terror, repression, Romanovs, Russian Civil War, Russian Revolution, settler-colonialism, shari'a, Siberia, Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, soviets, St. Petersburg, Stalin, Stalinism, statism, strikes, substitutionism, suppression, syndicalism, Tambov, Tashkent, Tashkent Soviet, terror, The Party Crisis, Thiers, Tolstoy, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky, Tsar Nicholas II, Turkestan, Ukraine, Urals, Vladimir Lenin, Volga, Voline, waqf, Winter Palace, Wrangel, WWI, Yekaterinoslav, Yuli Martov, Zinoviev
Posted in 'development', anarchism, displacement, Europe, health, imperialism, requiems, Revolution, Russia/Former Soviet Union, Shoah, U.S., war | 2 Comments »
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Our Passion is Real Estate
Buying Property Held in a Corporation
Costa Rica Real Estate: Area tours
Why Investment Real Estate in Costa Rica Makes Sense
Relocation: Things to Consider
Why Retirement in Costa Rica makes Sense.
You are here: Home / ABOUT US / Krain Resource Center / Why Investment Real Estate in Costa Rica Makes Sense
Costa Rica is more than an alluring vacation or retirement destination; it's an attractive place to pursue investment real estate.
Countless investment opportunities exist.
There are numerous options to consider when looking at investment real estate in Costa Rica. As Central America's leading vacation destination, hotels and vacation rentals are two areas of the market that are extremely easy to pursue. Those who have experience with larger property management opportunities will not be disappointed in the gated and condominium communities in existence, while those who want to build have plenty of land-buying options. With all those tourists passing through regularly and a constantly growing expat community, high-quality restaurants are also more in demand than ever.
You can get a tropical getaway out of the deal.
Investing in Costa Rica real estate comes with one perk your friends and family will be especially excited about–a vacation, part-time, or full-time home in the tropics. If you purchase a rental property, you can plan an escape from the cold winter weather or reserve it for you and your personal guests at any time throughout the year. If you invest in a hotel, there's no reason you shouldn't enjoy the presidential suite from time to time. Even if you choose a commercial investment, you'll always have an excuse to get away from it all with a quick "business-related" trip to Costa Rica.
Your property will generate income throughout the year.
While there are certainly peak times during which most tourists visit–winter, spring break, and summer vacations–there is never a time when travelers stop coming to Costa Rica. For example, budget travelers like to plan their trips during the “green season” when they know the scenery will be beautiful and they can find discounted rates. Daily rainfall is to be expected during much of Costa Rica's green season, from April to December, though some parts of the country are dryer than others. The northern Guanacaste province, for example, is notoriously dry and has little rainfall. A steady flow of income can often be expected for about 10 months out of the year in popular Guanacaste beach towns like Tamarindo and Samara.
You can incorporate your passion into the investment.
If you so choose, investing in Costa Rica can be more than a financial decision; it can be a passion project. If you've always dreamed of owning a bed and breakfast, there's no better place than Costa Rica to make that dream a reality. If you love the idea of owning a restaurant, an art gallery, or a cafe, the Costa Rican government and business scene will welcome you with open arms. Cattle farms, agricultural properties, and teak farms are also available. Whether you want to build from the ground up or find a turnkey business that's ready to go, Costa Rica has it all.
You don't have to be a resident to own a business or property in Costa Rica.
Fortunately, residency status is not a requirement for purchasing investment real estate or opening a business in Costa Rica. When you do come to visit, you'll be granted a 90-day visa with no questions asked. The only stipulation is that you must travel outside the country at the end of the 3-month period, which essentially serves as an excuse to fit in a quick vacation if nothing else. Starting a business or investing in real estate gives an edge when it comes to gaining residency if that's something you're interested in.
Costa Rica has a strong infrastructure that continues to improve.
There are now two major international airports in Costa Rica, with frequent flights to and from numerous U.S. cities and other international destinations. The Juan Santamaria International Airport is located just outside San Jose, and the Daniel Oduber International Airport is located near Liberia, putting the popular beaches of Guanacaste within a driving distance of just an hour or two. There are regional airports throughout the country and talks of constructing another international airport in the southern zone. A modern new highway was just opened several years ago and connects the Central Valley to the Pacific Coast, cutting down travel time by an hour or more. The major Interamericana Highway, which runs all the way from the U.S. to Chile in South America, is undergoing a major revitalization and expansion near the city of Liberia. Costa Rica's government has made it clear that they are ready to welcome investors and travelers with its well-maintained roadways and modern airports.
Among the reasons listed above, it's worth noting just how economically and politically stable Costa Rica is. There is no political unrest, riots, or anti-government demonstrations like in other Latin American countries. The local currency, colones, rarely fluctuates in value. The country has no standing army, nor has it since 1948. It boasts a strong public school system and Central America's highest literacy rate. Crime rates are low, and quality of life is consistently ranked among the highest in the world in independent studies. It is one of the few countries in the world with a tropical climate yet no hurricane or tropical storm season. When compared side by side with other Latin American or Caribbean nations, Costa Rica is the clear front-runner for real estate investment.
Copyright © 2014 KRAIN Costa Rica Limitada, All rights reserved.
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Best of 2017: Supporting Actress
January 16, 2018 by Keith
Each year I set aside time to highlight what I think are the best performances of the past movie year. In keeping with the upcoming Oscars I have adopted their format and for the next several days I’ll be sharing my favorite performances for each of the four acting categories. Ladies first so I’m starting with the Supporting Actress category. Women had a ton of fabulous performances to consider this year which made this tough to narrow down. Nonetheless here are my five favorites:
#5 – Octavia Spencer (“The Shape of Water”)
You could make an argument that Octavia Spencer could play this role in her sleep. I tend to agree, but that doesn’t make her any less fabulous in Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water”. There is an incredible natural quality to Spencer’s acting making it a perfect fit for characters like this. The movie certainly benefits from her presence.
#4 – Kirstin Dunst (“The Beguiled”)
With the many good performances in Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” my mind kept coming back to Kirsten Dunst. It’s a fittingly low-key performance but one that’s hard to read. As the tension amps up in the film’s second half, Dunst is allowed to open up her character a tad more. But through it all she still remains a bit of a mystery.
#3 – Tatiana Maslany (“Stronger”)
One of the true surprises of the year came from Tatiana Maslany who plays Jake Gyllenhaal’s on again/off again girlfriend in David Gordan Green’s biopic “Stronger”. It would have been easy for Maslany to get lost behind Gyllenhaal’s attention-getting performance but she’s incredibly good and an anchor in many of the movie’s best scenes.
#2 – Mary J. Blige (“Mudbound”)
Drop this one into the “eye-opening” category. Mary J. Blige kills it in “Mudbound” and it’s great to see her getting some well-deserved attention along the awards circuit. I knew Blige had gotten into acting but I had never seen her work. After her performance as the matriarch of her 1940s Mississippi Delta family, you can expect to see a lot more of her.
#1 – Laurie Metcalf (“Lady Bird”)
There were several really good performances from women playing ‘complicated’ mothers. Laurie Metcalf’s from “Lady Bird” was easily my favorite. There is a complexity to the character that demands a very careful and precise performance. Metcalf gets it just right and delivers a character who walks the pivotal line between sympathetic and infuriating. Brilliant.
So what do you think? What did I get right and what did I miss. Share your thoughts and picks in the comments section. Supporting Actor is next.
This entry was posted in Movie News and Articles. Bookmark the permalink.
← REVIEW: “The Shape of Water”
Best of 2017: Supporting Actor →
19 thoughts on “Best of 2017: Supporting Actress”
Mark Walker says: January 16, 2018 at 12:16 pm
I do love these yearly posts, bro. Always great to catch your opinion on such matters. I’d love to do it myself but I rarely catch everything on time.
I can only comment on one actress here as I haven’t seen the rest yet but, yeah, it’s Laurie Metcalf. I wasn’t overly keen on Lady Bird but Ronan and Metcalf were very good.
Keith says: January 16, 2018 at 1:50 pm
Thanks my friend. I do have fun doing these things. Metcalf was a no-brainer for me. I love her character – far more complex than just a domineering mom. And you’re right, she and Ronan are fantastic together.
Film & Nuance says: January 16, 2018 at 1:35 pm
Love love love your choices 🙂 Been a bit of a film geek as well in this regard as I do my best of lists every year, but I haven’t caught up with everything yet 😛
I’ve seen Laurie, Mary J Blige and Kirsten Dunst and they were all fantastic 🙂 Glad someone else remembered how good Dunst was in the beguiled!
I love doing these things. I always look back at my past lists when doing a new one. It’s fun to see my choices over the years.
I loved Dunst and The Beguiled. Do you get a sense that it is somewhat of a forgotten movie?
Tom says: January 16, 2018 at 2:16 pm
I definitely do Keith. I really enjoyed Coppola’s version of The Beguiled, yet the memory of that theater trip is already gathering dust. Dunst and inspired choice. And who else could it be at #1 other than Laurie Metcalf?
Totally agree. No one is talking about The Beguiled and that’s a real shame. As for Metcalf, it looks like she’ll lose the Oscar to Allison Janney but for me she’s tops!
ninvoid99 says: January 16, 2018 at 5:07 pm
Dunst and Metcalf are excellent choices as there’s still a lot of films for me to see to make a serious list. Plus, I’m really hoping for an Oscar nod for Tiffany Haddish just to shake things up.
I have a lot of fun with these things. Always good to hear others toss in their picks.
Vits (@Vits_Chile) says: January 17, 2018 at 4:02 am
I agree with Mary J. I liked Kirsten’s performance, but not that much. THE SHAPE OF WATER, STRONGER and LADY BIRD haven’t been released here yet.
Keith says: January 17, 2018 at 7:27 am
Really? None of them have opened there? Oh man I know that’s frustrating. I sound like a broken record, but release schedules drive me nuts. Hopefully you can see them soon.
Vits (@Vits_Chile) says: January 17, 2018 at 2:36 pm
According to the distributor, the release dates for THE SHAPE OF WATER and LADY BIRD will be in the middle of February and early March respectively. STRONGER doesn’t have a date yet. That could change if/when they get Oscar nominations.
Oh man. That stinks. February isn’t far off but still it would be frustrating (especially for impatient people like me).
Brittani says: January 17, 2018 at 8:43 am
Laurie! Mary! Great picks. I still haven’t seen The Shape of Water or Stronger.
I really need to post my Stronger review. It’s just sitting in my draft bin! It’s a movie that really surprised me. It’s also one that was overlooked by a lot of people.
Wendell says: January 17, 2018 at 12:54 pm
I’ve only seen Spencer in The Shape of Water and Mary in Mudbound. I think two things you hinted on might explain why Mary is getting love on the awards circuit and Spencer is getting, and will continue to get, much less. Spencer really could play that role in her sleep. She was excellent, but it’s pretty much par for the course. Mary has not had that type of success as an actress. She’s only been in a few things and nothing that has been on the Academy’s radar. So her performance was most certainly an eye-opener.
Some others I really liked of what I’ve seen so far:
Allison Janney in I, Tonya
Catherine Keener in Get Out
Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip
Keith says: January 17, 2018 at 12:59 pm
I think you’re exactly right. But I had to put Spencer on here. She has this undeniable charm and authenticity that draws me to her performances. Not a great measuring stick for this type of list, but I can’t help myself.
Keener is a really good mention. Janney is good too and will probably take home the Oscar.
vinnieh says: January 17, 2018 at 2:10 pm
I love this feature you do. Keith. I agree with your choice of Kirsten Dunst in the list. And after reading this, I want to see The Shape of Water as soon as it comes out where I am.
polarbears16 says: January 20, 2018 at 10:15 pm
Yes Tatiana! So overlooked this year.
Definitely! It’s a shame, I’ve heard no one talking about her performance.
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How will carbon markets help the Paris climate agreement?
Katherine Lake, University of Melbourne
The Paris Agreement marks a historic turning point for global co-operation to address climate change.
For the first time, 195 countries committed to take action to limit the global temperature rise to “well below 2C”. Through the final tense hours of the negotiations, it was doubtful whether the provisions on carbon markets would survive, given the staunch opposition to them by certain Latin American countries.
To the contrary, the agreement clearly establishes a new international carbon market mechanism, despite there being no reference to the words “market mechanism” or “carbon market” in the agreement.
So what does the Paris agreement say on carbon markets?
A new market mechanism
While the agreement doesn’t mention “carbon markets”, it allows parties to pursue “co-operative approaches” and voluntarily use “international transferred mitigation outcomes” to help meet their reduction targets, while ensuring that transparency and the environmental integrity of the regime is maintained.
Article 6 of the agreement establishes a new mechanism to “contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and support sustainable development”. The mechanism allows for the participation of both the public and private sectors, and, significantly, it aims to deliver an overall reduction in global emissions.
It will operate under the “authority and guidance” of a body to be designated by countries who have signed the agreement, and the rules governing its operation will be developed by the technical group under the UN climate body (the UNFCCC), with the view to being adopted in the first meeting of the Parties, after the agreement enters into force.
Countries must agree to robust accounting rules and must not double count emissions reductions. This means emissions reductions achieved in a country through the mechanism cannot be counted by that country towards their own emission reduction target if another country has bought those emissions reductions.
Learning from the past
This is not the first time a climate agreement has created a new mechanism. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
There are key differences between the CDM and the new mechanism. Notably, the new mechanism doesn’t contain any geographic restrictions. Emissions can be reduced in a developed or developing country and be bought by any other country.
This reflects the new dynamic in the Paris Agreement. There is no longer a formal distinction between the responsibility of developed and developing countries to cut. Indeed many developing countries have now made emissions reductions commitments.
The new mechanism is intended to go beyond a purely individual project-based offset mechanism like the CDM, and instead support new policies, activities and programs such as financial support to improve energy efficiency in the building sector of a country or to introduce and implement a renewable energy policy. It is also broad enough to support the linking of emissions trading schemes between parties.
Significantly, the new mechanism requires that it must result in an overall reduction in global emissions, rather than simply offsetting emissions. This was a contentious issue in the negotiations. There is no such requirement in the CDM. Time will tell how countries will implement the mechanism to ensure that this requirement is met.
What now for international carbon markets?
The call for a global carbon price was a central theme in the sidelines of the meeting, with business making loud calls for countries to introduce a carbon price and World Bank group president Jim Yong Kim declaring it was important to get momentum behind carbon pricing.
While much of the detail of the new mechanism is yet to be fleshed out, the framework sends a long-term signal to investors that all countries support the emergence of a global carbon market. It is inevitable that post 2020, we will see a range of inter-linked carbon markets develop.
International units or offsets are an increasingly controversial issue in the global fight against climate change. There is a risk that by using foreign emissions reductions countries could delay the task of decarbonising their own economies.
It is clear that to meet the 2℃ or better goal, all major economies will need to make serious domestic emissions reduction cuts by implementing strong domestic policies that will transition away from reliance on fossil fuels. Offsets can play an important role in scaling up ambition and allowing businesses to meet their commitments at the least cost. But the country using them must simultaneously bring down their own domestic emissions.
Public finance alone cannot transition developing countries away from fossil fuels. The mobilisation of private sector finance through carbon markets could play an essential role in scaling up low emissions development, provided that clear accounting and monitoring, reporting and verification rules are established.
This is particularly the case if the new mechanism goes beyond single projects and supports the implementation of new policies and programs.
One of the key risks is that that supply of credits might initially outstrip demand, as only a handful of the countries that support using markets to meet their climate pledges are likely to be buyers, such as Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway. Australia has until now ruled out using international credits, but after the conference environment minister Greg Hunt stated that Australia “probably will” use international credits to meet emissions reduction targets.
Carbon markets in Australia
As the Paris summit progressed, Australia softened its position on carbon markets.
In the second week, it signed a declaration developed by New Zealand to bolster support for carbon markets and commit to develop rules to govern a post-2020 carbon market.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop recognised the importance of carbon markets. And at the conference, Greg Hunt reportedly referred to the Safeguard Mechanism as a “baseline and credit” scheme.
Under the agreement national emissions reductions targets will be reviewed and ramped up, beginning in 2018. Australia should now consider how carbon markets could assist it to increase its existing 2030 target, in order to make a responsible contribution to stabilising temperatures at 2℃ or below.
Katherine Lake, Research Associate at the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law, University of Melbourne
December 15, 2015 by particularkev Categories: Climate Change, France, Global Warming, Paris | Tags: agreement, article, carbon, climate, Climate Change, COP21, France, global warming, markets, Paris | Leave a comment
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Climate justice and an end to fossil fuels: the Paris agreement won’t satisfy activists →
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Category Archives: T.I.
How Much?: T.I.
He may be on another term in jail, but that has stopped T.I. from dropping his new album ‘No Mercy’. The road to release has been a long one with the album, under its original name ‘King’, originally scheduled to come out in August.
T.I. has also gone through a few singles to get to this point, none of which were actual hits. Things looked promising for ‘Got Your Back’ at first, but even with it’s mainstream appeal the song never caught on the Hot 100. ‘Get Back Up’, his collaboration with Chris Brown, as so far peaked at 70 on the Hot 100.
His last album ‘Paper Trail’ helmed 3 top 3 singles, 2 of which Continue reading →
How Much?/T.I.
First Week Sales/First Week Sales Prediction/No Mercy/T.I.
‘Castle Walls’ T.I. feat. Christina Aguilera
Rating: A-
After a preview was released a few years ago the T.I./Christina Aguilera collaboration ‘Castle Walls’ can be heard in full as of today. The song, which serves as the next single for ‘No Mercy, finds the two lamenting about the negative side of fame.
As I said earlier this week, both T.I. and Christina need a hit Continue reading →
Christina Aguilera/Song Review/T.I.
Castle Walls/Christina Aguilera/Full Version/New Single/No Mercy/T.I.
Sneak Peak: T.I. feat. Christina Aguilera
With the release of his album quickly approaching T.I. is keeping the buzz alive giving us a sneak peak of his new single ‘Castle Walls’ featuring pop star Christina Aguilera.
The 30 second sneak peak only features Christina Aguilera singing what I assume to be the chorus. The song was produced by Alex Da Kid, who is quickly becoming the ‘it’ producer in music after the success of ‘Love The Way You Lie’.
T.I. changed a lot with his album ‘Paper Trail’. I honestly feel like all of T.I.’s new collaborations sound the same. ‘Castle Walls’ will probably sound like everything off of ‘Paper Trail’, Continue reading →
Christina Aguilera/T.I.
Castle Walls/Christina Aguilera/New Single/No Mercy/T.I.
Remix: ‘Deuces’- Chris Brown feat. Drake, T.I., Kanye West, Fabulous, and Andre 3000 (Poll Included Below)
Rating: B
Its clearly evident that Chris Brown is trying to come back harder than ever before. This remix is going to help him out a lot since R&B radio has been the first to welcome him back to the airwaves. While ‘Yeah x3’ begins to spin on pop stations Chris is aiming to milk the ‘Deuces’ cow for all its worth. The line-up alone on this remix is highly impressive, and one would think that that it would be a mind blowing remix, but it fails to impress.
Each rapper does their own thing, but Drake has the best verse. I was excited to see Andre 3000 on the track because he always delivers, but he missed this one. His voice sounds too distorted and I’m not really favoring his flow on this track. Continue reading →
Chris Brown/Drake/Kanye West/T.I.
Andre 3000/Chris Brown/Drake/Fabulous/Kanye West/New Song/Rap/Song Review/T.I.
‘Got Your Back’ T.I. feat. Keri Hilson
Rating: B-
After a year of being in Jail and two years since his last album, rapper T.I. is now ready to hit the music scene again with his new album ‘King Uncaged’ on August 17. He released the buzz single ‘I’m Back’ a few weeks ago, which received minor radio-play from the R&B stations. With all of the drama surrounding his social life, the album is highly anticipated and is expected to explore some of the social and personal lesson he has learned the past year. ‘Got Your Back’ is the first official single to be released, featuring songstress Keri Hilson.
T.I was thrust to superstardom after his last album, ‘Paper Trail’, helmed two number 1’s singles on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Got Your Back’ follows a similar formula that ‘Whatever You Like’ followed back in 2008; sing-along raps with a pop chorus. Jim Jonsin, a frequent collaborator with T.I, produced the song. Normally Jonsin creates great beats (look at ‘Sweet Dreams’ or ‘Lollipop’), but this song almost sounds like a nursery rhyme. The synth lead melody line it too distracting and over powers Keri’s voice. There is nothing that is hip-hop about this beat, which is a shame because the song is showing signs of T.I. selling out.
I really do blame T.I. for turning hip-hop into pop. Even though he claims that he is still a rapper, this song does not prove that. His rapping is more like singing, and with such a weird beat the song just songs catered for Top 40 radio. When looking back at his older music like ‘Bring Em Out’, it’s a shame that such a good rapper turned so commercial. It’s easy for a rapper to be commercial without selling out (i.e. Jay-Z, Kanye West), but T.I. is blatantly making music just to receive a hit, leaving his true rapping talent behind. Keri Hilson is the songs saving grace. She works her voice really well in the song, using her high register for most of the song. I will say that I think they are a good pairing, but the song could have been much better since they have each proven themselves to be quite creative musically.
That being said I am sure the song will be a hit. The songs construction is quite common with a rapper doing the verses and a female singer singing the chorus, so there is no new territory being covered here, but it has always worked. Still, there is no way that the song will hit number 1 on any chart. It’s catchy enough to reach around number 6 or 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, but I would be surprised if it got any higher since is it so unoriginal. I am just disappointed that after all T.I. has gone through he decided to release this as his first musical statement. Hopefully there will be some musical growth on this album, and we wont see ‘Paper Trail’ 2.0.
Keri Hilson/Song Review/T.I.
‘Hello Good Morning’ Dirty Money feat. T.I.
Rating: C
Diddy formed the new group Dirty Money when he announced plans for his album ‘Last Train to Paris’. The group consist of himself, Kalenna Harper, and Dawn Richards of Danity Kane. Previously the group released two singles, ‘Love Comes Down’ and ‘Angels’, both of which failed to do anything on the charts. ‘Hello Good Morning’ is the third attempt to gain some buzz and hopefully a hit single for Diddys album ‘Last Train to Paris’. The song was produced by Danja, who has had a stream of hits these past few years. The beat is honestly the strongest part of the song. The song starts out with an epic string introduction that leads into a drum section to lead into the vocals. The heavy synth lead beat is meant to get you moving, which it does quite well. T.I. again is consistent in delivering a good verse. The problem with the song is that although it has a good dance beat and features a high profile rapper it still fails to deliver. The song was written by Rico Love, who is a great song writer. He has written a number of hits in the past but sadly this is not one. The song gets more annoying as you listen to it because it repeats itself over and over again. Also the flow of the verses is not good, its too choppy and does not flow into a catchy tune. The first time around the verse sounds ok, but the problem is that it repeats three more times during the song. The chorus does not work at all, you don’t finish song the humming it. A good song will leave a lasting impression on its listener, but the impression this song leaves is forgettable. The song has a break down where Diddy raps. Diddy is not that good of a rapper and he continues to say “lets work” and “let go” over and over again in the background. He is too distracting in the song, but thats more of his style. Diddy has been criticized for being too vocal in the background for years, so at this point I think its safe to say that this is his style. The song debuted at 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 after it was preformed on American Idol. It has since fallen. I think the video will cause the song to rise a little bit, but I do not see it surpassing its peak of 34. They need to come harder than this if they want to reach the top. With artist like B.O.B. and Lady Gaga ruling the charts with their creativity and genre bending sounds, Dirty Money needs to step up their game to contend. Their previous single ‘Love Comes Down’ was much better, but for some reason it never charted. All three of the artist are talented and have proved with a previous single that they are capable of much more. Hopefully they will be able to drop a good charting single before ‘Last Train to Paris’ drops.
Dirty Money/Song Review/T.I.
‘Winner’ Jamie Foxx feat. Justin Timberlake & T.I.
I said that I wouldn’t judge a song because of the artist who sings it and this is going to be pretty hard for me this time around. Personally, I haven’t been to impressed with any of Jamie Foxx’s offerings in this past, but I do enjoy this song. After the success of ‘Blame It’ last year (the song was number 2 on the Billboard Top 100 and was number 1 on the R&B chart for an amazing 14 weeks) Jamie has returned faster than he ever has between two albums. ‘Winner’ is the first single off of Jamie’s new album ‘Body’ which is set to drop on July 20th. Jamie was smart to call on Justin Timberlake and T.I. to help out on the track. Previously the duo has had mass success when they teamed up in the past (Their first collaboration ‘My Love’ was number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2007 and their song ‘Dead and Gone’ was number 2 in 2009). The song was produced by The Y’s, which is a production team that is made up of Justin Timberlake, James Flauntleroy, and Rob Knox (they also produced ‘Dead and Gone’ and the top ten hit ‘Love, Sex, and Magic’ by Ciara). The song has a real epic beat that is lead by a blasting horn line and deep bass. The song sounds similar to a Timbaland beat, but when is that really a bad thing? Justin Timberlake really puts his all into this track. It’s nice to hear him on a new track, because he is really one of the most creative people from our generation of music. His flow is very similar to the feel of his album ‘Futuresex/Lovesounds’. This track easily could have been from there, but in no way does it sound dated. There’s a breakdown half way through the song when T.I. begins his rap. This sections is what adds a more current flare to the song; The beat is completely different than the rest of the song. At a first listen it almost sounds like it doesn’t belong, until the lead piano is added in slowly and the chorus comes blaring in. Lyrically T.I. is great, and sounds more determined than every to take the top spot in rap. Jamie Foxx does a good job in the song. It’s hard to say that he is the lead artist because Justin Timberlakes voice literally overpowers the chorus, but Foxx holds his own on his verse. The song is in a decent register for him, he sounds like he is straining a little, but its not annoying. Jamie has a good voice when he’s in the right octave, so I would like to see him sing a little lower. The only three writers listed on the song are the three performers. Thats pretty impressive because most artist have outside writers collaborating on the song. I love that this is truly a mixture of their minds. The song is catchy and will have you singing “Winner-Winner-Winner” once its over. Overall the song is entertaining and I think it will do a lot on the R&B charts. Whether of not it will hit the top twenty is questionable. The song debuted at number 23 on the Top 100, but has since fallen. With a video coming out, the song may see a rise. This is a good start to Jamie’s album and hopefully he will be able to have a few good singles this time around.
Jamie Foxx/Justin Timberlake/Song Review/T.I.
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Fringe Season 1 Episode 20: There’s More Than One of Everything
I am thrilled that Fox has picked up Fringe for another season. If last night’s season finale had instead been the end of the series, it would have been cruel. We obviously have a long journey ahead of us, and I can’t wait.
The episode started with Massive Dynamic’s Nina Sharp being worked on at the hospital due to a gunshot wound. We find out that it’s David Robert Jones who’s responsible, and after some prodding, Nina reveals to Olivia and Phillip that Jones removed an extremely powerful power cell from her artificial arm. She also explains that it was William Bell who hid the power cell in her arm to begin with. Apparently Jones was once an up-and-coming employee at Massive Dynamic, but had a falling out with Bell.
Jones doesn’t waste any time putting the power cell to work. He finds a quiet street and uses the cell to power a device that opens up some kind of gateway to an alternate universe. The gateway is unstable though, and a most of a semi truck makes it through before the back end is sliced off, leaving a rather unique piece of wreckage. Once the FBI team arrives, we discover just how unique, when it is confirmed there is no record of any part of the truck being manufactured in our universe.
While Olivia and her team are busy chasing down Jones, Walter and the Observer go off on a search of their own. The Observer escorts Walter to the shore, and to a beach house Walter spent a lot of time in many years ago. The Observer then explains he has already overstepped his bounds and can go no further. He hands Walter a silver dollar and asks if he remembers what he has to find. Walter does not remember, but goes toward the house alone anyway.
Back in the city, we see that Peter has truly come a long way from the first time we saw him–it is obvious that he truly cares for Walter, and we see Peter’s concern about the whereabouts and well-being of his father. Once Peter tracks him down to the beach house, a childhood memory of Peter’s helps Walter remember what he was supposed to look for. Some kind of strange telescope-like device that he and Bell used to use to connect to the other universe while tripping on LSD.
Ultimately we have a final showdown between Jones’s crew and Olivia’s. There is some serious ass-kicking, the opening of a pretty stable gateway between the two universes, and finally Peter uses the funny-looking telescope thing to close the portal just as Jones is passing through. We end up with an awesome sliced in half version of Jones with a kind of “Are you kidding me?” look on his face.
I thought that was the big climax of the episode, but then Peter comes to the lab to find a note from Walter.
“Stepping out for a bit. Don’t worry about me son, I know where I’m going.”
Peter doesn’t seem worried, and we cut to Walter returning to the cemetery we’ve seen him at before. This time we get to see the tombstone he’s been crying over. It’s Peter’s, and it says he was seven years old when he died. I actually had to pause the show for this complete “Holy fucking shit!” moment. So Walter’s Peter did drown, and somehow Walter brought the Peter from the other universe (with The Observer’s help?) back to raise as his own. This opens up a whole array of possibilities for the show that I hadn’t even considered.
Olivia then gets a call from Nina to schedule a meeting with Bell. Olivia goes to the destination and thinks she’s been stood up. As she gets on the elevator to leave the building, we see her skip between universes briefly, then the elevator door opens and she is greeted by name by a woman who leads her to an office. There’s a newspaper with the headline “Obamas set to move into new White House” lying on the desk. William Bell then enters. Olivia asks where they are and who he is. He introduces himself, but says the answer to her other question is more complicated. The camera backs out over Olivia’s shoulder and out of the office window–then backs out further to reveal that the meeting is taking place in one of the World Trade Center towers–END.
This took some massive balls, and quite frankly I’m thrilled someone has finally decided to slaughter the sacred cow of 9/11 on mainstream television. I can’t think of a more potent way to show the difference between two alternate versions of New York City than to use 9/11. I hope this is exactly the kind of bold storytelling we can expect when season two starts in the fall.
May 13, 2009 Posted by nerddotis | Drama, Renewed, Science, Scifi, Season Finale, Technology, Television | 9/11, alternate universe, david robert jones, fox, fringe, lsd, massive dynamic, new york city, nina sharp, olivia, peter, phillip, silver dollar, the observer, walter, william bell, world trade center | Comments Off on Fringe Season 1 Episode 20: There’s More Than One of Everything
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February 16, 2016 February 16, 2016 neilfoster
Protecting free speech in the Same Sex Marriage Plebiscite debate
An article in the The Guardian today, “Override hate speech laws to allow marriage equality debate, urges Christian lobby” reports that Lyle Shelton, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, has made proposals urging greater protection of free speech for those opposed to the introduction of same sex marriage in the forthcoming Australian plebiscite on the topic.
Of course, the reader will see that the Guardian headline and my summary of the proposals seem quite different. In its support for same sex marriage, the Guardian and those it quotes describe the ACL proposals as follows: the ACL wants to “permanently override anti-discrimination laws”; the ACL is said to need to justify why it wants to “breach anti-hate laws”; the laws in question are designed to “protect Australians from acts of hatred, vilification and incitement”; the ACL has an “intention to run an ugly and discriminatory campaign against marriage equality”.
I think the Guardian has slanted the ACL views unfairly. (Even more unfairly, the Sydney Morning Herald report on the story features a cartoon of an ACL representative complaining that they can’t be expected to make their case “without expressing hatred and bigotry”.) Let me suggest reasons why the ACL proposal, so far as can be ascertained from these press reports, sounds limited, moderate and sensible.
One piece of terminology needs to be defined up front. The phrase “hate speech” is commonly used in this debate. In the anti-discrimination area, a law forbidding “hate speech” is designed to make unlawful, in general terms, behaviour which “incites hatred” against a person or group of persons on the basis of a protected characteristic. It is important to note that the “hate” in the short-hand description “hate speech” does not refer to any emotion felt by the speaker; it refers to an emotion which is designed to be generated in the listeners. The law does not punish people feeling a certain way when they say something; in limited areas it does prohibit those who seek to generate hate in others for a person or group of persons on the basis of some characteristic of those persons.
The classic example is race-based hate speech. The NSW Anti Discrimination Act 1977, for example, prohibits “racial vilification” in the following way:
20C Racial vilification unlawful
(1) It is unlawful for a person, by a public act, to incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons on the ground of the race of the person or members of the group.
The Act also prohibits “transgender vilification” (s 38S) and “homosexual vilification” (s 49ZT) in similar terms.
Lyle Shelton in his reported remarks in the Guardian explicitly disclaims any desire to engage in speech of this sort in the plebiscite debate.
Shelton told Fairfax Media those in the no camp were not seeking to say anything bigoted by having the anti-discrimination laws relaxed but wanted to put forward the argument that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
This puts the matter in a nutshell. Is it an act of unlawful “bigotry” to say that the legal status of marriage should be extended only to a relationship between persons of the opposite sex? In my view, and the view of many others, it is not irrational bigotry or hatred. Agree or not, many of those who oppose same sex marriage offer rational, non-religious, reasons for their stance. The debate can be conducted with civility and respect.
Offensive Speech
So if the ACL are not arguing for a “license for hate speech”, what do they want? What they seem to be arguing for is a way of dealing, not with “hate speech” as defined above, but with what we might call “offensive speech” provisions. There are some provisions in Australian law which go far beyond prohibiting hate speech understood as speech inciting hatred in others, and which make unlawful the mere causing of “offence” to someone. The most obvious of these provisions is the Tasmanian law noted in the article, s 17 of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998. I have discussed this provision, and the current proceedings involving Archbishop Porteous, in previous posts here and here. In summary, the provisions makes it unlawful to “offend” someone in a way connected with their homosexuality, and the complainant in that case alleges that the Archbishop’s act of circulating to Roman Catholic schools a summary of Roman Catholic teaching on the topic was relevantly “offensive”.
If a Roman Catholic cleric cannot provide the teaching of their church to children who have been sent to church schools, then it seems perfectly plausible that someone going into the public debate on same sex marriage, and opposing it on the basis of their belief that homosexual behaviour is sinful or wrong, would also cause “offence”. Of course it is “offensive” to be told that some behaviour one enjoys is wrong. And yet time and again in newspapers and social media this happens without people being brought before courts for doing so. Mining companies are told that their new mine is wrong and harmful, Governments are told that the tax system is dreadful, or their asylum policy is awful. A television interviewer is attacked for the way they run an interview. Causing “offence” in the sense of telling someone that one disagrees with their way of doing things is a common part of public discourse, of free speech in a democracy.
The importance of free speech in debate, even where it may cause offence, has been stressed on many occasions. Perhaps one of the most striking examples in recent days was the report of comments of Peter Tatchell, renowned gay activist in the UK, arguing that the recent prosecution of bakers for refusing to supply a cake supporting SSM was wrong as a denial of free speech (even though he fundamentally disagreed with the bakers.) He concludes by saying:
In my view, it is an infringement of freedom to require businesses to aid the promotion of ideas to which they conscientiously object. Discrimination against people should be unlawful, but not against ideas.
There are reasons to think, as I have noted in my most recent comments on the case, that the proceedings against Archbishop Porteous will fail, and in any event that the way that the Tasmanian law is worded contravenes the implied freedom of communication on political matters enjoyed under the Constitution by all citizens. But the mere fact of being caught up in these proceedings would be a deterrent to others to speaking their minds on the important issues involved in the plebiscite debate.
In those circumstances it seems to me perfectly reasonable to suggest that any proposed law allowing the conduct of a plebiscite provide protection for free speech on the topic by explicitly providing that State “offensive speech laws” would not operate in this area. As I say elsewhere, in fact I think such laws should be repealed as bad policy and constitutionally unsound anyway. But an explicit provision in Commonwealth law protecting free debate on the plebiscite issue would make sense in the short term.
Such a law might provide, say, that
“for the purposes of allowing a full and free debate on the issues concerned, arguments presented in good faith against the introduction of same sex marriage shall not be unlawful for that reason alone, under any law of a State or Territory prohibiting the causing of offence, humiliation, intimidation, insult or ridicule on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity”.
To be crystal clear, I do not support speech of that nature as a good thing! But unless the law allows a clear space for comment which might be seen that way by some, we cannot have a sensible debate on the important issues concerned. (It should be noted that the terms of s 17 of the Tasmanian law, for example, merely require that someone subjectively be offended etc where a reasonable person would have anticipated such offence. This is a very “low bar” indeed for permitted speech.)
How the UK deals with the issue
The example of UK law is important here. The Public Order Act 1986 (UK) forbids vilification on the grounds of sexual orientation. This is a true “hate speech” law. But s 29J of the Act provides explicit free speech protection even in that context:
29JA Protection of freedom of expression (sexual orientation)
(1) In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
(2) In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, any discussion or criticism of marriage which concerns the sex of the parties to marriage shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred. (emphasis added)
Subsection (2) here was inserted by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 c. 30 Sch.7(2) para.28, when the UK was introducing same sex marriage.
The UK amendment, which extends to “hate speech” proper, was presumably inserted to completely avoid any argument that debate about the topic of marriage, or sexual conduct or practices, could in some way be cast as engendering “hatred” for same sex attracted persons. In light of that provision it may also be desirable, not (to repeat) to allow true hate speech, but to avoid any doubt and so avoid useless litigation, to explicitly provide that State laws on the topic will not be breached by mere debate on the issues raised by the plebiscite. This will not prevent such laws being used where other types of speech are used which go beyond debate on the issues. But it will prevent vexatious court actions designed to stifle public comment on the serious issues involved.
It is true that the Australian community is deeply divided on the issues surrounding same sex marriage. But in a robust democracy the way to resolve the question as to whether this change to the law should be made, is to have a respectful and honest debate about the issues. Some on both sides of the debate may be offended by arguments that are used on the other side. But laws which prohibit the mere causing of “offence”, or attempts to use “hate speech” laws to shut down the putting of arguments in support of one side or the other, will only restrict that debate. It seems sensible that the Commonwealth Parliament, when enacting laws to allow the plebiscite, also provide protection for the free speech needed for a proper debate.
Posted in Freedom of speech, Same Sex marriageTagged Plebiscite on SSM2 Comments
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Former Trump Adviser Michael Anton: Constitution Does Not Require Birthright Citizenship
Posted by Fuzzy Slippers Sunday, July 29, 2018 at 4:00pm | 7/29/2018 - 4:00pm
Anton, who also authored The Flight 93 Election article, argues: “The American people did not willingly, knowingly, or politically adopt birthright citizenship”
Michael Anton, a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College and a former national security official in the Trump administration. Anton also was the pseudonymous author of The Flight 93 Election article that cause a stir prior to the 2016 election.
Earlier this month, Anton penned an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he argued that birthright citizenship was not a constitutional requirement. The op-ed generated a great deal of discussion, prompting Anton to explain and defend his argument to critics on both the left and the right.
In his op-ed, Anton writes, Citizenship shouldn’t be a birthright:
The notion that simply being born within the geographical limits of the United States automatically confers U.S. citizenship is an absurdity — historically, constitutionally, philosophically and practically.
. . . . Constitutional scholar Edward Erler has shown that the entire case for birthright citizenship is based on a deliberate misreading of the 14th Amendment. The purpose of that amendment was to resolve the question of citizenship for newly freed slaves. Following the Civil War, some in the South insisted that states had the right to deny citizenship to freedmen. In support, they cited 1857’s disgraceful Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which held that no black American could ever be a citizen of the United States.
A constitutional amendment was thus necessary to overturn Dred Scott and to define the precise meaning of American citizenship.
That definition is the amendment’s very first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The amendment clarified for the first time that federal citizenship precedes and supersedes its state-level counterpart. No state has the power to deny citizenship, hence none may dispossess freed slaves.
Anton goes on to make a distinction between “subject to the jurisdiction” and “subject to American law.”
Second, the amendment specifies two criteria for American citizenship: birth or naturalization (i.e., lawful immigration), and being subject to U.S. jurisdiction. We know what the framers of the amendment meant by the latter because they told us. Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, a principal figure in drafting the amendment, defined “subject to the jurisdiction” as “not owing allegiance to anybody else” — that is, to no other country or tribe.
Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, a sponsor of the clause, further clarified that the amendment explicitly excludes from citizenship “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”
Yet for decades, U.S. officials — led by immigration enthusiasts in and out of government — have acted as though “subject to the jurisdiction” simply means “subject to American law.” That is true of any tourist who comes here.
The framers of the 14th Amendment added the jurisdiction clause precisely to distinguish between people to whom the United States owes citizenship and those to whom it does not. Freed slaves definitely qualified. The children of immigrants who came here illegally clearly don’t.
Anton offers the following solution:
The problem can be fixed easily. Congress could clarify legislatively that the children of noncitizens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and thus not citizens under the 14th Amendment. But given the open-borders enthusiasm of congressional leaders of both parties, that’s unlikely.
It falls, then, to Trump. An executive order could specify to federal agencies that the children of noncitizens are not citizens. Such an order would, of course, immediately be challenged in the courts. But officers in all three branches of government — the president no less than judges — take similar oaths to defend the Constitution. Why shouldn’t the president act to defend the clear meaning of the 14th Amendment?
The response was rapid and fiery, with Anton being called every name in the book: racist, xenophobic, bigoted, white nationalist, un-American, and etc.
The Washington Post, in a separate article, provides an overview of the criticism Anton faced from both the left and the right. Much of this criticism is focused on the insertion of a bracketed “or” in a quote.
Here is the Editor’s Note on Anton’s WaPo op-ed:
Editor’s note: Michael Anton inserted the bracketed word “[or]” into a statement made by Michigan Sen. Jacob Howard during debate of the 14th Amendment on May 30, 1866, as recorded in the Congressional Globe. Anton wrote that Howard “clarified that the amendment explicitly excludes from citizenship ‘persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.’ ” Writers before Anton have made the same insertion, and Anton stands by his interpretation of Howard’s statement and maintains that the insertion of the word clarified rather than altered its meaning. You can read his full explanation in a blog post subsequently published by the Claremont Review of Books. Others believe the inserted word changes rather than clarifies the meaning of the quotation. Because the quotation can be read a different way, we should have asked Anton to publish it unaltered and then explain his interpretation rather than publishing it with the inserted word.
Vox has more:
It was not well received. At all. On the left, historians who study the 14th Amendment mocked his history at length on Twitter. On the right, the American Conservative — usually sympathetic to immigration restrictionism — ran an op-ed from a scholar at the Cato Institute, which does not share those views. And even the Federalist, known for the anti-anti-Trump tone of its writing, published a piece with the headline “Ending Birthright Citizenship Will Make Republicans Look Like the Party of Dred Scott.”
So why was Anton’s argument a bridge too far? Part of it was the radicalism of his proposal — asserting flatly that the president could end birthright citizenship with a wave of the pen and that “judges faithful to their oaths will have no choice but to agree with him.”
But part of it is because of the awkward position ending birthright citizenship holds on the restrictionist agenda. It’s always on the agenda — and many restrictionists see it as an important long-term solution to the ongoing problem of unauthorized immigration. But it’s never very close to the top, because it’s difficult as well as politically sensitive.
The blowback prompted Anton to write a response to his critics.
I expected the reaction to a recent op-ed I published calling for the end of birthright citizenship to be cantankerous. I even expected it to be hysterical—from the Left. I did not expect self-described “conservatives” to be just as hysterical as the Left, and to use precisely the same terms. “Nativist.” “Xenophobe.” “Bigot.” “Racist.” “White nationalist.” “White supremacist.”
One point I’ve been making for a while is that one faction of “conservatism”—let’s call it the anti-Trump wing, although the phenomenon long predates Trump—sounds and acts with every passing year more like a “conservative” subdivision of the Left. Like the Left, they don’t want to debate; they want to call those they disagree with evil. For what are those epithets supposed to mean, if not “evil”?
Whether or not to have birthright citizenship for the children of noncitizens is one such fundamentally political question. But like so many other political questions, this one is ruled out of bounds by scholars, lawyers, experts, pundits, and professional moralists.
The American people did not willingly, knowingly, or politically adopt birthright citizenship. They were maneuvered into it by the Left and by the Left-allied judiciary. They’ve never debated it or voted on it. They’ve simply been told that it’s required by the Constitution.
He goes on to address concerns raised by his critics about his reading of the Howard quote.
Anton also appeared on Tucker Carlson to explain his position.
Here’s a partial transcript of this Tucker segment.
TUCKER CARLSON: Most of us grew up learning that the American Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship; in other words anybody born in this country even to parents who are here illegally or simply on vacation is a US citizen and due all the benefits of that for life. But is that really what the Constitution says?
Michael Anton does not believe it says that. He’s a lecturer at Hillsdale College and a former Trump advisor just wrote a piece in The Washington Post arguing that birthright citizenship is not a constitutional requirement Michael Anton joins us tonight. Michael, thanks all for coming on. I’m amazed that Post printed this piece. Good for them. You took a lot of heat for it; people were shocked by the idea that you would even question this but you made your case partly on legal grounds. Why does the Constitution not say what we’ve been taught it says?
MICHAEL ANTON: You have to read the whole 14th Amendment. There’s a clause in the middle that people ignore or they misinterpret — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — ‘thereof’ meaning of the United States. What they’re saying is, if you’re born on US soil subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, meaning you’re the child of citizens or the child of legal immigrants, then you are entitled to citizenship. If you’re here illegally, if you owe allegiance to a foreign nation, if you’re the citizen of a foreign country, that clause does not apply to you.
If you read the debate about the ratification of the 14th amendment, all the senators who are discussing what this is meant to do and what it means are very clear on this point; I tried to point that out. I expected the left would blow up and get angry which they did. What I didn’t expect, at least not to this extent, and what was very disappointing was how angry the so-called conservative intellectuals got with me, and they essentially said any opposition to birthright citizenship is racist and evil and un-American. . . .
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tom_swift | July 29, 2018 at 4:15 pm
Another hand grenade.
A good one, too. My favorite type.
alaskabob | July 29, 2018 at 4:32 pm
The Left will forget about the discussion during the debate over the amendment as they conveniently forget about The Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights. For the Left, the Constitution has a built-in “amnesia clause” so they can forget the intent.
Ira | July 29, 2018 at 4:53 pm
What is the difference between “subject to the jurisdiction” of the USA and “subject to the laws” of the USA?
Tom Servo | July 29, 2018 at 6:19 pm
Legally, there is none whatsoever, as per current Federal Code.
And no Court in US history has ever found differently, either.
plauer | July 29, 2018 at 7:21 pm
Not entirely true. People with work visas and others, even thoes who have permenent residency are not subject to military draft.
Milhouse | July 29, 2018 at 8:19 pm
That is not true. Whenever the US has had a draft, all residents, whether citizens or aliens, and whether here legally or not, were equally subject.
The same applies to Selective Service registration today; if you live in the USA and are male between 18 and 25, you are legally required to register regardless of your citizenship or whether you’re here legally. People on work visas, of course, don’t live here, so they’re exempt; if they overstay their visas by more than 30 days they become (illegal) residents, and must register.
V.Lombardi | July 30, 2018 at 6:29 am
That is such a silly remark, easily verified to be untrue.
No, V. Lombardi, you and plauer are the silly ones, condemned by your own words, because what I wrote is indeed easily verifiable as the exact truth. You arrogant POS didn’t even bother to verify it, did you? When you do so, I expect a full apology from you.
Milwaukee | July 30, 2018 at 5:10 pm
“…if they overstay their visas by more than 30 days they become (illegal) residents, and must register.
Has anyone ever been charged, as being an illegal alien who has overstayed their visa and not registered for the draft?
Does this apply to the DACA “children” Citizens, like the kid down the street, must register for the draft to get any Federal benefits, such as school loans. Are those who were brought here illegally by their felonious parents registering for the draft? Inquiring minds would like to know.
I don’t think anyone, citizen or alien, legal or illegal, has ever been charged for not registering. But the duty to register exists, and it applies equally to all male US residents between 18 and 25, regardless of citizenship or legal status.
Yes, it does apply to DACA people. And I assume they are registering at the same rate as anyone else. It’s impossible to know for sure, of course, because the selective service does not keep statistics on registrants’ citizenship or legal status, since these things are irrelevant for its purposes.
artichoke | July 30, 2018 at 11:50 am
The legislative history defines what the original intent of “subject to the jurisdiction” meant. Read the article.
It used to be interpreted that way, then it was legislatively changed as I recall. So it could be legislatively un-changed. But that’s unlikely since it’s a hand-grenade, so Trump, who like Obama has “a phone and a pen”, could say he’ll enforce original intent and dare courts to overrule him.
SCOTUS won’t.
First of all, the original intent of the drafters is irrelevant. What matters is the original meaning.
And no, it was never interpreted that way, and there was never any legislative change. You have been lied to.
That is what we call a “knee slapper”. Milhouse, you made a funny, unexpectedly, I’m sure. Not your intention, but the original meaning is funny.
When President Trump wants a travel ban on people from countries whose governments are shaky, and can not verify information, the courts look at his campaign statements and determine his intent was racist. A party in a state comes up with a redistricting plan, and the courts will strike it down, because the intent was racists. Whether or not the plan fails some predetermined criterion is irrelevant, because their intent was racist. But, when the framers of Obamacare say over and over this is not a tax, which was their intention, the Supreme Court can suddenly decide it is a tax. What you said should be true. However, it is not.
Christopher B | July 29, 2018 at 4:58 pm
It’s amazing to me that this is even subject to debate. If the 14th was intended to grant citizenship to anyone born physically in the US then it would have automatically and without further action made citizens of all the various Native American tribes. However, Congress felt it necessary to enact legislation granting citizenship to Native Americans. This clearly indicates that 14th amendment citizenship applied to former slaves only, as only they could derive citizenship by birth in the US and subject to its jurisdiction without requiring naturalization.
You are wrong. Indians were not under US jurisdiction, i.e. not subject to US law. They were foreign nations with whom the US made treaties, exactly as it did with China or the UK. Indians could not be sued in US courts. This very question was heavily debated, and the amendment’s proponents explained that the “subject to their jurisdiction” clause was explicitly intended to exclude them, in addition to diplomats’ children. However it was intended to include the children of all immigrants who were subject to US jurisdiction, specifically including Chinese and Gypsies, even if the parents were not naturalized.
maxmillion | July 29, 2018 at 5:53 pm
Sorry! One of your down votes was by me, by accident– I agree with you. I clicked on the number 1, not the down thumb, trying to see who it is that is doing the down voting, and it registered another down vote.
@Ira – everyone physically in territory (with a few exceptions) is subject to the laws of the government controlling that territory regardless of their immigration status. A citizen of another country can not commit a crime and escape punishment because they are not a citizen (unless they do it in one of the Left’s sanctuary areas). The authors of the 14th clearly expressed their opinion that ‘jurisfiction’ meant ‘holding no allegiance to another country’, the same position freed slaves were in when the 14th was adopted.
No, Christopher B, both Howard and Trumbull explicitly said that so long as the children were subject to US jurisdiction they would be citizens, regardless of their parents’ citizenship, or of what allegiance foreign countries might claim from them. Those who selectively quote otherwise are being dishonest.
In any case, the amendment’s drafters’ intent is irrelevant. No law depends on what its drafters think. It depends on what the words enacted actually mean, to a contemporary reader. And there’s no question that the words’ meaning to English-speakers of 1866-8 was that children born in the US to aliens would be citizens. Those words still meant the same thing in 1898 when Wong Kim Ark was decided.
Something that always really irks me is that whenever this topic comes up on some blog, the fact that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is firmly defined in the current US code is almost never brought up. Now, the Federal Code is created by Congress, and can be changed by Congress, but UNTILL it is, then in any court of law there is absolutely no question at all about what this phrase means. It has been strictly, legally, and officially defined in 31 CFR 515.329 and 31 CFR 515.330
Currently, any person who is physically located in the United States is legally defined as being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, regardless of their citizenship. Ambassadors and their staffs aren’t considered to be in the United States because their Ambassadorial residences are subject to the legal fiction that they are actually small parcels of their home country, surrounded by US soil.
But they’re not subject to US jurisdiction even when they’re outside their little enclaves. They can walk into the Oval Office, which is certainly in the United States, and still not be subject to US jurisdiction.
Also, for the purpose of this amendment I’m pretty sure foreign embassies are considered US territory, just as US embassies in foreign countries are not. In other words, if a foreigner gives birth at a US embassy the child is not a 14th-amendment citizen, while if a US citizen gives birth at a foreign embassy in Washington the child is a 14th-amendment citizen (as opposed to a citizen by the grace of Congress, which can change its mind).
ronk | July 30, 2018 at 11:31 pm
so wrong, embassies are considered the country to which they belong, when Iran took over the US embassy in Tehran, they essentially invaded the US, US laws do not apply to the embassy grounds. children born they are not US citizens they are the citizens of the country the embassy belongs to.
Milhouse | July 31, 2018 at 12:05 am
ronk, And your basis for those confident assertions is?
Because the fact is that you are wrong. Embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic spaces remain the territory of the host state. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong. Children born to alien parents in US embassies overseas are not thereby US citizens. And children born (to non-diplomat aliens) in foreign embassies here are. Oh, and US-registered ships and planes are not US territory either; children born there to aliens are not US citizens.
jeastman | July 30, 2018 at 11:04 am
You claim that “subject to the jurisdiction” is clearly defined in the US Code, but your citations are to the Code of Federal Regulations, not the US Code. That regulation is based on a provision in the U.S. Code, which is the law actually passed by Congress. It says: “As used in this chapter, the term “United States person” means any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States, and any corporation, partnership, or other organization organized under the laws of the United States.” 22 USC 6010. And the chapter deals with Cuba, not more broadly. Using this particular CFR provision for the broad claim you make is simply dishonest.
This is another silly argument. You refuted nothing the poster wrote. Intent is relevant in judicial review. The drafters stated explicit intent.
The drafters’ intent is irrelevant. Laws, and certainly constitutional provisions, are interpreted according to their public meaning at the time of enactment, not according to the drafters’ intent.
Which makes no difference here, since the drafters explicitly said that the native born children of Chinese aliens would be citizens.
Close The Fed | July 30, 2018 at 10:55 am
This assertion conflicts with rules of statutory interpretation. There is a long list of rules for this, one of which is, what did the legislature enacting it intend.
Somebody missed that day in law school.
On the contrary, I was awake when taught that transcripts of legislative debate are not admissible in court, because they reflect only the views of those speaking. And that drafters’ intent is completely irrelevant, since they are not legislators. And that the constitution in particular is to be interpreted strictly by its objective public meaning, regardless of what anybody intended.
Your position is consistent with the way the laws have been interpreted.
This does pose problems for us, and the US. There are some who come here for the sole purpose of giving birth here so their child has US citizenship. Witness a while back, a hotel in San Francisco, which catered to wealthy, pregnant, Chinese nationals. They came here, stayed in the hotel until they had their child and then returned home. Somebody was making a nice profit on that.
The alternative is something like what France has. Being born in country doesn’t award citizenship. They have some of Algerian heritage, who are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation born in France, without being citizens. That makes assimilation even more difficult. If a person is going to be a citizen, there are huge advantages to the country if they assimilate into mainstream culture. My observation is that has not worked out well for either those of Algerian descent, or French society at large.
If you wish to propose a constitutional amendment, go right ahead. But the current constitution clearly does allow that, and that was the explicit intention of the people who proposed it and who ratified it.
Article I Section 8 Clause 4: “[The Congress shall have Power] To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,…”
By implication, right from the beginning in 1789, there’s a distinction between “Naturalization” and other ways of being a citizen, probably consistent with the citizenship mentioned in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;”
No need to even go to the 14th Amendment.
There are only two ways to become a citizen – either naturalization, or by being a citizen from the moment of birth. There is no 3rd way, either in law or in custom, and the belief that such a thing exists is one of the more bizarre things floating around the internet these days.
There is no such thing as a person who is a citizen from the moment of their birth who is not a natural born citizen. The USA does not have multiple, parallel levels of citizenship, it never has.
“Naturalization” means “being made natural”, as opposed to already being natural, i.e. by birth. This gives Congress the power to make rules for how someone not a citizen can become one. It does not give Congress power over the citizenship of those who already have it by birth.
You’re not making any sense. The 14th amendment overrides the original text, to whatever extent it contradicts it.
I don’t think Anton is racist or white supremacist or anything like that, but what he is, is dishonest. There is no justification for inserting that “or” into Jacob Howard’s clear statement that anyone but the child of a foreign ambassador would be covered. Nor is it honest to hide the fact that Lyman Trumbull explicitly said the native-born children of Chinese aliens would be citizens, exactly the same as the native-born children of German aliens. Chinese citizens in the US, of course, did owe allegiance to the Chinese emperor, and yet he insisted their children would be US citizens.
Nor is it honest to hide that he also explained why Indians were not under US jurisdiction, and therefore those born in the US were not citizens — because the US treats them as foreign nations, making treaties with them, and because they could not be sued in US courts. If Congress were to renounce US jurisdiction from illegal aliens, as Anton proposes, this would automatically mean they would be exempt from US law, and could commit any crime or tort they liked with impunity. Any attempt to declare that they were not subject to US jurisdiction but were still required to obey the law and subject to arrest, trial, and/or lawsuits, would contradict itself, because that is US jurisdiction.
Also dishonest is his assertion that Wong Kim Ark applies only to the children of legal residents. There is no possible basis for such a distinction, since legal aliens are no more and no less under US jurisdiction than illegal ones.
Whether citizenship should be a birthright is indeed a political question which it is legitimate to debate, but only in the same sense as whether to ban guns or “hate speech”, or whether to reintroduce slavery. All these changes would require amending the constitution, so the debate has to be in the context of proposing such amendments; it is illegitimate to discuss them within the context of the current constitution.
I noticed one of the linked articles was by one Mark Pulliam, who comes out with the ignorant claim that “only citizens can be drafted into the armed forces of the United States”. This is not and has never been true. Whenever the US has had a draft it has included aliens; today male alien residents between 18 and 25, including those residing here illegally, are required to register for selective service. The Selective Service system keeps no records of whether a registered person is a citizen or an alien, nor whether their residence is legal or illegal; these questions are irrelevant for its purposes, it has no use for the information, so it has no authority to collect it.
I agree with all of your points here, especially about the “Indians” (native americans). Well into the 20th century, our government put a great deal of effort into maintaining the legal fiction that they were members of independent, sovereign governments.
I used to believe that this could only be changed by amending the constitution, but after study I have come around to the belief that this can indeed by altered by an act of Congress, just as the Native Americans were given voting rights by an act of Congress. (Congress also gave all Puerto Ricans automatic citizenship, in 1917) But the idea that Trump could change this with an Executive Order is both foolish and dangerous; that’s what Anton has been pushing.
You wrote much sophistry for a simple issue.
You’re the sophist, and the fool. Have you looked up yet whether aliens are subject to the draft? I’m expecting an apology when you do.
CaptTee | July 30, 2018 at 10:15 pm
I had a co-worker who immigrated from Germany as a child and as he was about graduate from college he applied to join the Army as an officer. It was then he found out that he didn’t automatically become a citizen when his parents became citizens. His application was rejected because he was an alien. When he graduated, his student deferment from the draft expired and he was drafted. After returning from Vietnam, be became a citizen.
MSO | July 29, 2018 at 6:07 pm
Amending our constitution is extremely dangerous as there are very few writers who can successfully navigate the artificial shoals of our courts.
What’s that got to do with it? The courts don’t get to rule on amendments. Any amendment passed by 2/3 of each house of congress, and that the secretary of state certifies has been ratified by 38 state legislatures is by definition part of the constitution, and overrides anything previously in the constitution, and of course any statute or treaty, that contradicts it.
MSO | July 30, 2018 at 7:27 am
An amendment that was intended to ensure full citizenship to former slaves accidentally grants citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.
a) it was no accident, but the explicit intention. b) even if it had been an accident, it would have had nothing to do with the vagaries of courts, but with the explicit meaning of the words enacted.
can successfully navigate the artificial shoals of our courts.
I presume this refers to the emanations of penumbras which the courts will be able to find in any but the most carefully crafted texts.
stevewhitemd | July 29, 2018 at 7:44 pm
Unfortunately I can’t read the WaPo article as I’m not a subscriber. Can someone tell me whether Mr. Anton addresses the USSC Wong Kim Ark decision? If he can’t get around that then the rest of his piece is wishful thinking.
Yes, he claims (ridiculously) that it applies only to the children of legal immigrants, not those of illegal ones. He doesn’t explain what possible difference that could make, since even by his spurious interpretation of “jurisdiction”, it applies equally to legal and illegal aliens. He claims (wrongly) that anyone owing allegiance to a foreign country is not under US jurisdiction for the purposes of the 14th amendment; but both legal and illegal aliens owe exactly the same allegiance to their country of citizenship, and so do their US-born children, so how could Wong Kim Ark possibly have distinguished them?
Milhouse claims that Anton’s position on Wong Kim Ark is ridiculous, because the law either applies to all immigrants (legal and illegal) or to none. But the authors of the citizenship clause explicitly drew a distinction between full and complete jurisdiction (owing allegiance) and partial/territorial jurisdiction (merely being subject to the laws while physically present in the U.S.). Not a hard concept to understand, but if you want a more complete explanation, see https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/26/dred-scott-seriously/. Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legally domiciled in the U.S., not just visiting. They had exercised their natural right to expatriate from their native country (even if China refused to recognize that). And in doing so, and with our permission, had taken up a new domicile in the US, manifesting as much allegiance to their new country as we allowed at the time.
But the authors of the citizenship clause explicitly drew a distinction between full and complete jurisdiction (owing allegiance) and partial/territorial jurisdiction (merely being subject to the laws while physically present in the U.S.).
No, they did not; their example of who would be covered was the child of Chinese parents, and their example of who would not was a Navajo.
Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legally domiciled in the U.S., not just visiting. They had exercised their natural right to expatriate from their native country (even if China refused to recognize that). And in doing so, and with our permission, had taken up a new domicile in the US, manifesting as much allegiance to their new country as we allowed at the time.
Irrelevant. They still owed exactly the same allegiance to the Chinese emperor.
You can’t possibly be suggesting that our permission or lack thereof for them to settle here could affect their debt of allegiance to the emperor. How could we possibly absolve them of that? What did it have to do with us? Whatever effect you think their leaving China had, must apply equally to every immigrant, legal or not, since it’s not a matter for US law; our laws can only affect our jurisdiction, not any other country’s.
artichoke | July 30, 2018 at 2:01 pm
“both legal and illegal aliens owe exactly the same allegiance to their country of citizenship”
Milhouse, you’re exactly right. But then neither is covered by the 14th and so we can choose to make their offspring citizens or not. I think we should choose not to make offspring of illegals citizens, and we might consider making the offspring of legal permanent resident aliens citizens, but I definitely would exclude people here on temporary visas including working visas.
No, artichoke, you’re not paying attention. Wong Kim Ark says we cannot choose; the native-born child of Chinese nationals is automatically a US citizen regardless of what we want. Now this Anton clown’s way around this is to pretend it would apply only if the parents were here legally; but as you just admitted that distinction is impossible, because the parents’ allegiance to China would be the same whether they were here legally or not.
beagleEar | July 29, 2018 at 9:15 pm
Finally, someone dearest to state the obvious.
No part of the constitution was intended as a national suicide pact.
PersonofInterests | July 30, 2018 at 11:13 am
America needs to review these “Urban Legends” and folklore like “Birthright Citizenship” and put the debate before We the People; put it on the ballot as a referendum, a Constitional Amendment, or other. And most definitely, get our so called elected “Representatives” on record so we know who to remove from office because of their tyranny displeases us.
I’d rather see Trump handle it behind the scenes without all the mess and divisiveness of a “national debate” supervised by leftist federal judges in every tricky way they can think of.
Also, I wish people would stop using “We” as a direct object. I’d say “Us the People”, as the writers would have if they were not in the nominative case.
Constitutional amendments never go on a ballot, you idiot. They are none of the business of your “we the people”. The constitution does not recognize referendums for any purpose. Amending the constitution is the business of 2/3 of each house of congress and 3/4 of state legislatures, and nobody else.
He probably got the idea that Federal Constitutional Amendments go on the ballots, because he has seen so many State Constitutional Amendments on ballots.
We have a lot of Amendments in Florida that do not belong in the State Constitution. That is because people got tired of laws not getting passed. Sadly, most Amendments passed, until someone slipped one in raising “passing” from 50% to 60%. Fortunately, that one passed! Now they don’t all pass.
Then he has no business commenting on anything to do with the US constitution.
You can’t draft tourists arriving on a foreign country’s passport, because they are citizens of another country and not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, just as Americans traveling aboard have to obey other countries’ laws, but are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the other countries.
Wrong. Subject to the jurisdiction means having to obey the laws. Everyone in the US except diplomats are equally subject to US jurisdiction. The moment a non-diplomat American sets foot in another country he is subject to its jurisdiction.
Tourists are not subject to the draft because they don’t live here, but aliens who do live here, legally or illegally, are subject to the draft.
And there’s no legal reason Congress couldn’t decide to draft tourists too; it would dry up the tourist trade, but that’s not a legal reason.
Candid | July 31, 2018 at 12:19 am
simple: non citizens birthing in America have non citizens offspring. They are subject to another legal jurisdiction (state or nation), just pregnant invaders in America. No way citizens, nor their offspring.
Believe otherwise, you are doomed to the true foolishness that President Trump preaches against–USA immigration laws are the laughing stock of the world–pure stupidity.
Congress must fix and fund a massive wall. Shut down the government, with no back pay.
Milhouse | July 31, 2018 at 12:47 pm
You have no idea what you are talking about, and should shut up. You have no idea what the word “jurisdiction” means.
And you prattle about our founders’ values while ignoring that citizenship by soil rather than blood was one of those core values that they thought important.
jeastman | July 31, 2018 at 7:04 pm
Actually, Milhouse, it is you who doesn’t seem to understand the issue. The common law on “citizenship by soil,” as you call it (the actual phrase is jus soli) had two components — those born on the King’s soil were the King’s subjects, and the subjects owed the King perpetual allegiance. The Declaration of Independence fundamentally rejects the second component–indeed, it is the most eloquent rejection of that aspect of jus soli ever penned in human history. And by grounding governments on consent, it goes a long way toward rejecting the first as well.
You also seem to have a hard time understanding the basic argument about “subject to the jurisdiction.” The phrase has two meanings–subject to the complete, allegiance-owing jurisdiction; and subject to the partial, territorial jurisdiction. The issue, then, is which of those meanings was intended by the authors of the 14th Amendment and understood by those who ratified it. The evidence is pretty compelling that it was the former. Senator Howard was asked point blank a question about that, and he said, the full and complete jurisdiction. And the ratification debates are full of evidence that those who ratified the 14th Amendment understood that they were codifying the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which by its terms (“not subject to any foreign power”) embraced the former definition as well.
Milhouse | August 1, 2018 at 4:03 am
Jeastman, I understand your false assertions just fine; you don’t seem to understand that they are false. The founders took citizenship by soil absolutely for granted. That they believed it was possible to renounce one’s allegiance, however obtained, for sufficient cause doesn’t change that.
Subject to the jurisdiction has only one meaning; if someone has to obey the laws, and can be hauled into court if they don’t, then they are under the full and complete jurisdiction. Senator Trumbull explicitly said this would cover the US-born children of Chinese aliens, and that the term only excluded those who were not subject to US laws, i.e. diplomats and Indians. His specific example to show that Indians were not subject to US jurisdiction was that they could not be sued in US courts.
jeastman | August 1, 2018 at 12:44 pm
I gave you one example of the founders’ rejection of jus soli, which you now concede was true, and yet you assert my claim was a “false” assertion.
You also claim, falsely, that “subject to the jurisdiction has only one meaning.” In support of that proposition, you’ve altered what you claim Trumbull “explicitly said,” ignored his other statements more directly on point, and don’t address at all what Howard said. But happily, there is a record of what was said, and the other readers can judge for themselves which of us has made “false assertions.”
When pressed about whether Indians living on reservations would be covered by the clause since they were “most clearly subject to our jurisdiction, both civil and military,” for example, Senator Lyman Trumbull responded that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant subject to its “complete” jurisdiction, “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.” Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2893 (May 30, 1866). And Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the language of the jurisdiction clause on the floor of the Senate, contended that it should be construed to mean “a full and complete jurisdiction,” “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now”[5] (i.e., under the 1866 Act). They well understood the difference between partial, territorial jurisdiction and “full and complete jurisdiction.” The two are not the same.
As for the response (it was by Senator Conness, not Trumbull) on the Chinese and Gypsie question, Cowan did not use the phrase “Chinese aliens,” as you claim. He said “Chinese immigrant”. And he specifically acknowledged that they were different than temporary visitors (“sojourners”). Here’s what he said, acknowledging the double meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction” that you say doesn’t exist: “Have they any more rights than a sojourner in the United States? If a traveler comes here from Ethiopia, from Australia, or from Great Britain, he is entitled, to a certain extent, to the protection of the laws….but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptation of the word.”
Your substitution of the word “alien” for “immigrant” is misleading, and significant, because “immigrant” indicates that the person was here lawfully and had taken up an allegiance to his new country. “Alien,” on the other hand, placed them in the category of a mere “sojourner,” a temporary visitor who was still entitled to the protection of, and bound to comply with, our laws while physically present in the territory of the U.S., but not owing allegiance.
Conness’s response was to the question about the children of Chinese “immigrants,” not “aliens.” And to that question, he said the children would be citizens no matter the parentage because, no matter the country of origin, the children of anyone subject to the complete jurisdiction of the U.S. would be citizens. Children of diplomats not covered; children of “Indians” not covered because they were subject only to the partial jurisdiction of the U.S.; children of temporary sojourners not covered, because they were likewise subject only to the partial jurisdiction of the U.S., owing allegiance to a foreign power (to use the language of the 1866 Act, which the 14th Amendment was intended to codify.
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Franco Debono Is Offering Two Return Tickets To Rome To Anyone Who Finds A Very Specific Clip Online
Franco Debono, criminal lawyer and former MP who formulated various reforms, has challenged the Maltese population to find a clip of him speaking about his vote in the 2012 Budget broadcast on PBS of at least 10 minutes in length.
The clip should feature Debono’s version of events, where he is giving his comments to PBS explaining in detail the reasons for the stand he took in that vote, a vote that eventually led to a Budget that was not passed by Parliament – the first Budget not to pass since Independence – and that contributed to the downfall of the PN administration in 2013.
Saying that this clip has historical importance, Debono wants to find the clip in an attempt to enshrine his impact on one of “the most important votes in Malta’s history”.
However, there’s a catch – the clip might not exist due to the fact that PBS has not furnished a way for the Maltese public to access previous clips, unlike most national broadcasters. Though PBS has a legal obligation to keep the public informed, Debono has highlighted a lack in this service in the national broadcaster.
In his blog post, he explained why he wants to find the clip so much
“Everyone who lives in Malta knows the importance of those events, things that, among others, contributed to the fact that I still have police behind my door.”
“We are living in an information era where we are bombarded with information, even about the most frivolous things. Now, I am offering two airplane tickets for free to Rome to anyone who can find this clip of ten minutes on PBS where I explain to the Maltese people, for my benefit and even more-so the benefit and information of the Maltese people, the reasons why I took the position that I did in that vote.”
However, he has a grave warning for anyone who cannot find the clip online
“If you don’t find the clip you should begin begin fearing living in this country because that means that things in certain spheres have not only not changed, but have gotten much worse.”
“Would it have ever passed through your mind that you wouldn’t find this clip in the information era? If you find this clip, I’ll tell you why, and if you don’t find it, I’ll tell you as well.”
“This vote was over five years ago… obviously, this vote opened me and my family up to risks and dangers and the fact that I was never given the opportunity to explain why I took that vote could have exposed me to even more danger, especially in the time around the episode itself.”
“Obviously, since that day, 90% of the Maltese population knew I had a reason – but that is not the point.”
“The flights to Rome are with return, obviously. This is not a joke – whoever finds me the clip gets the tickets.”
Tag someone who can find the clip and take you to Rome
READ NEXT: This Is How I Helped Bring About Constitutional Reform In Malta
All Black Everything! Valletta Features In International Fashion Shoot All About Staying Cool And Stylish In Summer
Delia’s Associate Attempted To Spy On Nickie Vella de Fremaux And Created Fake Profiles To Discredit PN Critics
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Home Lake Okeechobee There’s more to the story: Invasion of the Algae Megabloom
There’s more to the story: Invasion of the Algae Megabloom
Jul 24th, 2016 · by Katrina Elsken · Comments:
OKEECHOBEE — It’s like a horror movie from the 1950s … a tiny, harmless-looking organism experiences something that turns it into a dangerous blob that keeps growing.
The algae outbreak at the St. Lucie River, June 27, 2016. Photo, courtesy Earthjustice.
The Treasure Coast Algal Megabloom has people afraid, confused and angry.
And like in the movies, the angry mob wants someone to blame.
Enter Lake Okeechobee.
Where did it come from?
The story starts with the algae.
According to the South Florida Water Management District and Florida Department of Environmental Protection, algae is present in freshwater throughout Florida. This year, the Treasure Coast areas on Florida’s Atlantic coastline experienced a massive algal bloom.
But what happened and why?
Some of the algae that grew into a massive bloom is believed to have come from Lake Okeechobee. Those who enjoy boating on the Big O know that Lake Okeechobee algal blooms are commonplace. And the lake, with an area of more than 700 square miles, is so big that even a large bloom like the 33-square-mile bloom documented in May or the 200-square-mile bloom reported in early July, can’t even be seen from shore.
From an aerial photo it might look fairly close to shore, but the lake is 40 miles across. When viewing the photos, consider the scale.
When a bloom is reported, DEP collects samples to determine what type of algae is present. But monitoring the event is the extent of their involvement.
According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s (FDEP) publication “Freshwater Algal Booms,”: “Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, is a type of algae found naturally in freshwater environments. This algae is a micro-organism that functions like a plant in that it feeds through photosynthesis and derives its energy from the sun. Blue-green algae can be found all over the world, and occurs in Florida’s freshwater and brackish habitats, such as lakes, rivers and estuaries. Hot weather makes the algae bloom.”
Local fisherman say it’s not unusual to see blooms when the weather gets warm. The problem is when a large algae bloom dies, the decomposition takes dissolved oxygen out of the water column and if fish can’t get out of the way in time, they die.
So far this year, there have not been any fish kills reported on the lake. Quite the contrary, local fishermen report catching big bass in record numbers.
The lake is also home to other fish and wildlife — with frequent sightings of herons, ducks, eagles and manatees.
Manatees go back and forth from the lake to the Rim Canal so often that “manatee protection devices” were installed on the locks to prevent manatees from being crushed when the lock gates close.
This summer there have been no problems reported with any of the wildlife species that make the Big O and its shores their home.
“Some — not all — blue-green algae can produce toxins that can contribute to environmental problems and affect public health,” the FDEP publication explains. “Little is known about exactly what environmental conditions trigger toxin production. Over time, these toxins are diluted and eventually break down and disappear.”
DEP documented an algal bloom in the lake in May.
Water has been released from the lake to both the east and west coasts since then. Even though the blooms were more than a mile from the locks, biologists say it’s safe to assume there was algae in the water.
The early warnings
Even before the lake releases, some algae was already in the St. Lucie waterway — just as algae is in the water column of most freshwater in Florida, according to FDEP.
SFWMD records show the Treasure Coast has experienced algal blooms during years that NO lake water was released to the east. Most recently, this happened in 2014.
Still, releases of water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie waterway likely carried some algae from the big lake into that system, according to algae expert Dr. Brian LaPointe of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI).
Dr. Brian LaPointe
His role in the story started long before the current bloom.
Long before the green slime made the nightly television news, his team of researchers tried to warn people about the potential danger of algal blooms fed by the pollution from the septic tanks and sewage systems in the Indian River Lagoon basin.
But the scientific data got little attention.
A few articles in area newspapers covered the release of the HBOI study last year, and there was some discussion in online blogs, but a technical scientific report apparently wasn’t interesting to the TV media, who largely ignored it.
What made the algal growth explode?
In recent months, Lake Okeechobee area residents who saw pictures of the Treasure Coast algal megabloom on television and the internet found it hard to believe it could be the same algae that is found in Lake Okeechobee.
In the lake, even when a large bloom is present, the algae looks translucent and feathery. It’s usually patchy — not the thick solid neon green mass depicted in the images of the St. Lucie area on the television news.
In the Big O, algae comes and goes — showing up, disappearing, showing up somewhere else — wherever the wind blows it. It doesn’t clump into large balls or make thick mats. The pictures of the algal bloom in the Indian River Lagoon and the Treasure Coast shoreline looked like something completely alien from anything our fishermen and boating enthusiasts see in Lake Okeechobee.
While the nutrients in the water from the lake combined with the hot summer weather were enough to cause the algae to bloom in the lake, something in the lagoon apparently made algae growth explode into a “megabloom.”
“This is algae,” quipped a local fisherman referring to algae commonly seen on the lake.
“This is algae on crack,” he added, in reference to photos from the St, Lucy estuary area.
What made the algae grow so fast, so thick, so out-of-control?
According to the HBOI study, the high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus already present in that waterway contribute to rapid algae bloom. HBOI research linked those high concentrations of nutrients to sewage plants and hundreds of thousands of septic tanks that serve the 1.7 million people who live in the Indian River Lagoon watershed.
According to SFWMD data released July 14, between 2011 and 2015, local basin runoff — including water from septic systems, as well as runoff into the C-44 canal from farms and residential areas — accounted for 79 percent of the total nitrogen load and 87 percent of the total phosphorous load in the St. Lucie basin.
Those numbers are similar to studies done by the University of Florida and by HBOI.
Water from Lake Okeechobee enters the C-44 canal at Port Mayaca. From there, as it travels the 23 miles to the St. Lucie Lock and the additional 15 miles from the St. Lucie Lock to the lagoon, it mixes with local runoff that flows directly into the C-44 canal.
By testing the lake water as it enters the C-44 at Port Mayaca, and testing the water entering the lagoon from the C-44, researchers can tell how much of the nutrient load comes from the lake water.
The pundits counter: If the nutrient levels are already high, why doesn’t algae grow there all the time?
According to FDEP, salinity levels and heat affect algae growth. Releases of freshwater from the lake, combined with freshwater runoff from record rainfall into the local watershed during a very wet “dry” season, lowered the salinity level.
The biggest problem with the Lake Okeechobee releases have to do with lowering the salinity in the estuaries, not nutrient load, say the scientists.
When the summer temperatures soared, the conditions were ripe for a perfect storm of an algal bloom.
Low salinity + algae + hot weather + phosphorus + nitrogen = algal bloom.
In 2013, when releases from Lake Okeechobee were blamed for an algal bloom in the Caloosahatchee estuary, noted limnologist Dr. Dan Canfield with the University of Florida. He said the problem was the excess freshwater which lowered the salinity.
“It’s the fresh water that’s causing the problem. The water is not high enough in salinity,” Dr. Canfield explained in an Okeechobee interview published Oct. 20, 2013.
‘Clean it north?’
Lake Okeechobee is a living ecosystem with a thriving fishery. But the lake is in danger.
Thanks to the results of a century of man-made ditching, dredging and draining, the health of the Big O is threatened by inflows of water with high phosphorus levels — well above the target range recommended by FDEP.
Most of the water entering the lake comes from the Kissimmee River basin.
Since the 1980s, state agencies have struggled with the problem of reducing the phosphorus load in water entering the lake.
In the early 1980s, a good percentage of the phosphorus load was believed to come from dairy farms north of Lake Okeechobee. In 1987, restrictions on the amount of phosphorus in runoff from dairy farms forced most of the dairies out of the basin. Those that remained are required to keep the runoff on their property, using retention ponds and spray fields to hold, clean and recycle the water.
Unfortunately, it turned out that destroying most of Okeechobee County’s dairy industry — and putting hundreds of people out of work in the process — did not make a significant impact in reducing the phosphorus in water coming into the lake.
The drainage basin includes the Orlando/Kissimmee urban area as well as ranches, orange groves, farms, RV parks and homes between Orlando and the Big Lake. There is also phosphorus naturally occurring in the soil, and “legacy” phosphorus left in the watershed from previous years.
At the top of the watershed, the Orlando/Kissimmee urban area has grown dramatically. The Greater Orlando area is home to more than 2 million people and attracts millions of visitors. According to Visit Orlando, more than 62 million people visited Orlando in 2014, a new all-time record for the U.S. travel industry.
According to data presented by FDEP researchers at Lake Okeechobee Basin Management Plan (BMAP) meetings, the faster the water flows south from the Kissimmee River Basin into the lake, the higher the nutrient load in that water. When the water moves more slowly, there is time for solids to settle out and for vegetation in the floodplain to clean the water by absorbing some of the nutrients.
In the 2013 interview, Dr. Canfield also explained that some of the phosphorus entering the lake is from the soil. Dr. Canfield pointed out that high phosphorus levels in the Harney Pond area are due to natural phosphate deposits.
“When they dug canals, they put all that stuff up and it leaches back into the water,” he explained.
The target phosphorus load for Lake Okeechobee is 40 ppb (parts per billion), but water entering the lake has higher phosphorus levels — sometimes up to four times higher — especially when the flow is rapid.
Reports presented at the BMAP hearings indicated that the key to reducing the phosphorus loading lies in slowing the flow of water and cleaning it in water treatment areas north of the Big O.
At the April 16, 2013, Lake Okeechobee BMAP meeting at the SFWMD office in Okeechobee, FDEP’s Frank Nearhoof said the key to reducing the excess phosphorus entering the lake is slowing the flow of water into the lake from the north.
“If we can’t detain this flow, we are doomed to failure,” he said.
Projects under way
According to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers public affairs specialist Jenn Miller, some projects are already under way and others planned to store and clean water before it enters the lake.
“The Lake Okeechobee Watershed project, which we will be initiating later this month, will identify opportunities to increase storage north of Lake Okeechobee,” she explained. “Since planning efforts are just about to begin, it is premature to try to quantify how much storage the project will ultimately provide, but if you look in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), which serves as the framework for our CERP projects, it projected that approximately 280,000 acre-feet of storage could be available through components we’re looking at as part of the Lake Okeechobee Watershed project.”
Additionally, she explained, when the Kissimmee River Restoration Project is completed, a new headwaters regulation schedule will allow the project to provide up to 130,000 acre feet of temporary storage.
“Since water can only be stored temporarily, the project will act more like a buffer than a reservoir, but nonetheless, it will help slow down the flow of water from the Kissimmee Basin entering into Lake Okeechobee,” she explained.
No need to start making “buy the land, clean it north” signs just yet.
Much of the land needed for those projects already belongs to the state. Some of it was obtained by eminent domain from unwilling sellers. The problem has never been the state’s ability or inability to purchase real estate. The problem has been lack of funding for the projects themselves.
And now for the twist …
Monster movie fans know there is always a twist at the end of the story.
In this story, it’s a classic case of vanquishing the obvious “villain” only to discover a bigger threat.
Early in the story, those who were paying attention to the scientists figured out that Lake Okeechobee discharges were just part of the problem.
But some people were still feeling good about throwing blame on “Big Sugar.”
Then the Corps of Engineers officials pointed out that sugar cane fields are south of the lake.
Backpumping of water from agricultural areas into the lake from the south was banned years ago thanks to a lawsuit filed by EarthJustice. The small towns on the south side of the Big O are allowed to backpump for flood control — as in to keep floodwaters out of their homes and businesses.
The water coming in from the south end accounts for only about 6 percent of the nitrogen entering the lake, according to the Jan. 4, 2016 SFWMD report.
So what’s the most treacherous of the hidden dangers?
There are plenty of possibilities — septic tanks, landspreading of treated sewage, digging in areas where natural phosphates occur, the unregulated use of class AA “dry” sludge as fertilizer or even something yet undiscovered.
A May 20, 2016, report in “Florida Today,” headlined “Is sludge also sickening the lagoon?” pointed out the potential danger from the landspreading of residuals from sewage plants and septic tanks.
Quoted in that article, Gary Roderick, an environmental consultant from Martin County and former county and state environmental administrator, called sewage sludge: “The 5,000-pound gorilla that’s not saying anything right in the middle of the room.”
The article pointed out that no one knows how much class AA sludge is spread in the lagoon watershed and eventually winds up feeding algae blooms.
In 2010, the Florida Legislature made the issue even harder to track when new state rules left unregulated this most treated, driest form of sludge, in cases when it’s mixed with mulch and marketed and distributed as fertilizer.
Unless all of the contributing factors are addressed, South Florida can expect to see sequels to “Invasion of the Algal Superbloom.”
Publisher/Editor Katrina Elsken can be reached at kelsken@newszap.com
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Forthcoming byelections
11 years ago / July 18, 2008
The following local government byelections are in the pipeline:
Boston borough council: Coastal ward due to the resignation of Neil McGregor of the Better Boston Party. The new councillor will serve until 2011.
Derby city council: Darley ward, caused after Wendy Harbon failed to attend any meetings for six months and was disqualified from membership. She was originally elected as a Liberal Democrat but is now an Independent. Her replacement comes into a term ending in 2010.
Ipswich borough council: Castle Hill ward, after the death of Harry Davies (Conservative). The new councillor serves until 2010.
Mid Sussex district council: Hurstpierpoint and Downs ward, caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Christopher Maidment due to pressure of business. The term ends in 2011.
Newark and Sherwood district council: Magnus ward, after the death of former Conservative MP for Newark Richard Alexander. His successor serves until 2011.
Telford and Wrekin council: Muxton ward, after the resignation of Stuart Cain (Conservative). The Conservatives would lose their overall majority if they lost the byelection. The new councillor will serve until 2011.
Westminster City Council: Church Street ward, after the death of Labour councillor Tony Mothersdale. The winner will serve until 2010.
Cardiff city council: Pentyrch ward, after the resignation of Simon Roberts (Conservative) due to ill health. He had only just been re-elected and the new councillor will serve until 2012.
Gateshead borough council: Whickham South and Sunniside ward, after the death of Alan Ord (Liberal Democrat). He had just been re-elected and his successor will inherit a term ending in 2012.
Lincolnshire county council: Louth wolds division after the death of Sheila Roy of the Conservative Party. The winner will have a term ending in May next year.
Oadby and Wigston borough council: Oadby Uplands ward, caused by the resignation of Dr S.M. Rizvi (Liberal Democrat). The new councillor serves until 2011.
Suffolk Coastal district council: Witnesham ward, following the resignation of Kate Waddell (Conservative). Her term would have ended in 2011.
Maldon district council: Maldon North ward, due to the resignation of Conservative councillor Brian Mead. His replacement serves until 2011.
Nottingham city council: Wollaton West ward, after the death of former Conservative group leader Michael Cowan. The new councillor will have seat until 2011.
Rhondda Cynon Taff county borough council: Cilfynydd ward, caused by the disqualification of Steve Logan (Liberal Democrat) who holds a politically restricted post. The term lasts until 2012.
Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council: Pimhill ward, after the death of Brian Rees (Conservative). The term will last only until next year when the authority is abolished.
The Conservatives have vacancies on Barrow borough council, Newbarns ward, due to the death of Colin Liversedge, on Cheshire county council and the new Cheshire East shadow unitary council following the death of Bert Grange who represented Knutsford division, on Redcar and Cleveland council, Guisborough ward, after the death of Anne Franklin, and on Suffolk county council and Suffolk Coastal district council due to the resignation of Ben Redsell who represented Woodbridge Riverside ward on the district council and Woodbridge division on the county council. There is likely also to be a vacancy on Westminster city council, Lancaster Gate ward, should Sir Simon Milton be approved as Deputy Mayor of London for Policy and Planning.
There is a Labour held vacancy in Greenwich borough council, Plumstead ward, after the death of Kanta Patel.
The Liberal Democrats have a vacancy on West Lindsey district council, Middle Rasen ward, after the resignation of Gary Fenwick.
Sedgefield district council‘s Sedgefield ward has a vacancy after the death of Independent councillor Jim Wayman. Colin Auty, an Independent and former British National Party member of Kirklees borough council for Dewsbury East ward, has also indicated his intention to resign his seat.
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Edward A. (Ted) Parson
September 20, 2017 /in Public Policy All Faculty Faculty /by Ervin Huang
Dan and Rae Emmett Professor of Environmental Law; Faculty Co-Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment; Professor of Law and Public Policy
Ph.D. in Public Policy, Harvard University
M.Sc. in Management Science, University of British Columbia
B.Sc. in Physics, University College, University of Toronto
parson@law.ucla.edu
3456, UCLA School of Law
Edward A. (Ted) Parson is Dan and Rae Emmett Professor of Environmental Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Parson studies international environmental law and policy, the role of science and technology in policy-making, and the political economy of regulation. His articles have appeared in Science, Nature, Climatic Change, Issues in Science and Technology, theJournal of Economic Literature, and the Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. His most recent books are A Subtle Balance: Evidence, Expertise, and Democracy in Public Policy and Governance, 1970-2010 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2015), The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change (with Andrew Dessler) (2nd ed. Cambridge, 2010), and Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy (Oxford, 2003), which won the 2004 Sprout Award of the International Studies Association and is widely recognized as the authoritative account of the development of international cooperation to protect the ozone layer.
Parson has led and served on multiple advisory committees, for the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and other national and international bodies. He was formerly Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law, Professor of Natural Resources and Environment, and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and spent twelve years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In addition to his academic positions, Parson has worked and consulted for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, the U.N. Environment Program, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He holds degrees in physics from the University of Toronto and in management science from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard. In former lives, he was a professional classical musician and an organizer of grass-roots environmental groups.
A Subtle Balance: Evidence, Expertise, and Democracy in Policy and Governance, 1970-2010 (edited by E.A. Parson). McGill-Queens University Press (May 2015).
The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate (with A.E. Dessler). 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press (2010). The second edition of Dessler and Parson’s acclaimed book provides an integrated treatment of the science, technology, economics, policy, and politics of climate change. Aimed at the educated non-specialist, and at courses in environmental policy or climate change, the book clearly lays out the scientific foundations of climate change, the issues in current policy debates, and the interactions between science and politics that make the climate change debate so contentious and confusing. This new edition is brought completely up to date to reflect the rapid movement of events related to climate change. In addition, all sections have been improved, in particular a more thorough primer on the basic science of climate change is included. The book also now integrates the discussion of contrarian claims with the discussion of current scientific knowledge; extends the discussion of cost and benefit estimates; and provides an improved glossary. Order from Cambridge University Press | Order from Amazon.com
Global-Change Scenarios: Their Development and Use (with V. Burkett, K. Fisher-Vanden, D. Keith, L. Mearns, H. Pitcher, C. Rosenzweig, M. Webster). Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.1b, US Climate Change Science Program (2007). Final Report
Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy. Oxford University Press (2003). (Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, International Studies Assoc., 2004). Order from Oxford University Press | Order from Amazon
Governing the Environment: Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations (edited by Edward A. Parson). University of Toronto Press (2001). (Also published in French translation as Gérer l’environnement, les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2001). Order from Univ. of Toronto Press | Order from Amazon
Climate Change Impacts on the United States. US Global Change Research Program, Cambridge University Press (2001). National Assessment Synthesis Team (member of collective author). Two volumes: “Foundation” and “Overview.” Order “Foundation” from Cambridge University Press | Order “Overview” from Cambridge University Press | Order “Foundation” from Amazon | Order “Overview” from Amazon
Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: a Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain (edited by W.C. Clark et al.). MIT Press (2001). Vols. 1 and 2. Social Learning Group (member of collective author). Order Vol. 1 from MIT Press | Order Vol. 2 from MIT Press | Order Vol. 1 on Amazon | Order Vol. 2 on Amazon
Articles, Chapters, and Reviews:
Climate Engineering in Global Climate Governance: Implications for Participation and Linkage, 3(01) Transnational Environmental Law 89-110 (2014). Full Text
Market Instruments for the Sustainability Transition (with Eric L. Kravitz), 38 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 415-40 (2013). Annual Review | Abstract
End the Deadlock on Governance of Geoengineering Research (with David W. Keith), 339 Science 1278-79 (March 15, 2013).
Climate Engineering Research, Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 2013). Forum Comment on Long and Scott.
International Governance of Climate Engineering (with Lia N. Ernst), 14 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 307 (2013). Full Text
Sequential Climate Change Policy (with D. Karwat), 2 Wiley Interdisciplinary Review: Climate Change 744-56 (2011). Wiley
Research on Global Sun Block Needed Now (with D.W. Keith and M. Granger Morgan), 463 Nature 426-27 (Jan. 28, 2010). Full Text
Ontario Electricity Policy: The Climate Challenge, in Chapter 2Current Affairs: Perspectives on Electricity Policy for Ontario (edited by D. Reeve, D. DeWees, and B. Karney, University of Toronto Press, 2009). Order from Univ. of Toronto Press
Useful Global Change Scenarios: Current Issues and Challenges, 3(4) Environmental Research Letters 045016 (Oct.-Dec. 2008). ERL | Full Text
Review Essay: The Big One, 74 Journal of Economic Literature 147-64 (2007).Reviewing Catastrophe: Risk and Response, by Richard Posner. JEL | Full Text
Reflections on Air Capture: The Political Economy of Active Intervention in the Global Environment, 74 Climatic Change 1-11 (2006). Climate Change | Full Text
Grounds for Hope: The Assessment of Technological Options to Manage Ozone Depletion, in Assessments of Regional and Global Environmental Risks: Designing Processes for the Effective Use of Science in Decision-Making (edited by A. Farrell and J. Jäger, Resources for the Future Press, 2005). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Environmental Health Implications of Global Climate Change (with R. Watson, J. Patz, D. Gubler, and J.H. Vincent), 7 Journal of Environmental Monitoring 834-43 (Dec. 2005). JEM
Book Review, 37 Canadian Journal of Political Science 439-41 (2004). Reviewing Restoration of the Great Lakes: Promises, Practices, Performances, by M. Sproule-Jones.
Seeking Truth for Power: Information Strategy and Regulatory Policy-Making (with C. Coglianese and R. Zeckhauser), 89 Minnesota Law Review277-341 (2004). Via Hein Online (restricted) | Full Text
Collective Silence and Individual Voice: the Logic of Information Games (with R.J. Zeckhauser, and C. Coglianese), in Collective Choice: Essays in Honor of Mancur Olson 49-70 (edited by J. Heckelman and D. Coates, Springer-Verlag, 2003). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Climate and the Water, Forests, and Salmon of the Pacific Northwest (with E.A. Parson, P.W. Mote and ten other authors), 61 Climatic Change45-88 (Nov. 2003). Climatic Change
Understanding Climate Impacts, Vulnerabilities, and Adaptation in the United States: Building a Capacity for Assessment (with E.A Parson, R.W. Corell and ten other authors), 57 Climatic Change 9-42 (Mar. 2003). Climatic Change
The Technology Assessment Approach to Climate Change, 84 Issues in Science and Technology 65-72 (Summer 2002). Issues in S&T | Subsequent discussion forum, Fall 2002 | Full Text
Implementing the Climate Regime’s Clean Development Mechanism (with R.B. Mitchell), 10(2) Journal of Environment and Development 125-46 (June 2001). JED (Subscription required)
Environmental Trends: a Challenge to Canadian Governance, Chapter 1, in Governing the Environment: Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations 3-29 (edited by Edward A. Parson, University of Toronto Press, 2001).
Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations: A Synthesis, Chapter 9, in Governing the Environment: Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations 345-80 (edited by Edward A. Parson, University of Toronto Press, 2001).
Leading While Keeping in Step: Canadian Management of Global Atmospheric Risks, Chapter 10 (with A.R. Dobell, A. Fenech, D. Munton, and H. Smith), in Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: a Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain 235-57 (edited by W.C. Clark et al., MIT Press, ). Social Learning Group. Also secondary author on four other chapters in volume.
Socioeconomic Context for Climate Impact Assessment, Chapter 3 (E.A. Parson and M.G. Morgan, with A. Janetos, L. Joyce, B. Miller, R. Richels, and T. Wilbanks), in Climate Change Impacts on the United States. A Report of the National Assessment Synthesis Team, US Global Change Research Program93-107 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). PDF on USGCRP website
Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for the Pacific Northwest, Chapter 9 (with P.W. Mote, A. Hamlet, N. Mantua, A. Snover, W. Keeton, E. Miles, D. Canning, K.G. Ideker), in Climate Change Impacts on the United States. US Global Change Research Program 247-80 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). PDF on USGCRP website
Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for Alaska, Chapter 10 (with L. Carter, P. Anderson, B. Wang, and G. Weller), in Climate Change Impacts on the United States. US Global Change Research Program 283-312 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). PDF on USGCRP website
Environmental Trends and Environmental Governance in Canada, 26 Canadian Public Policy S123-S143 (Aug. 2000). Full Text
Joint Implementation of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism”: Its Scope and Limits (with K. Fisher-Vanden), 32 Policy Sciences 207-24 (Sep. 1999). Policy Sciences
The Montreal Protocol: The First Adaptive Global Environmental Regime?, in Protecting the Ozone Layer: Lessons, Models, and Prospects (edited by P.G. LePrestre, J.D. Reid, and E.T. Morehouse, Jr., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Games and Simulations (with D.W. Keith), in Human Choice and Climate Change (edited by S. Rayner and E. Malone, Battelle Press, 1998). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Fossil Fuels without CO2 Emissions (with D.W. Keith), Science 282 (5391)1053-54 (6 Nov. 1998). Science | Full Text
Informing Global Environmental Policy-making: A Plea for New Methods of Assessment and Synthesis, 2(4) Environmental Modeling and Assessment 267-79 (1998). EMA
Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change (with K. Fisher-Vanden), 22 Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 589-628 (1997). Annual Review
International Environmental Negotiations: The Current State of Empirical and Analytical Study, 13 Negotiation Journal 161-83 (April 1997). Full Text
International Protection of the Ozone Layer, in Green Globe Yearbook: 1996(edited by H.O. Bergeson and G. Parmann, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oxford University Press, 1996). Order from Amazon
What Can You Learn From a Game?, in Wise Choices: Games, Decisions, and Negotiations (edited by R. Zeckhauser, R. Keeney, and J. Sebenius, Harvard Business School Press, 1996). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Three Dilemmas in the Integrated Assessment of Climate Change, 34 Climatic Change 315-26 (1996). Climatic Change
Integrated Assessment and Environmental Policy-Making: In Pursuit of Usefulness, 23 Energy Policy 463-75 (1995). Energy Policy | Full Text
Sustainable Development as Social Learning: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Challenges for the Design of a Research Program (with W.C. Clark), in Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions428-60 (edited by L. Gunderson, C.S. Holling, and S. Light, Columbia University Press, 1995). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Cooperation in the Unbalanced Commons (with R. Zeckhauser), in Barriers to the Conflict Resolution 212-34 (edited by K. Arrow, R. Mnookin, L. Ross, A. Tversky and R. Wilson, Norton, 1995). Order from Amazon | Full Text
Equal Measures or Fair Burdens: Negotiating Environmental Treaties in an Unequal World (with R. Zeckhauser), in Shaping National Responses to Climate Change 81-114 (edited by H. Lee, Island Press, 1995). Order from Amazon
Von dem Peripherie ins Zentrum der Aussen politik? Die internationale Umweltpolitik, in Amerikanische Weltpolitik nach dem Ost-West-Konflikt(edited by M. Dembinski, P. Rudolf, and J. Wilzewsk, Nomos Verlag, 1994).
Protecting the Ozone Layer, in Institutions for the Earth (edited by P.M. Haas, R.O. Keohane, and M.A. Levy, MIT Press, 1993). Order from Amazon
Assessing UNCED and the State of Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 508-13 (1993). Full Text
Policy-advisory and Popular Articles:
Policy Brief, Climate Change: Less focus on collective action, more on delayed benefits and concentrated opponents. Policy Brief, Centre for International Governance Innovation. April 2015. Paper
Controlling Greenhouse-Gas Emissions from Transport: the performance and promise of California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (with Jesse Lueders and Sean Hecht). Emmett Institue, UCLA Law, May 22, 2015. Paper
Fiscal and Regulatory Approaches to Limiting Greenhouse Gases, Briefing to Meeting on Breaking the Climate Change Deadlock, Paris, March 2008.
Synthesis Report, Launch Workshop, The 3E Initiative. Report of first meeting, Merrickville Ontario. 1-3 Nov. 2007.
Report of Planning Meeting, Canada Low-Carbon Project, Calgary, July 16, 2007.
How to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Guide for Policy-makers in Canada and Elsewhere. Part 1: National Policies; Part 2: Internation Action. Briefing Note for Planning Meeting, Canada Low-Carbon Project. May 24, 2007.
An L-14 Leadership Initiative Within the UN Climate-change Process, Briefing Note Prepared for Side event at Clinton Global Initiative, May 11, 2007.
Moving Beyond the Kyoto Impasse, New York Times A23 (July 31, 2001). Opinion
A Breakthrough in Climate-Change Policy? (with D. W. Keit), Scientific American 78-79 (Feb. 2000).
International Ozone Agreements: Response to Comments by Ian Rowlands (with O. Greene), 37(3) Environment 3 (April 1995).
The Complex Chemistry of the International Ozone Agreements (with O. Greene), 37(2) Environment 16 (March 1995).
Appraising the Earth Summit (with P. Haas and M. Levy), 34(8) Environment (Oct. 1992).
A Summary of the Major Documents signed at the Earth Summit and Global Forum (with P. Haas and M. Levy), 34(8) Environment (Oct. 1992).
A World Atmosphere Fund (with A.R. Dobell), Policy Options (Nov. 1988).
Technical Reports and Writing Papers:
Moratoria for Global Governance and Contested Technology: The Case of Climate Engineering (with Megan Herzog), UCLA School of Law, Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper Series No. 16-17 (2016). Full Text
The International Policy Environment for Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Report to National Energy Technology Laboratory, US DOE, April 2003.
Implementing Joint Implementation: Developing a Management and Performance System for the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (with R.B. Mitchell), ENRP Discussion Paper E-98-06. Harvard University (June, 1998).
Explaining the Form of Assessments: Why do we get the assessments we do? (with S. Agrawala, A. Patt, R. Keohane, R. Mitchell, L. Botcheva, W. Clark, E. DeSombre, J. McCarthy, and E. Shea), ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-12. Harvard University (1997).
Global Environmental Assessment (with W.C. Clark and N. Dickson),ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-15. Harvard University (1997).
Joint Implementation and its Alternatives: Choosing Systems to Distribute Mitigation and Finance (with K. Fisher-Vanden), ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-03. Harvard University (1977).
A Global Climate Change Policy Exercise: Results of a Test Run, July 27-29 1999, Working Paper WP-96-90.International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria (August 1996).
Thematic Guide to Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change Socio-economic Data and Analysis Center, NASA Mission to Planet Earth, 1966.
Climate Treaties and Models, Background Study, Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress, Washington DC, June 1994.
Negotiating Climate Cooperation: Learning from Theory, Simulations, and History.Harvard University (May 1992). Doctoral dissertation in Public Policy.
The Transport Sector and Global Warming, Disc. Paper G-90-07, Harvard Global Environmental Policy Project. (Appeared in abridged form as the transport sector chapter in Changing by Degrees, OTA’s Feb. 1991 Report on Global Climate Change)
Midwest-Northeast Transmission: A Partial Solution to Acid Rain? Discussion Paper E-88-05, Energy and Environment Policy Center, Harvard University.
https://luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luskin-logo-2-1.png 0 0 Ervin Huang https://luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luskin-logo-2-1.png Ervin Huang2017-09-20 11:04:232018-11-29 15:44:58Edward A. (Ted) Parson
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("Skynet" is also a: user.)
Do you really want to send Texwiller a message saying you like their work?
(thing) by Void_Ptr Thu Jun 22 2000 at 15:21:33
The network of computers in the Terminator films which developed Sentience and started the first all out nuclear war when attempts were made to shut it down. The chip which Skynet runs was based on the ruins of the first Terminator sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor and is therefore based on a paradox.
(idea) by herbman Thu Jun 22 2000 at 15:34:50
Skynet was developed by Cyberdyne systems, and becomes self aware in August of 1997. It's funny that no one in the movies ever questioned the paradox of making something from a chip that didn't exist yet.
(thing) by Albert Herring Sun Jan 07 2001 at 0:01:10
In Belgium, the country's largest ISP, a subsidiary of the phone company. Nuff said. Except that their major competitor is the French phone company's ISP, the absurdly named Wanadoo, who are even worse. So much for the Single Market.
Their primary domain is skynet.be but due to a (latterly rationalised) rather over-complex marketing strategy they are also responsible for belgacom.net ("free" - i.e. call charges only - mass-market accounts). Encroaching liberalisation means that they are no longer the only ISP in the country providing DSL, although most or all other providers' DSL packages are still basically Belgacom services resold.
Update, October 2008: Belgacom stopped using the Skynet brand for its ISP services around 2005 in favour of the "main" Belgacom name and its mobile telephony brand Proximus; the name continues as a general portal site aimed at the Belgian market, skynet.be.
(idea) by wilsone8 Mon Feb 02 2004 at 2:27:47
As mentioned in a few of the writeups, Skynet is a paradox (it is never invented in the timeline).
What they fail to mention is that Skynet HAD to send back the original Terminator in order to be created. In fact, given the information available it is almost certain that Skynet would HAVE to have been aware of the fact the first terminator that it sent back would be destroyed.
But that leads to another paradox. Clearly, Skynet lives in a physics model where the future (and the past) cannot be modified. That is, all time travel does is ensure that the present (from the time travelers perspective) does not change. So Skynet is wasting resources sending terminators back in time. If one of them had suceeded, Skynet would not be fighting the resistance leader in the future.
(idea) by metalangel Tue Dec 14 2004 at 16:59:14
Skynet's timeline in The Terminator movies can be modified. After all, August 29, 1997 never became the bad fucking day for everyone not wearing 3 million sunblock that the second movie told us. After all (and I do warn of spoilers), Arnie tells John Connor that Judgement Day cannot be prevented, only delayed.
Perhaps this was done to appease fans of the Dark Horse comics who wondered how John could still be a teenager in the year 2000. But then, Terminator 2 was 1992, eight years after 1984, and yet John was about twelve years old. The plot begins to have more holes than Arnie's leather jacket.
However, Skynet is not wasting resources per se by sending back the first Terminator - as, without the first Terminator, Skynet would never have been built based on the chip design. The first Terminator is, in fact, to ensure Skynet's existence in the future.
The real question arises when you ask whether Skynet ever gets destroyed, eventually.
The Terminator 2029 games by Bethesda Softworks claimed that, once Skynet (which in their view was a space station) blew up, a secondary backup system activated.
Kyle Reese in the first movie claimed that the Resistance had won and Skynet, desperate, sent back the first Terminator.
But Terminator 3: Not Even Fan Service seems to blow these out of the water a bit, unless the one future sequence of John standing atop wreckage with a tattered American flag is meant to indicate they do eventually win.
This in turn raises the question, why does Skynet even bother, if it knows all it will achieve by starting the war is ravaging the planet for three decades?
(thing) by Osmosis Mon Feb 21 2005 at 21:38:05
Skynet is the name of the British satellite based military communications system. It has had several incarnations, the current generation of which is Skynet 4. The first Skynet satellite was launched in 1969. It is used by all three arms of the British armed forces – the British Army, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force – as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service.
The system is based around a number of geosynchronous satellites which relay encrypted signals from ground stations, ships, and between each other. Each successive Skynet satellite is designated with its generation and an alphabetic character – Skynet 4E, for example.
Skynet began in the mid-1960s, when Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Mountbatten recommended that the three armed forces use one single communications system. A key figure in its early life was Wing Commander Frank Padfield, later to become an Air Commodore. As a technically competent radar and guided weapons instructor at the RAF Technical College, in 1967 he was assigned to begin work on the project of merging the disparate networks. He joined a 30-man team at the then Ministry of Technology. As Skynet operational programmes director for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Padfield had to coordinate the work in both departments with strict deadlines and a £26m budget.
While his team was proficient and professional, Padfield's main problem was in dealing with entrenched bureaucracy and inter-service rivalry. The MoD was opposed to the project in principle, as was the RAF, which remained bitterly hostile because it held sole control of the existing British high frequency communications system.
Despite this, the first Skynet 1 satellite was launched on 22nd November 1969 from Cape Canaveral. Built by Ford Aerospace, it weighed 422kg and resembled nothing more than a huge zoetrope. Reports differ over Skynet 1A’s fate. Some accounts describe nine years of active service, which would have far exceeded its expected life, but others suggest it failed prematurely. Skynet 1B was launched on 19th August 1970, but at least here sources are in agreement that it failed to reach its geosynchronous position, becoming stranded in a lower orbit when a rocket motor malfunctioned.
Skynet 2 satellites were spin-stabilised, weighed 240kg and used two communications bands, 20MHz and 2MHz. In appearance, they, again, were large drum-shaped constructions, although they were smaller than the first van-sized modules. This second programme began unsuccessfully in 1974 with the loss of Skynet 2A following another launch malfunction. Skynet 2B, however, worked perfectly, and amazingly was still in service 20 years later.
There was never a Skynet 3, and, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find out why. Which is vaguely frustrating.
Skynet 4, however, is currently in use by the British services. It was built by British defence contractor British Aerospace (now BAe Systems). The first three units were deployed successively throughout 1988-1990 by the American Titan 3 rocket (4A) and the European Arianne (4B and 4C). Designed to last only seven years, they included hugely improved electronics, jam-resistance and 16-foot solar panels as well as multichannel X-band, EHF and UHF band transponders. In 1998-99, as 4A-4C began to reach the end of their working life, NASA kindly lifted three more birds for the MoD. 4D-4F are of the same generation but have been reworked by contractors Matra Marconi Space (now part of sprawling European contractor EADS Space). Their incremental improvements include hardening against EMP, further jam-resistance and directable antennae for tactical purposes.
The Skynet 4 constellation are now reaching their final days, and so the MoD has been waving vast contracts for the next generation of satcoms platforms at aerospace contractors since early 2002. Skynet 5 is still two to three years from being deployed, but will have the singular distinction of being the world’s only outsourced military communications network. The MoD awarded the contract to build the satellites to EADS Space and another contract to run and maintain them to Paradigm Secure Communications, a wholly owned EADS subsidiary; the MoD will, in effect, pay to lease the satellites’ use. This is an example of the British Government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) at work, and indeed Skynet 5 is the largest PFI contract yet awarded. The tangled, incestuous web of defence contracts and sub-contracts sees EADS subsidiary Paradigm awarding a sub-contract for upgrading ground control stations and naval communications to … EADS Space.
“BAe battles for £2.5bn MoD contract”. The Sunday Telegraph, 24 Feb 2002
David Hastings’ Comsats Page, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~daveh/Space/Military/milspace_comsat.html
“EADS in Britain’s biggest PFI deal with MoD”. The Times, 25 October 2003
Obituary, Frank Padfield CBE. The Guardian, 13 Feb 2004
“Paradigm awarded Skynet 5 contract”, Paradigm Communications. http://www.paradigmsecure.com/?OBH=30&ID=27
“Skynet”, Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/uk/military/comm/index.html
(person) by Texwiller Wed Sep 08 2010 at 19:43:41
Skynet is a producer of drum and bass music from the United Kingdom. He started producing music around 1997 and is known for his collaborations with Stakka, whom he met first in 1996. Together they produced three albums, called Voyager, Blazin, and Clockwork.
Additionally to his cooperation with Stakka, he has also worked with other artists such as Dom & Roland, Kemal and Rob Data, K-Tee, Skinny, and others.
Despite the success of their partnership, which lasted from 1998 to 2003 circa, Skynet decided to quit working together with Stakka, because, according to his words, "It was like a marriage without the love. I felt restricted and needed to move on".
He kept producing music and released a new album, "Sentient", in 2008, featuring Dom & Roland, Chuck Treece, Ben Peeler and Leiana. Article at Dogs On Acid
He has also produced dubstep music as the style became more popular in recent years.
*Galactic Cycle
*Telemetry with Stakka
*Silverback
*Bios-Fear with Stakka, Kemal and Rob Data
*Carbon Shock
*Telos by Amex (remix)
*Time on Earth (dubstep)
*Skynet Recordings official site
*Skynet on Discogs
*Stakka & Skynet at Discogs
*Skynet at Myspace
Original endings to movies Cyberdyne Systems August 29, 1997 Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Version 2.4
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Computers as characters in Sci-Fi models of fictional time travel physics How to kill a Terminator
T-1000 Terminator Paradoxes 1 Cloud + 1 Cloud = 1 Cloud Terminator
Judgement Day zoetrope T-800 Everything is a psychological experiment funded by the government
sentience BAe Systems Robocop Vs. The Terminator Dispeopler
user group Paradox Eclipse Phase Skype
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Great Game
The insane cost of U.S. health care
boolean search
Brought down as White, kept down as Black, brought up as None, left with me
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Diplomacy • Legal • Politics
Correction: Maldives-Prisoners story
MALE, Maldives (AP) — A Maldives opposition leader and two Supreme Court judges were arrested after the government declared an emergency in the Indian Ocean nation increasingly in turmoil since the court ordered several jailed politicians to be freed. The charges against the opposition leader include bribery and attempting to overthrow the government. The emergency decree gives the government sweeping powers to make arrests and restricts freedom of assembly.
A Maldives opposition leader and two Supreme Court judges were arrested after the government declared an emergency in the nation increasingly in turmoil since the court ordered several jailed politicians to be freed
MALE, Maldives (AP) — Security forces in the Maldives stormed the Supreme Court overnight, arresting two judges and later a top opposition politician after the government declared a state of emergency in the Indian Ocean nation famous its luxurious resorts.
The government of President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has moved to assert its power since the Supreme Court ordered several imprisoned opposition politicians to be freed late last week. The government announced a 15-day state of emergency Monday night, giving it sweeping powers, including to make arrests, search and seize property and restrict freedom of assembly.
Yameen has cracked down on civil liberties since coming to power in 2013, imprisoning or forcing into exile nearly every politician who opposes him.
Hours after the state of emergency was declared, security forces in riot gear and blue camouflage stormed the Supreme Court building, arresting two of its judges, including Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed. It was not immediately clear what charges they faced if any. The whereabouts of the court’s other three judges were not clear Tuesday morning.
Later, former dictator and opposition politician Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was seen on cellphone video shot by his daughter being quietly escorted from his home by security forces, hugging friends and family and waving to supporters before being driven away.
Shortly before his arrest, he sent a message on Twitter saying a large deployment of police had surrounded his house: “To protect me or to arrest me? No idea.”
His lawyer, Maumoon Hameed, said Gayoom faced charges including bribery and attempting to overthrow the government.
Gayoom was president from 1978 to 2008, when the Maldives became a multiparty democracy.
The president’s main rival, exiled former President Mohamed Nasheed, denounced the emergency decree and urged people not to obey what he called an “unlawful order.”
“This declaration is unconstitutional and illegal,” Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader, said in a statement.
Nasheed, who lives in exile, was among the opposition politicians ordered freed by the Supreme Court.
The Maldives is an archipelago of more than 1,000 islands with fewer than 400,000 citizens, more than one-third of them living in the crowded capital city, Male. Tourism now dominates the country’s economy, with wealthy foreigners flown to hyper-expensive resort islands.
But it remains, in many ways, a small community. Gayoom, the former dictator, is the half-brother of President Yameen. The two men are now political enemies. Nasheed, the opposition leader, unseated Gayoom in the country’s first democratic elections in 2008. But he and Gayoom are now political allies in an opposition alliance.
The surprise, unanimous Supreme Court ruling last week ordering the release of the imprisoned opposition leaders has led to increasing turmoil, with Yameen lashing out at the court, opposition protests spilling into the streets of Male, and soldiers in riot gear stopping lawmakers from meeting in the parliament building.
Yameen, in a statement issued after the state of emergency, was announced on state television, said that while “certain rights will be restricted, general movements, services and businesses will not be affected.”
The emergency decree followed a series of letters exchanged by the government and the Supreme Court, arguing whether last week’s order was legal and whether the prisoners could be freed.
Nasheed was one of the opposition leaders the Supreme Court had ordered freed, ruling that the guilty verdicts had been politically influenced.
The United Nations, the United States and other foreign governments have urged the Maldives to respect the court order.
The U.S. also strongly criticized the emergency decree, with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying Yameen has “systematically alienated his coalition, jailed or exiled every major opposition political figure” since his election.
She called on Yameen, the army, and police to comply with the rule of law, and for the constitutional rights of Maldivians to be restored.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was “gravely concerned” about the Maldives situation and asked Yameen and the Maldives government to “peacefully end the state of emergency, restore all articles of the constitution, take immediate steps to implement in full the order of the Supreme Court, and to permit and support the full, free and proper functioning of Parliament.”
In addition to ordering the release of the political prisoners, the court also reinstated 12 lawmakers who had been ousted for switching allegiance to the opposition. When those lawmakers return, Yameen’s Progressive Party of the Maldives will lose its majority in the 85-member parliament, which could result in the legislative body functioning as a rival power to the president.
The Maldives became a multiparty democracy 10 years ago after Gayoom’s rule, during which he was repeatedly the only candidate for the presidency.
Nasheed won the nation’s first democratic election in 2008 but resigned during his term following protests over the arrest of a judge. He lost the 2013 presidential election to Yameen, then was convicted under Maldives’ anti-terrorism laws in a trial widely criticized by international rights groups.
He was granted medical leave in 2016 and travelled to Britain where he was granted asylum. He is currently in nearby Sri Lanka, watching as the political turmoil unfolds.
Nasheed said last week after the court ruling that he would mount a fresh challenge for the presidency this year.
China, Australia and the United States updated their travel advice during the latest unrest. China urged people to avoid travel there and Australia and the U.S. told citizens to be cautious.
Full details are available at the link below:
Source URL: Google News
Google News Maldives State of Emergency 2018
Maldives crisis: US-Indian strategic alliance forming
The Latest: Maldives issues invite for visits by officials
Corruption • Governance • Legal
Ex-Auditor General Niyaz, 11 others nominated for ACC...
Aviation • Business • Legal
State wins USD 1M lawsuit against Mega Maldives
Maumoon Hameed elected President, Muiz elected Vice...
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Steve Keen and Max Keiser continue their discussion of the markets and economy (part 2/2)
RT, Released on 4/13/19
For Part 1 of this interview, CLICK HERE
Max continues his interview with professor and author Steve Keen about the failure of negative interest rates, the promise of a Green New Deal or a Trump infrastructure package, and about Ray Dalio’s failure of capitalism claims.
Max Keiser is an American broadcaster and film-maker. He hosts Keiser Report, a financial program broadcast on RT. He presents a weekly show about finance and markets on London’s Resonance FM, and writes for The Huffington Post. Keiser invented “Virtual Specialist Technology,” a software system used by the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Prior to inventing this technology, he worked on Wall Street where he began working after graduating from NYU.
Steve Keen is an Australian-born, British-based economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. Keen was formerly an associate professor of economics at University of Western Sydney, until he applied for voluntary redundancy in 2013, due to the closure of the economics program at the university. In autumn 2014 he became a professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He is also a fellow at the Centre for Policy Development.
Curt Tyner on Trump says not happy with supporters ’ ‘send her back’ chant
Mike on Jordan Roy-Byrne: Silver Now Outperforming Gold – Why?
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Curt Tyner on Federal Debt Ceiling Reached as Federal Spending Rages
Dan Sheehan on The evolution of warmongers, from the Reagan admin to Trump’s with Paul Craig Roberts
Jim Rogers discusses investing opportunities in Russia, India
Berkeley, California Will ‘Degenderize’ Its Municipal Code, Getting Rid of Words Like ‘Manhole’ and ‘Ombudsman’
Fed’s Williams hints at more aggressive rate cuts: ‘Better to take preventative measures’
Danielle Park: Transports Warning of Market Downturn
Silver is Headed for the Moon, Watch Out Says Bubba
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Trump’s Scottish golf resorts faace US inquiry over suspect finances from Scotland on Sunday
A US political ethics watchdog has demanded the Department of Justice investigate the books of Donald Trump’s Scottish golfing resorts after flagging up “suspect” financial disclosures.
The American Democracy Legal Fund (ADLF) has highlighted “significant and widespread discrepancies” in the reported income of the Republican presidential candidate’s resorts at Trump Turnberry in South Ayrshire and Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire.
The organisation has now written to Raymond Hulser, chief of the public integrity section at the Department of Justice, as well as Walter Shaub, director of the US Office of Government Ethics, calling for an inquiry.
As reported by The Scotsman in January, there is a gulf between the figures reported by Trump to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – an independent regulatory agency which oversees the financing of elections – and those reported to Companies House in the UK.
The Washington DC-based ADLF claims Trump has broken the Ethics in Government Act, a federal law introduced in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Under the legislation, presidential candidates are required to disclose their financial holdings and transactions.
Documents filed by Trump with the FEC last July claim his resort in Balmedie generated income of $4.4m (£3.3m), but accounts filed with Companies House show it made losses of £1.1m in the year to December 2014.
The liberal accountability group said “the numbers still do not add up”, adding that the “same discrepancies hold true” for Turnberry. Trump told the FEC its income was $20.4m (£15.5m), yet accounts for its parent company show a £3.6m loss.
In a four-page letter to investigators, the ADLF’s co-founder, Brad Woodhouse, said there were “significant, widespread discrepancies” in the income figures reported by Trump, describing it as a “violation” of the 1978 act. Woodhouse said: “The Department of Justice should investigate these discrepancies to ensure that the public is granted full disclosure of Mr Trump’s finances as a candidate for president of the US.”
Patrick Harvie, co-convenor of the Scottish Greens, said: “It’s welcome that questions are being raised in the States about discrepancies in Trump’s Scottish affairs, and I’d encourage the relevant authorities here to co-operate with any inquiry.
“Scottish communities have been dumped on by Trump, with governments and public bodies taken for a ride. The more scrutiny he receives the better, as this deluded individual’s bid for power continues to falter.”
George Sorial, executive vice president of the Trump Organisation, referred Scotland on Sunday’s inquiry to the Trump campaign, but no-one responded.
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Trump's immigration plan would end birthright citizenship
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks to the media after arriving by helicopter at a nearby ballpark before Trump attended the Iowa State Fair Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015, in Des Moines.
Image: Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
After weeks spent touting sweeping immigration reforms as a key campaign policy, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump delivered a proposal of what these reforms would actually look like.
Trump has come under fire since he kicked off his campaign in mid-June, calling for a wall at the southern U.S. border and a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
See also: Donald Trump knows what kids want: Helicopter rides
Since then, Trump has been hounded with questions about specifics. On Sunday, Trump's campaign unveiled a slew of immigration policy proposals in a position paper.
The six-page report, titled "Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again," digs into the policies Trump has been alluding to for weeks.
Here is a taste of what immigration reform would look like under a Trump presidency:
The Mexican wall
Trump's proposed wall on the southern U.S. border with Mexico was, unsurprisingly, the focus of a large chunk of his position paper.
Much of his reasoning pointed to what he sees as a wave of crimes committed in the U.S. by undocumented immigrants, as well as healthcare, housing, education costs, and welfare costs. Trump also believes undocumented immigrants are taking opportunities away from American jobseekers, alleging that "black Americans have been particularly harmed."
Asserting that "Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty in their own country," Trump believes our neighbors to the south should pick up the bill for building a permanent wall at the border.
If the country chooses not to, Trump believes the U.S. should impose financial penalties on Mexico including "increasing fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them)," increase fees on all border crossing card, increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico, and impose tariffs and foreign aid cuts on the country.
Rescinding birthright citizenship
Trump wants to eliminate the birthright citizenship — the legal right of children born in U.S. territory to become citizens regardless of their parents legal status.
He believes it "remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration." While much of Trump's own policy paper rises to the defense of the Constitution, this particular point seems to go squarely against it.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution grants citizenship to everyone "born or naturalized in the United States."
Trump's new proposed policies to "defend Constitution" include: "End birthright citizenship."
Here's 14th Amendment: pic.twitter.com/Fy53Dh8ZQR
— Taniel (@Taniel) August 16, 2015
Eliminating short-term visas for foreign students
Trump wants to eliminate the J-1 visa program, used for student work exchange for foreign students interested in doing short-term work in the U.S.
Instead, Trump wants to repurpose the funding and use it instead for "a resume bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers to the J-1 visa program." Trump fails to comment on how eliminating the J-1 visa, which is reciprocated by many partner countries for Americans looking to work abroad, might affect U.S. students.
Limiting refugees in the U.S.
In a section titled "Refugee program for American children," Trump outlines a confusing plan that seems to indicate he wants to limit the admission of refugees and asylum seekers into the U.S. Despite the fact that the world is currently struggling to deal with the largest refugee crisis it has seen since World War II, Trump thinks the U.S. should allow fewer refugees into the country.
The nation has long played a leading role in providing safe haven for refugees fleeing instability in their own countries, but for Trump, this is not a priority.
He instead plans to "use the monies saved on expensive refugee programs to help place American children without parents in safer homes and communities, and to improve community safety in high crime neighborhoods in the United States."
Read the policy proposals in full below:
Immigration Reform Trump
Topics: Politics, U.S., World
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Home Contributors PBT434 Data to be Presented at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease...
PBT434 Data to be Presented at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders
MELBOURNE, Australia & SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Prana Biotechnology Ltd (ASX PBT: NASDAQ PRAN) has today announced it will be presenting further pre-clinical evidence for PBT434 at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders® to be held in Hong Kong from October 5-9, 2018.
The data to be presented will include new in-vivo evidence of the efficacy of PBT434 to prevent neuron loss and improve function in an animal model of Multiple system atrophy (MSA), an important cause of atypical Parkinsonism. MSA is a rapidly progressive and devastating neurological disease with no established treatments and is one of the target indications for PBT434.
PBT434 is the first of a new generation of small molecules designed to inhibit the aggregation of alpha(α)-synuclein and tau, vital intracellular proteins that are implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and atypical Parkinsonism. PBT434 has been shown to reduce the abnormal accumulation of these proteins in animal models of disease by restoring normal iron balance in the brain. Prior non-clinical characterization of PBT434, including animal models of Parkinson’s disease, was published last year in Acta Neuropathologica Communications and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1186/s40478-017-0456-2.
The experimental data to be presented demonstrate that in an animal model of MSA, PBT434 prevents α-synuclein accumulation, preserves neurons, and decreases the number of glial cell inclusions in the brains of treated animals. Glial cell inclusions are the key pathological finding in MSA and contain abundant aggregated α-synuclein that is associated with neurodegeneration. Importantly, these benefits led to improved motor function in treated animals. Alpha-synuclein is of great interest because aggregated forms of the protein are considered a pathological hallmark of Parkinsonian conditions and are a recognised therapeutic target by basic and clinical neuroscientists.
“Multiple system atrophy, or MSA, is a devastating orphan disease with limited treatment options. These animal data are robust and indicate that PBT434 has excellent potential to help individuals with MSA. Having recently started our first human study of PBT434, these data represent an important step as we pursue new treatments for Parkinsonian diseases,” said David Stamler, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Clinical Development.
The initial human study of PBT434 commenced in June 2018.
The International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders® is the preeminent scientific meeting for sharing ideas and stimulating interest in the care and research of movement disorders, and is organized annually by the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
For further information please visit the Company’s web site at www.pranabio.com.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180708005054/en/PBT434-Data-Presented-International-Congress-Parkinson%E2%80%99s-Disease/?feedref=JjAwJuNHiystnCoBq_hl-WBlLQO14j4QZPTyX5CYOnwC4VjN53jumZRlnzhBoBxGrCOi9QzgjCezTS3Nw_X6kJUrpSBm-Hav1w-UkdSlG3ltkRSnqzf6ourQGu_UA28CzZCGORvG0LE20YOvo49uqw==
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Princess Eugenie’s wedding details – from them ‘hiring the Beckhams’ wedding planner to Robbie Williams performing’
Amy DuncanFriday 14 Sep 2018 4:10 pm
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank are tying the knot this year (Picture: PA)
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle may have stolen the royal wedding limelight with their May 19 nuptials, but there’s still another royal wedding to come this year.
Princess Eugenie will be marrying fiance Jack Brooksbank in a matter of weeks.
Given she’s ninth in line to the British throne, unlike Harry who had been third nearly all of his life until Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis were born, making him now sixth, it won’t be quite as grand an affair.
Eugenie and Jack announced their engagement on 22 January this year.
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank pictured at the wedding of Charlie Van Straubenzee and Daisy Jenks in Frensham (Picture: John Rainford/WENN)
Their wedding will fall on Friday 12 October and it will be taking place in St George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle, just like Harry and Meghan’s did.
Prince Andrew confirmed the date of Princess Eugenie’s wedding as Friday October 12 in February this year, making the announcement on his official Twitter account.
The marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie to Mr Jack Brooksbank will take place on 12th October 2018.
As previously announced, the wedding will take place at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
— The Duke of York (@TheDukeOfYork) February 2, 2018
The Duke Of York wrote: ‘The marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie to Mr Jack Brooksbank will take place on 12th October 2018.
‘As previously announced, the wedding will take place at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.’
St George’s Chapel where the marriage will take place (Picture: Zak Hussein)
Eugenie and Jack announced their engagement in January this year (Picture: PA)
Eugenie and Jack (Picture: PA)
It is understood their wedding security alone is costing £2million, according to the Mirror, and it is set to be covered by the UK taxpayer.
While it might not be on the same scale as Harry and Meghan’s wedding, it was revealed that they will also be taking part in a carriage ride around Windsor, just like Harry and Meghan did, hence the need for heightened security.
Eugenie and Jack’s carriage ride will depart via Castle Hill and continue along part of Windsor High Street before returning to the castle via Cambridge Gate.
It’s thought Harry and Meghan’s wedding cost between £2 million and £4 million in security, seeing 100,000 people travelling to Windsor to soak up the atmosphere of the special day.
Autumn Phillips, Peter Phillips, Princess Eugenie, Jack Brooksbank and Princess Beatrice (Picture: Andrew Milligan – WPA/Getty Images)
Specific details are yet to be released by the Royal Family, however rumours over some of the finer details have been swirling.
It’s understood she will be having more guests than Harry and Meghan did at their May nuptials, and has planned to make her celebrations last the whole weekend, instead of sticking to a wedding ‘day’.
Eugenie is well connected in the celebrity world, with pals including Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Chelsy Davy and Kate Moss – and it’s understood all of these celebs will be in attendance.
The couple have apparently even hired Victoria and David Beckham’s wedding planner Peregrine Armstrong-Jones and are using Elton john’s personal florist.
Evening entertainment is expected to come in the shape of Robbie Williams and Goulding performing, with the wedding taking on a festival theme with dodgems and coconut shies, according to The Sun.
Jack Brooksbank chats to Eugenie and Beatrice as they wait for Meghan and Harry’s arrival at their wedding on 19 May (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)
It was announced in January that Eugenie, the Queen’s granddaughter, and Mr Brooksbank, got engaged in Nicaragua during a private holiday.
Eugenie began dating the 31-year-old brand ambassador of Casamigos Tequila about seven years ago after they met while skiing near the Swiss resort of Verbier.
The princess said she cried when Mr Brooksbank went down on one knee to ask for her hand in marriage, and she revealed the proposal was a ‘complete surprise’ but the ‘perfect moment’.
What is the current line of succession to the British throne?
The following line of succession accounts for Harry and Meghan's first child, due this spring.
Reigning monarch: Queen Elizabeth II (born 1926)
1st - Charles, Prince of Wales (b. 1948)
2nd - Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (b. 1982)
3rd - Prince George of Cambridge (b. 2013)
4th - Princess Charlotte of Cambridge (b. 2015)
5th - Prince Louis of Cambridge (b. 23 April 2018)
6th - Prince Henry of Wales (Prince Harry) (b. 1984)
7th - Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor (b. 6 May 2019)
8th - Prince Andrew, Duke of York (b. 1960)
9th - Princess Beatrice of York (b. 1988)
10th - Princess Eugenie of York (b. 1990)
11th - Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex (b. 1964)
12th - James, Viscount Severn (b. 2007)
13th - Lady Louise Windsor (b. 2003)
14th - Anne, Princess Royal (b. 1950)
15th - Peter Phillips (b. 1977)
16th - Savannah Phillips (b. 2010)
17th - Isla Phillips (b. 2012)
18th - Zara Tindall (née Phillips; b. 1981)
19th - Mia Tindall (b. 2014)
20th - Lena Elizabeth Tindall (b. 18 June 2018)
Jack Brooksbank and Princess Eugenie attend the traditional Easter Sunday church service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on April 1, 2018 in Windsor, England. (Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
Jack Brooksbank, Princess Eugenie of York, Ellie Goulding and Caspar Jopling attend the Brooklyn Nets Vs New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2017 (Picture: James Devaney/WireImage)
The engagement was greeted with joy by her parents the Duke and Duchess of York, with Andrew summing up the feelings of the royal family with the words: ‘I’m absolutely overjoyed. I’m thrilled.’
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh also expressed their delight at the news, wishing their granddaughter and her fiance ‘all the best’.
A close up of Princess Eugenie’s engagement ring, which was gifted to her by fiance Jack Brooksbank (Picture: EPA/Jonathan Brady)
Princess Eugenie’s ring features a padparadscha sapphire which is surrounded by 10 brilliant cut diamonds and two pear cut diamonds, to give it an edge to the standard cluster.
Padparadscha is the name given to the corundum gem that bears a mixture of red and yellow, a sort of cross between a ruby and yellow sapphire.
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace after announcing their engagement in January 2018 (Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)
This beautiful gem is sought-after and treasured by gemstone experts, considered the rarest and most valuable of all the corundum varieties.
Deborah Papas of Prestige Pawnbrokers, which features on Channel 4’s Posh Pawn, estimates the value of the ring: ‘With its carefully faceted cut and the set off with the whitest of white diamonds, this ring could easily be worth over £100,000.’
Every royal wedding that's taken place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding is taking place at Windsor Castle - but they're not the first royal couple to have said their vows at the Queen's residence.
The bride and groom to be will be saying 'I do' in front of 600 family and friends inside St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on Saturday 19 May.
Windsor is expected to be flooded with crowds of people as fans gather to wish Harry and Meghan well.
Here is a list of all of the British royal couples in history who have married at Windsor Castle too (and while some may remember Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles married in Windsor, they didn't marry in Windsor Castle - they instead tied the knot at the Guildhall in Windsor).
Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra
Illustration of the marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in St, George's Chapel, Windsor, March 10th 1863 (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Another illustration from the 1863 marriage of King Edward VII and Princess Alexandra of Denmark at Windsor Castle (Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
On 10 March 1863, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, the eldest son and successor of Queen Victoria, married Princess Alexandra of Denmark at St George's Chapel.
Princess Helena and Prince Christian
On 5 July 1866, Princess Helena, who was the third daughter of Queen Victoria, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg at St George's Chapel.
Princess Louise and Marquess of Lorne
On 21 March 1871, Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, married the Marquess of Lorne (later Duke of Argyll) at St George's Chapel.
Prince Arthur and Princess Louise Margaret
1878: Arthur William, Duke of Connaught (1850 - 1942), third son of Queen Victoria with the Duchess of Connaught, formerly Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)
On 13 March 1879, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who was the third son of Queen Victoria, married Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia at St George's Chapel.
Princess Frederica and Luitbert von Pawel Rammingen
On 24 March 1880, Princess Frederica of Hanover, the great-granddaughter of King George III, married Luitbert von Pawel Rammingen at St George's Chapel.
Prince Leopold and Princess Helena
On 27 April 1882, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, married Princess Helena of Waldeck-Pyrmont at St George's Chapel.
Princes Marie Louise and Prince Aribert
British Royalty, Cowes, Isle of Wight. Circa 1897 (L-R) Prince Leopold of Battenberg, Princess Aribert of Anhalt, Prince Edward of York (Duke of Windsor), Duchess of York (Queen Mary), Princess May (Princess Royal), Princess Margaret of Connaught, Prince Alexander of Battenberg (on ground), Prince Albert of York (King George V), Queen Victoria, Prince Arthur of Connaught,Queen of Spain, Duchess of Connaught, Princess Ena of Battenberg, Princess Henry of Battenberg,Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, Princes Patricia of Connaught, Prince Maurice of Battenberg (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)
On 6 July 1891, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein (daughter of Princess Christian) married Prince Aribert of Anhalt at St George's Chapel.
Princess Alice and Prince Alexander
Princess Alice of Albany married Prince Alexander George of Teck (Picture: W. & D. Downey/Getty Images)
On 10 February 1904, Princess Alice of Albany (daughter of the Duke of Albany), married Prince Alexander of Teck (later Earl of Athlone) at St George's Chapel.
Princess Margaret and Prince Gustaf
Gustav VI marrying Princess Margaret of Connaught in Windsor Castle in 1905 (Picture: Engraving. L'Illustration)
On 15 June 1905, Princess Margaret of Connaught (daughter of the Duke of Connaught) married Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden (later King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden) at St George's Chapel.
Prince Edward and Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones
Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones leave St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on their wedding day (Picture: GERRY PENNY/AFP/Getty Images)
Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones wave to wellwishers as they leave the chapel (Picture: GERRY PENNY/AFP/Getty Images)
On 19 June 1999, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II, married Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones at St George's Chapel. Theirs was the first wedding to take place at the chapel for 94 years.
Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess Of Cornwall
Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, depart the Civil Ceremony where they were legally married, at The Guildhall in Windsor on April 9, 2005 (Picture: Georges De Keerle/Getty Images)
On 9 April 2005, divorcee Prince Charles married fellow divorcee Camilla, Duchess Of Cornwall.
Charles' marriage had to be approved by the Queen, the government and the Church Of England as, given he is the future Supreme Governor of the Church Of England, his divorcee status was met with some caution.
They were set to marry at Windsor Castle in a civil ceremony followed by a religious blessing at St George's Chapel. However, Windsor Castle would have had to have applied for a licence for civil marriages, with one condition being that the venue must be available for civil marriages for a period of 12 months, which the royal family did not want.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, Duchess of Cornwall leave St George's Chapel (Picture: Anwar Hussein Collection/ROTA/WireImage)
Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, his wife Camilla, the Duchess Of Cornwall, and mother by HM Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen, leave the Service of Prayer and Dedication (Picture: ROTA-Pool/Getty Images)
The couple were therefore married at the town hall at Windsor Guildhall with Prince William and Tom Parker Bowles witnesses.
The Queen and the Duke Of Edinburgh then joined for their religious blessing.
A reception was held at Windsor Castle for the newly married couple, arranged by the Queen.
Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly
WINDSOR, UNITED KINGDOM - MAY 17: Peter Phillips marries Autumn Kelly at St. George's Chapel on May 17, 2008 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth ll chats to Zara Phillips following the wedding of Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly at St. George's Chapel on May 17, 2008 in Windsor (Picture: Pool/Anwar Hussein Collection/WireImage)
On 17 May 2008, Peter Phillips, the son of Anne, Princess Royal and Mark Phillips, married Canadian Autumn Kelly at St George's Chapel.
Ahead of their marriage, Kelly converted from Roman Catholicism to join the Church of England. Had she remained Roman Catholic, Phillips would have lost his place in the current line of the succession to the throne, of which he is 14th, due to the terms of the 1701 Act Of Settlement.
They welcomed the Queen's first great-grandchild, Savannah Anne Kathleen, on 29 December 2010.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, leave from the West Door of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in Windsor on May 19, 2018 in Windsor, England. (Picture: Ben STANSALL - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle tied the knot on 19 May at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Their special day was the first royal wedding to take place there in 10 years, after Peter and Autumn's.
And one more to go...
Princess Beatrice and Jack Brooksbank
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank announced their engagement on 22 January this year (Picture: EPA/Jonathan Brad)
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank will be marrying at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on Friday 12 October, just five months after Harry and Meghan.
MORE: Princess Beatrice age, job, boyfriends and maid of honour duty to younger sister Eugenie
MORE: Turns out Harry and Meghan are massive Hamilton fans too as the pair prepare to see show later this month
Meghan Markle Duchess of SussexPrince Harry Duke of SussexPrincess EugenieRoyal Family
Meghan Markle takes Archie to watch dad at polo with cousins George, Charlotte and Louis
Wimbledon fan told off for Meghan Markle 'selfie' did not know royal was there
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During this late-night Miami photoshoot in 2000 for “Da Baddest Bitch” hip-hop album by Trina, we hear “POW POW POW” and see a car speed past followed by a police car, the shooter later drove back and crashed into a tree a block away from our set.
Katrina Laverne "Trina" Taylor (born December 3, 1974 or 1978) (sources differ) is an American rapper. She first gained notoriety in 1998 with her appearance on Trick Daddy's second studio album www.thug.com on the single "Nann Nigga". She has released five moderately successful studio albums. XXL Magazine calls her "the most consistent female rapper of all time". Source Magazine celebrated Trina's career for the 2012 Women's History Month. In 2013, Complex Magazine ranked "Pull Over" #27 in their Top 50 Best Rap Songs by Women. In 2014, Trina was included in Billboard's list of the "31 Female Rappers Who Changed Hip-Hop".
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Order of the Crown Princess
From MicroWiki, the micronational encyclopædia
(Redirected from Order of the Crown Prince)
Awarded by the Empire of Austenasia
Chivalric order with four ranks
Awarded for
At the absolute discretion of the Heir to the Throne
Currently awarded
First awarded
Last awarded
Total awarded
Recipients: 49
Maximum quotas
Supreme Companion of the Heir: 1
Knight/Dame Protector: 12
Other grades: no limit
Next (higher)
Austenasian Order
Next (lower)
The Order of the Crown Princess (known as the Order of the Crown Prince when the Heir to the Throne is male) is an order of chivalry bestowed by the Heir to the Throne of the Empire of Austenasia. Founded on 31 January 2009 by Act 56 (Order of Chivalry), it is the lowest Austenasian order of chivalry in terms of precedence, and unique in that it is not bestowed by the Monarch.
1 Grades
2 Recipients
2.1 Supreme Companion of the Heir (SCP)
2.2 Knight/Dame Protectors of the Order of the Crown Princess (KPP/DPP)
2.3 Knights/Dames of the Order of the Crown Princess (KCP/DCP)
2.4 Squires of the Crown Princess (SCP)
3 Former recipients
There are four grades in the Order of the Crown Princess, and the holders of all but the last may legally be referred to as knights. There may only ever be one Supreme Companion at a time, as that particular grade was initially created with the intention of being granted to the consort of the Heir to the Throne; however, so far the position has only ever been bestowed upon close friends of the Heir.
There were originally five grades, with Knight/Dame Companion of the Crown Prince (KCCP/DCCP) being between Knight/Dame Protector and Knight/Dame in terms of precedence. However, this grade was abolished by Act 81 on 30 May 2009; it had only ever had one recipient, who had voluntarily relinquished it a mere month after recieving it at the Order's founding (see below).
Supreme Companion of the Heir
Knight/Dame Protector of the Crown Princess
Knight/Dame of the Crown Princess
Squire of the Crown Princess
Supreme Companion of the Heir (SCP)
Knight/Dame Protectors of the Order of the Crown Princess (KPP/DPP)
HIH Princess Consort Lady Dame Margaret Austen, Duchess of Royton, DHJ, IRC: 8/2/2009
Sir George Curtis, KCP: 28/7/2009
Lord Timothy, KOM, SCP: 16/2/2010
Lord Michael: 16/2/2010
Dame Rosalind: 16/2/2010
Sir Calum Jarvis, KCP: 29/6/2010
Sebastian Linden: 11/12/2011
Micheal Mitchell: 21/1/2012
Prof. Sir Jacob Tierney, OBS, KCA, COTS: 31/7/2012
Rebecca "Artz" Panks: 15/9/2012
HIM Emperor Jonathan I: 6/9/2018
HIH Emperor Father Terry: 6/9/2018
Knights/Dames of the Order of the Crown Princess (KCP/DCP)
Penny Lewis: 1/2/2009
Callum Hacket: 3/4/2009
Katie Langley: 6/4/2009
DI Thomas Carter: 16/5/2009
Ryan Dickinson: 17/6/2009
Thomas McGurran: 15/10/2009
"Mattholomew" Matthew Chappell: 1/3/2010
General Joseph Goldie: 8/3/2010
Tessy Herman: 10/3/2010
André Sammut: 7/4/2011
Quentin of Wyvern: 8/4/2011
HSM Prince Maarten I: 8/4/2011
E. Thornton: 13/5/2011
M. Mayanja-Kakyama: 13/5/2011
HSH Prince Joseph: 2/8/2011
Bradley of Dullahan: 2/10/2011
Robert Songhurst: 31/10/2011
N. James: 19/7/2012
Squires of the Crown Princess (SCP)
James Thompson: 10/1/2010
Alex Whitmarsh: 8/4/2011
Daniel Anderson: 8/4/2011
Dakoda George: 9/6/2011
John Gordon: 18/1/2012
Vladimir Doma: 23/11/2012
Former recipients
Sir William K., KOR, CAO: KCCP from 1/2/2009 - 1/3/2009. Voluntarily relinquished.
George Curtis: KCP from 17/6/2009 - 28/7/2009. Replaced with KPP.
Sir Timothy Boxall, KOM: SCP from 16/3/2009 - 16/2/2010. Replaced with KPP.
HIH Princess Lady Dame Caroline Austen, Baroness of Wrythe, DHJ, DOC: DPP from 8/2/2009 - 7/3/2010. Dishonourably revoked upon the outbreak of the Austenasian Civil War.
Calum Jarvis: KCP from 20/7/2009 - 29/6/2010. Replaced with KPP.
Dark Lord Esmond, 2nd Duke of Highland: SCH from 25/10/2009 - 21/8/2011. Honourably revoked.
Aldrich Lucas: KCP from 3/1/2011 - 20/2/2012. Dishonourably revoked upon said recipient's vandalism of the MicroWiki Forums and subsequent disgrace within and expulsion from the MicroWiki Community.
Sir Daniel Morris, IKA, OSP, MOF: KCP from 24/2/2011 - 20/5/2012. Dishonourably revoked for criminal behaviour.
Ricardo G.: SCH from 9/4/2012 - 30/6/2012. Voluntarily relinquished.
Miles, Prince of Copan: KPP from 20/2/2011 - 23/11/2012. Honourably revoked so as to provide room under the maximum quota for Countess Eritoshi of Memphis to be appointed a KPP.
HM King Declan I: KPP from 4/5/2010 - 20/1/2013. Automatically revoked by Parliament upon abdicating from the Throne.
Marshal Urokah Doshevik, Lord of Glencoe: KCP from 23/11/2012 - 22/9/2016. Honourably revoked.
Eritoshi, Countess of Memphis: KPP from 23/11/2012 - 14/6/2017. Honourably revoked.
HM King Kat I: KCP from 7/11/2010 - 6/9/2018. Honourably revoked by Crown Princess Caroline upon a review of the recipients of the Order.
Prince Aden of Rubber Ducky: 12/7/2011- 6/9/2018. Honourably revoked by Crown Princess Caroline upon a review of the recipients of the Order.
Rilgar Ompastre : 23/11/2012 - 6/9/2018. Honourably revoked by Crown Princess Caroline upon a review of the recipients of the Order.
Kalev Vostokreig: 23/11/2012 - 6/9/2018. Honourably revoked by Crown Princess Caroline upon a review of the recipients of the Order.
Retrieved from "https://micronations.wiki/index.php?title=Order_of_the_Crown_Princess&oldid=343493"
Austenasia
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Freeze | Kidney-friendly food
By Boyet Castillo on June 26, 2019
Last Monday’s news report in Mindanao Times by Rhoda Grace Saron said, “The Police Regional Office (PRO) will educate its personnel on their health maintenance as more than 130 cases of kidney diseases affecting officers were recorded last year.”
“This is one of the diseases that is considered a ‘silent killer’ as many with the condition experience no symptoms until their kidneys fail completely. The Department of Health considers Chronic Kidney Disease V as one of the primary causes of mortality among Filipinos… Obesity and hypertension are said to be the drivers of this disease. Lifestyle plays a major role – an unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle can lead to diabetes, which makes one vulnerable to kidney diseases,” according to yesterday’s editorial in Mindanao Times.
Eating healthy foods, working with a renal dietitian and following a renal diet made up of kidney-friendly foods is important for people with kidney disease. Let’s take a look at some foods that are considered to be kidney-friendly.
Red Bell Peppers. Red bell peppers are low in potassium and high in flavor, but that’s not the only reason they’re perfect for the kidney diet. These tasty vegetables are also an excellent source of vitamin C and vitamin A, as well as vitamin B6, folic acid and fiber. Red bell peppers are good for you because they contain lycopene, an antioxidant that protects against certain cancers.
Cabbage. A cruciferous vegetable, cabbage is packed full of phytochemicals, chemical compounds in fruit or vegetables that break up free radicals before they can do damage. Many phytochemicals are also known to protect against and fight cancer, as well as foster cardiovascular health. High in vitamin K, vitamin C and fiber, cabbage is also a good source of vitamin B6 and folic acid. Low in potassium and low in cost, it’s an affordable addition to the kidney diet.
Cauliflower. Another cruciferous vegetable, cauliflower is high in vitamin C and a good source of folate and fiber. It’s also packed full of indoles, glucosinolates and thiocyanates—compounds that help the liver neutralize toxic substances that could damage cell membranes and DNA.
Garlic. Garlic helps prevent plaque from forming on your teeth, lowers cholesterol and reduces inflammation. Garlic provides a delicious flavor and garlic powder is a great substitute for garlic salt in the dialysis diet.
Onions. Onion, a member of the allium family and a basic flavoring in many cooked dishes, contains sulfur compounds which give it its pungent smell. But in addition to making some people cry, onions are also rich in flavonoids, especially quercetin, a powerful antioxidant that works to reduce heart disease and protects against many cancers. Onions are low in potassium and a good source of chromium, a mineral that helps with carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism.
Apples. Apples have been known to reduce cholesterol, prevent constipation, protect against heart disease and reduce the risk of cancer. Apples are high in fiber and anti-inflammatory compounds.
Strawberries. Strawberries are an excellent source of vitamin C and manganese and a very good source of fiber. They are known to provide heart protection, as well as anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory components.
Red Grapes. Red grapes contain several flavonoids that give them their reddish color. Flavonoids help protect against heart disease by preventing oxidation and reducing the formation of blood clots. Resveratrol, a flavonoid found in grapes, may also stimulate production of nitric oxide which helps relax muscle cells in the blood vessels to increase blood flow. These flavonoids also provide protection against cancer and prevent inflammation.
Olive Oil. Olive oil is a great source of oleic acid, an anti-inflammatory fatty acid. The monounsaturated fat in olive oil protects against oxidation. Olive oil is rich in polyphenols and antioxidant compounds that prevent inflammation and oxidation (davita.com).
Sweet Potatoes. These super spuds are packed with beta-carotene and are an excellent source of vitamins A and C. Sweet potatoes are also a good source of vitamin B-6 and potassium. One medium (5-inch long) sweet potato contains 112 calories and nearly 4 grams of fiber, according to the USDA National Nutrient Database. You can eat them mashed or even make your own oven-baked fries (kidney.org).
Boyet Castillo
IL Gyu, Balcita share honors in RPVGCC 10th Monthly Medal
This story appears on Page 13 of the July 17, 2019,…
SMB Light, DC Construction drub foes in Uraya 40s hoop
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Moving Forward PRN
Category: Technology:Podcasting
On Moving Forward host Rob Seimetz will be covering my thoughts about the world and what do to moving forward. These thoughts will venture into Environmental Issues, United States Foreign and Domestic Policies, putting historical events in context, and current events. On the show we will try to figure how we can collectively move forward from our political past and what we need to do when looking at the future, all from a millennial perspective
Moving Forward - The Crystal Ships of Fatherhood
On this episode Rob opens up about what fatherhood is like and talks about various things that are on his mind as he navigates through fatherhood.
Rob's website:
https://robmovesforward.wordpress.com/
Moving Forward - The Trauma and Aggression Behind Zionism: A Conversation with Yoav Litvin and Patrick Farnsworth.
The Trauma and Aggression Behind Zionism: A Conversation with Yoav Litvin and Patrick Farnsworth.
Yoav Litvin is a doctor of psychology, a photographer and writer. In his work, he investigates the intersections of science, the arts and politics and aims to promote creative and radical causes with a focus on urban culture, social movements and peoples.
Litvin’s work has been featured in Truthout, Salon, Yes! Magazine, Al Jazeera English, Monthly Review, The Conversation, Counterpunch, Mother Jones, teleSur English, Mondoweiss, Eye Magazine, Business Insider, Truthdig and The Palestine Chronicle, among other outlets. His book Outdoor Gallery – New York City won the Independent Publisher’s Book Award in the Regional Northeast category for 2015. His new book 2Create – Art Collaborations in New York City was recently awarded the American Design Award and has been nominated for numerous publishing, photography and graphic design awards.
Patrick Farnsworth is the host of the podcast, Last Born In The Wilderness. You can find more of his work at www.lastborninthewilderness.com
Yoav's Website:
https://yoavlitvin.com/
Yoav's Truth Out Article:
https://truthout.org/articles/the-zionist-smear-campaign-against-bernie-sanders-is-just-beginning/
Yoav's YouTube Talk about Zionism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bATyYZS-umQ
Moving Forward - Dean Spillane-Walker: Having The Impossible Conversation Can Provide Us With Better Ways and Brighter Days Moving Forward
This episode was an in person interview of Shane Burley done in collaboration with Patrick Farnsworth of the podcast Last Born In The Wilderness. We discuss the hate, science, and darkness behind the far right.
Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press). His work as appeared in places such as Truthout, Jacobin, AlterNet, In These Times, Political Research Associates, Waging Nonviolence, Labor Notes, ThinkProgress, ROAR Magazine and Upping the Anti. Follow him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.
Patrick’s website:
https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/
Links to Shane Burley’s articles and book:
https://communemag.com/a-history-of-violence/
https://truthout.org/authors/shane-burley/
https://www.akpress.org/fascism-today.html
Moving Forward - Crap Science, Crap Politics: Decoding the Darkness and Hate in the Far Right w/ Shane Burley
Moving Forward - Moving Forward During The End of Ice: A Conversation With Dahr Jamail and Patrick Farnsworth
This special edition of Moving Forward is a collaboration with Patrick Farnsworth, host of the podcast Last Born In The Wilderness. Patrick and Rob conduct an in person interview of award winning journalist and author, Dahr Jamail, about his new book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption.
Where you can buy Dahr Jamail’s book:
https://thenewpress.com/books/end-of-ice
Dahr’s website:
http://www.dahrjamail.net/
Patrick Farnsworth’s website:
Moving Forward - Halfway to Hell: Joshua Frank on The Big Heat
Joshua Frank is the managing editor of CounterPunch and an Investigative Journalist. He is the author of several books, his most recent book co-authorized with Jeffrey St Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. You can follow him on twitter @joshua__frank
Where you can buy Joshua Frank's book:
https://store.counterpunch.org/product/the-big-heat/
Moving Forward - Rebelling Against Extinction with Clare Farrell.
Clare Farrell is one of many founding members of Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom. She's a long time environmentalist, designer and product developer, and an educator on the topic of sustainability and textiles/fashion.
robmovesforward.wordpress.com
Rob's new article in CounterPunch:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/12/bringing-a-life-into-a-dying-world-a-letter-from-a-father-to-his-unborn-son/
Moving Forward - Leaving A Mark On The Opioid Crisis: My Life and Opioids
Today on Moving Forward Rob opens up about how the opioid crisis has impacted his life and offers ways we must move forward from opioids.
Moving Forward - Shane Burley.
Moving Forward In A Time of Increased Far Right Violence, A Conversation With Author and Reporter Shane Burley.
Our guest today is Shane Burley. Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press). His work as appeared in places such as Truthout, Jacobin, AlterNet, In These Times, Political Research Associates, Waging Nonviolence, Labor Notes, ThinkProgress, ROAR Magazine and Upping the Anti. Follow him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.
Moving Forward - The Military and Moving Forward With a Former Marine Veteran.
Luke Lafko is a social justice/anti-war activist currently residing in the state of Florida. He currently works as an employment counselor with people who are educationally and/or economically disadvantaged. Luke believes passionately that we must not forgot about those segments of our society that the greater whole of our intuitions either simply forgets or neglects. In Luke’s time working in social services and his time engaging in social justice movements, he feels strongly that there is a disconnect between public opinion and public policy. Luke’s is also about to graduate with his dual bachelor’s degree in Public policy & Criminal justice focusing his attention on bringing a voice to the otherwise voiceless and assisting those within his surrounding communities navigate the public policy arena.
Luke is also former US Marine who has been on two combat deployments to Iraq. It is important to remember, as Luke likes to say, that he did not join the military out of patriotism, nationalism or any other abstraction; Luke enlisted into the military because he was languishing in a rust belt town that offered little drive and excitement. In part, Luke didn’t take into account the gravity of his hasty decision to join the US Marine Corp and soon found himself in a far off desert land participating in one of the greatest immoral wars of the 21st century. Luke has since denounced the war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and of course the war in Iraq. While Luke has lived within the relationship between US Empire and the global war on terrorism, he understands that its relationship between the two that, more often than not, offers the world a reservoir of newly created terrorist organizations, among all others both organizationally and individually, who have suffered as a result of strong arming its foreign policy. For Luke, for every regional problem, both foreign and domestic, is viewed as a nail with the military being the hammer; and that is a problem he maintains his focus on. War is an economy. War is a racket; and with booming arms sales comes a series of events that are certainly unpredictable.
Copyright 2017 Gary Null. All rights reserved.
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All In A Day’s Work
I asked you what you wanted to hear me rap about, and you responded. From all of the topics submitted, I chose five suggestions to base songs on. Each song was written, produced, and recorded in a 9 to 5 workday, hence the title “All In A Day’s Work”.
The songs have undergone some mixing and re-mixing, and are now ready to be added to your playlist.
1. Zoro – Inspired by the suggestion of Mr. Hooper fan Ebony London (“Paint Strokes”). I wrote, produced, and recorded the song on March 9, 2015.
Production Notes: Recorded and Mixed in Bob’s Room (Sacramento, CA)
2. No Permission – Inspired by the suggestions of Mr. Hooper fans Donna Hanes Martinez (“I say..living life against the trend”), Asia Allen (“LGBT”), and Erika Le (“Living life by your own terms after spending most of it living by everyone else’s expectations, even if you almost go broke doing so…. just thinking about people who go through divorce, decide not to go to college, etc…”). I wrote, produced, and recorded the song on August 25th, 2014.
Production Notes: Recorded and Mixed in Bob’s Room (Sacramento, CA) – Ian Barlow (Bass), Simon Rochester (Organ)
3. Then and Now – Inspired by the suggestion of Mr. Hooper fan Elle Hernandez (“How fear replaced love and or vise versa“). I wrote, produced, and recorded the song on August 12, 2014.
Production Notes: Recorded and Mixed in Bob’s Room (Sacramento, CA) – Ian Barlow (Upright Bass), Gregory Cain (Native American Flute)
4. Half The Battle – Inspired by the suggestion of Mr. Hooper fan Brian Espinosa (“A song that includes names and references from old TV shows or Movies or Toys from when we were kids”). I wrote, produced, and recorded the song on August 18, 2014.
5. My Fans – Inspired by the suggestion of Mr. Hooper fan Nessa Ortega Hurst (“Your fans or the tours you’ve been on”). I wrote, produced, and recorded the song on April 22, 2015.
Production Notes: Recorded and Mixed in Bob’s Room (Sacramento, CA) – Ian Barlow (Bass), Simon Rochester (Piano)
Cover Art by Brian Espinosa of Joint Medias
Special thanks to everyone who submitted suggestions, and much love to everyone who supports my music!
-Mr. Hooper
Buy on Google Play
Mr. Hooper
Walking Razor Entertainment
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“We went into every session hoping to bottle up happiness and bring it to the world,” Joe Jonas tells Apple Music of the first album he's made with his brothers Nick and Kevin in a decade. “We didn't know that would actually become the title of the album, or that the cover would be the visual representation of how we feel, which is that with each other, we can get through anything.” The album—tremendously pure and upbeat, with co-writing from Ryan Tedder, Max Martin, and Greg Kurstin—has playful Police spinoffs, Post Malone-inspired bops, and smouldering slow-jam serenades that, honestly, might make fans faint. Here's a track-by-track rundown of the family reunion as told by the brothers themselves.
Kevin: “We wrote this about Ricky Bobby and his journey to be the best race car driver in the world.”
Nick: “If you're not first, you're last.”
Joe: “But it was a slow burn. It wasn't immediate for all of us that we said, ‘This has to be the first single!’ We felt like it'd be a good album song, but we didn't think it’d be one to introduce us back into the world.”
Kevin: “And then what happened?”
Joe: “And then it became the first single.”
Nick: “This song came towards the end of the writing process. We were trying to write a ballad, actually, but we ended up writing this instead because we all came to the studio feeling very cool that day. Feeling like a million bucks.”
Joe: “This was the last song to make the album. Max Martin and Shellback [Karl Johan Schuster] approached us. They're handsome Scandinavian dudes, but they also happen to be two of the best songwriters and producers in the world. They have a lot of hits on their hands. And a little story: A lot of this song was written and recorded via FaceTime. Shellback was home in Sweden and he had to be really quiet because it was 4 a.m. his time and people were sleeping in the other room.”
Nick: “Actually, it would have been a really good Apple commercial. How the world is getting smaller and more connected and hit songs are written on FaceTime.”
Nick: “Early on in the process, Greg Kurstin helped us define what the album was going to sound like. He’s the best guy to do it, having worked with Adele and Beck–artists we love and respect. And this song is a love letter to my wife. I'm so excited to play it on tour.”
Joe: “We listened to it a lot on your bachelor party. It sounds even better by the beach.”
Nick: “It does. So try that.”
“Used to Be”
Joe: “This, upon first listen, was not a song I connected with. And then all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh my god, I get it. I love it.’ It just felt right.”
Kevin: “I feel like this song was heavily influenced by Post Malone and stuff on the rhythmic urban side. Post had shouted us out in one of his songs, so we felt it was only appropriate to do the same.”
“Every Single Time”
Joe: “This one has a Police feel to it.”
Nick: “The band Police. If you haven't heard of them, you should definitely go check them out. They're a great new band. They're fantastic.”
Kevin: “The lead singer is this guy Stung.”
Nick: “Yeah, Stung. He's fantastic.”
“Don’t Throw It Away”
Joe: “This song was also produced by Greg Kurstin and co-written by Mozella, who has become one of the biggest songwriters in the game and helped us unlock a lot of things early on in the creative process. This has some '80s influences in it.”
“Love Her”
Kevin: “It's very important on an album for us to have some romantic songs. We've had a lot of vibey, upbeat songs that you listen to and by the eighth song, at this point in the dinner, you're finishing that bottle of wine. You had the main course.”
“Happy When I’m Sad”
Nick: “This song is about putting on a face, a mask, a vibe of being happy when you’re sad.”
Kevin: “I think a lot of people can relate to that. I visualize Dexter, the TV show.”
Nick: “Just cutting someone in half but smiling through it.”
Joe: “Interesting. That's pretty dark, guys. Not what I had in mind when we were writing it, but to each his own.”
Nick: “This song was a collaboration with Jason Evigan, who I wrote my song ‘Chains’ with. He's a brilliant producer and songwriter and has been a friend for many years, but to get to turn great relationships into great songs is one of the most rewarding things as a songwriter. It was a magnetic connection for all of us.”
Joe: “You've gotten through 10 songs and you're like, ‘Where the hell are the Jonas Brothers I know? This is stupid.’ Lucky for you, Number 11 is here to save the day.”
“Hesitate”
Joe: “This is an important song. I wrote it for my significant other, Sophie, and it’s one of those love letters that you write to your partner saying, ‘I'll be there no matter what.’”
Kevin: “Our documentary Chasing Happiness came out recently, and it was so great to be able to tell our story. We knew we needed a song to help do that. Ryan [Tedder] presented us with ‘Rollercoaster.’ We adjusted a little bit to make it our own, and it perfectly embodies all the themes that are relevant in the documentary: having had that fun when we were young, then choosing to do it again in a healthy way, and in the end saying, ‘I would gladly get on that rollercoaster with you again and do it all over again.’”
Joe: “This is one I'm most proud of. We use pronouns in this that veer towards relationships, but it fully represents where we were at as a band, saying: ‘Come back to me. I'll come back to you.’ We've been through a lot in this journey, but it led us back here. This song touches on our roots growing up playing music in church, and there’s a hymn formed in the chord structure and even the melody. I'm just really proud of this one.”
Happiness Begins Jonas Brothers
Don't Throw it Away
Happy When I'm Sad
℗ 2019 Jonas Brothers Recording, Limited Liability Company, under exclusive license to Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
More By Jonas Brothers
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Jessie J, Ariana Grande & Nicki Minaj 2014
Pitch Perfect 2 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 2015
Price Tag (feat. B.o.B)
Who You Are (Bonus Video Deluxe Edition) 2011
I Got You (I Feel Good)
Fifty Shades Freed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 2018
Who You Are (Platinum Edition) 2011
About Jessie J
English singer/songwriter Jessie J combines deep, soulful vocals, a sharp pop sense, and a down-to-earth manner that recalls Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, and P!nk. Overcoming various career setbacks and health issues, she issued a trio of U.K. Top Five albums -- Who You Are, Alive, and Sweet Talker -- in the early 2010s, while also recording chart-topping singles "Price Tag," "Domino," "Bang Bang," and her cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
Born Jessica Cornish in Chadwell Heath, London in 1988, she started her career in show biz at the age of 11, performing in the West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind. After studying musical theater at the prestigious BRITS School, she signed a deal with indie label Gut Records, which went bankrupt before releasing any of her music.
Following a minor stroke at age 18, she gained a Sony publishing contract and penned hits for the likes of Chris Brown, Dutch X Factor winner Lisa Lois, and Miley Cyrus (the American number two hit "Party in the USA"). After building an established online presence, she signed to Universal Records and began working with the likes of hitmaker Dr. Luke (Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson), Atlanta rapper B.o.B, and R&B producer Labrinth on her debut album, Who You Are. In 2010, her first single, "Do It Like a Dude," originally written for Rihanna, reached number 25 on the U.K. charts and, following in the footsteps of Adele, Florence + the Machine, and Ellie Goulding, she won the Critics Choice Award at the 2011 Brits. That same year, an appearance on Saturday Night Live coincided with her album being reissued in the U.S.
Following a tour that took her to the U.K., Ireland, Australia, Malaysia, and her first stop in North America, Jessie J became the first U.K. female solo artist to achieve six Top Ten singles from a single studio album. The success of the sixth single, "LaserLight," featuring David Guetta, was aided in no small part by her appearance as a judge on the U.K. edition of The Voice. The hit show gave the singer a chance to display her talent for musical coaching, while building a rapport with fans both old and new on prime-time television. Also involved were Tom Jones and will.i.am, with whom Jessie J performed at Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee Concert in June 2012, before heading back to the studio to work on the follow-up to Who You Are.
After finishing her second and final season of coaching on The Voice in 2013, J returned with the singles "Wild" and "It's My Party," which preceded her second album, Alive, that September. With a planned U.S.-only version of Alive featuring collaborations with Pharrell Williams eventually put aside, J instead focused on recording new material for what would become her third studio album, Sweet Talker. Including the likes of Diplo, the-Dream, and the aforementioned Pharrell, the album also saw her join forces with De La Soul and 2 Chainz, while Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj both featured on the lead single, "Bang Bang," which debuted at number one in the U.K. and became a Top Ten hit in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Bulgaria. Sweet Talker arrived in October 2014, reaching the Top Ten in the U.S. and U.K. Taking a break from music, she joined the cast of judges on the 2015 season of the television singing competition The Voice Australia. That year she also embarked on a tour in support of Sweet Talker.
She issued a handful of new singles in 2017, including "Real Deal" and "Queen," which were slated to appear on a planned 2018 LP. Before that, however, she dipped back into television singing competitions, only this time, she was a contestant. China's Singer 2018 featured Jessie J as the only contestant not based in Asia, competing against Taiwan pop diva Angela Chang, X Factor Philippines winner KZ, and a host of others from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. J took the crown that April, becoming the first non-Chinese singer to win it all. Returning to her music, she issued the four-part R.O.S.E. album, which arrived in EP-sized chunks over the course of four days in May 2018. Split into R (Realisations), O (Obsessions), S (Sex), and E (Empowerment), the set was produced by DJ Camper. She capped off her busy 2018 with the release of the holiday album This Christmas Day. ~ Jon O'Brien & Daniel Clancy
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Close Menu Home
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The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987Amendment Of Section 12(d) Of The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987National Legal Services Authority Rules 1995NALSA Guidelines for Police Training
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Mizoram State Legal Services Authority
Government of Mizoram
Who's Who of MSLSA
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Scheme for Mentally Ill
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The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987
Amendment Of Section 12(d) Of The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987
National Legal Services Authority Rules 1995
NALSA Guidelines for Police Training
Page Links: https://mizoslsa.mizoram.gov.in/page/the-legal-services-authorities-act-1987p
(No. 39 of 1987)
(11th October, 1987)
[As amended by the Legal Services Authorities
(Amendment) Act, 1994 (No. 59 of 1994)]
An Act to constitute legal services authorities to provide free and competent legal services to the weaker sections of the society to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities, and to organise Lok Adalats to secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity.
Be it enacted by Parliament in the Thirty-eighth year of the Republic of India as follows:-
Short title, extent and commencement.-
(1) This Act may be called the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.
(2) It extends to the whole of India, except the State of Jammu & Kashmir.
(3) It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may by notification, appoint and different dates may be appointed for different provisions of this Act and for different States and any reference to commencement in any provision of this Act in relation to any State shall be construed as a reference to the commencement of that provision in that State.
2. Definitions.-
In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,-
(a) 'case' includes a suit or any proceeding before a court;
(aa) 'Central Authority' means the National Legal Services Authority constituted under Section 3;
(aaa) 'court' means a civil, criminal or revenue court and includes any tribunal or any other authority constituted under any law for the time being in force to exercise judicial or quasi-judicial functions;
(b) 'District Authority' means a District Legal Services Authority constituted under Section 9;
(bb) 'High Court Legal Services Committee' means a High Court Legal Services Committee constituted under Section 8A;
(c) 'legal service' includes the rendering of any service in the conduct any case or other legal proceeding before any court or other Authority or tribunal and the giving of advice on any legal matter;
(d) 'Lok Adalat' means a Lok Adalat organised under Chapter VI;
(e) 'notification' means a notification published in the Official Gazette;
(f) 'prescribed' means prescribed by rules made under this Act;
(ff) 'regulations' means regulations made under this Act;
(g) 'scheme' means any scheme framed by the Central Authority, a State Authority or a District Authority for the purpose of giving effect to any of the provisions of this Act;
(h) 'State Authority' means a State Legal Services Authority constituted under Section 6;
(i) 'State Government' includes the administrator of a Union territory appointed by the President under article 239 of the Constitution;
(j) 'Supreme Court Legal Services Committee' means the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee constituted under Section 3A;
(k) 'Taluk Legal Services Committee' means a Taluk Legal Services Committee constituted under Section 11A.
Any reference in this Act to any other enactment or any provision thereof shall, in relation to an area in which such enactment or provision is not in force, be construed as a reference to the corresponding law or the relevant provision of the corresponding law, if any, in force in that area.
THE NATIONAL LEGAL SERVICES AUTHORITY
3. Constitution of the National Legal Services
Authority. -
(1) The Central Government shall constitute a body to be called the National Legal Services Authority to exercise the powers and perform the functions conferred on, or assigned to the Central Authority under this Act.
(2) The Central Authority shall consist of -
(a) the Chief Justice of India who shall be the Patron-in-Chief;
(b) a serving or retired Judge of the Supreme Court to be nominated by the President, in consultation with the Chief Justice of India, who shall be the Executive Chairman; and
(c) such number of other members, possessing such experience and qualifications, as may be prescribed by the Central Government, to be nominated by that government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
(3) The Central Government shall in consultation with the Chief Justice of India, appoint a person to be the Member-Secretary of the Central Authority, possessing such experience and qualifications as may be prescribed by that Government, to exercise such powers and perform such duties under the Executive Chairman of the Central Authority as may be prescribed by that Government or as may be assigned to him by the Executive Chairman of that Authority.
(4) The terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and the Member-Secretary of the Central Authority shall be such as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
(5) The Central Authority may appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India, for the efficient discharge of its functions under this Act.
(6) The officers and other employees of the Central Authority shall be entitled to such salary and allowances and shall be subject to such other conditions of service as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
(7) The administrative expenses of the Central Authority, including the salaries, allowances and pensions payable to the Member-Secretary, officers and other employees of the Central Authority, shall be defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund of India.
(8) All orders and decisions of the Central Authority shall be authenticated by the Member Secretary or any other officer of the Central Authority duly authorised by the Executive Chairman of that Authority.
(9) No act or proceeding of the Central Authority shall be invalid merely on the ground of the existence of any vacancy in or any defect in the constitution of the Central Authority.
3A. Supreme Court Legal Services Committee.-
(1) The Central Authority shall constitute a Committee to be called the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee for the purpose of exercising such powers and performing such functions as may be determined by regulations made by the Central Authority.
(2) The Committee shall consist of -
(a) a sitting judge of the Supreme Court who shall be the Chairman; and
(b) such number of other members possessing such experience and qualifications as may be prescribed by the Central Government to be nominated by the Chief Justice of India.
(3) The Chief Justice of India shall appoint a person to be the Secretary to the Committee, possessing such experience and qualifications as may be prescribed by the Central Government.
(4) The terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of the Members and Secretary of the Committee shall be such as may be determined by regulations made by the Central Authority.
(5) The Committee may appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be prescribed by the Central Government, in consultation with the Chief Justice of India, for the efficient discharge of its functions.
(6) The officers and other employees of the Committee shall be entitled to such salary and allowances and shall be subject to such other conditions of service as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
4. Functions of the Central Authority.- The Central Authority shall perform all or any of the following functions, namely:-
(a) lay down policies and principles for making legal services available under the provisions of this Act;
(b) frame the most effective and economical schemes for the purpose of making legal services available under the provisions of this Act;
(c) utilise the funds at its disposal and make appropriate allocations of funds to the State Authorities and District Authorities;
(d) take necessary steps by way of social justice litigation with regard to consumer protection, environmental protection or any other matter of special concern to the weaker sections of the society and for this purpose, give training to social workers in legal skills;
(e) organise legal aid camps, especially in rural areas, slums or labour colonies with the dual purpose of educating the weaker sections of the society as to their rights as well as encouraging the settlement of disputes through Lok Adalats;
(f) encourage the settlement of disputes by way of negotiations, arbitration and conciliation;
(g) undertake and promote research in the filed of legal services with special reference to the need for such services among the poor;
(h) to do all things necessary for the purpose of ensuring commitment to the fundamental duties of citizens under Part IVA of the Constitution;
(i) monitor and evaluate implementation of the legal aid programmes at periodic intervals and provide for independent evaluation of programmes and schemes implemented in whole or in part by funds provided under this Act;
(j) provide grants-in-aid for specific schemes to various voluntary social service institutions and the State and District Authorities, from out of the amounts placed at its disposal for the implementation of legal services schemes under the provisions of this Act;
(k) develop, in consultation with the Bar Council of India, programmes for clinical legal education and promote guidance and supervise the establishment and working of legal services clinics in universities, law colleges and other institutions;
(l) take appropriate measures for spreading legal literacy and legal awareness amongst the people and, in particular, to educate weaker sections of the society about the rights, benefits and privileges guaranteed by social welfare legislations and other enactments as well as administrative programmes and measures;
(m) make special efforts to enlist the support of voluntary social welfare institutions working at the grass-root level, particularly among the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, women and rural and urban labour; and
(n) Coordinate and monitor the functioning of State Authorities, District Authorities, Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, High Court Legal Services Committees, Taluk Legal Services Committees and voluntary social service institutions and other legal services organisations and given general directions for the proper implementation of the Legal Services programmes.
5. Central Authroity to work in coordination with other agencies .- In the discharge of its functions under this act, the Central Authority shall, wherever appropriate, act in coordinatin with other governmental and non-governmental agencies, universities and others engaged in the work of promoting the cause of legal services to the poor.
STATE LEGAL SERVICES AUTHORITY
6. Constitution of State Legal Services Authority -
(1) Every State Government shall constitute a body to be called the Legal Services Authority for the State to exercise the powers and perform the functions conferred on or assigned to, a State Authority under this Act.
(2) A State Authority shall consist of -
(a) the Chief Justice of the High Court who shall be the Patron-in-Chief;
(b) a serving or retired Judge of the High Court, to be nominated by the Governor, in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court, who shall be the Executive Chairman; and
(c) such number of other Members, possessing such experience and qualifications, as may be prescribed by the State Government, to be nominated by that Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(3) The State Government shall, in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court, appoint a person belonging to the State Higher Judicial Service not lower in rank than that of a District Judge, as the Member-Secretary of the State Authority, to exercise such powers and perform such duties under the Executive Chairman of the State Authority as may be prescribed by that Government or as may be assigned to him by the Executive Chairman of that Authority; Provided that a person functions as Secretary of a State Legal Aid & Advice Board immediately before the date of constitution of the State Authority may be appointed as Member-Secretary of that Authority, even if he is not qualified to be appointed as such under this sub-section, for a period not exceeding five years.
(4) The terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and the Member-Secretary of the State Authority shall be such as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(5) The State Authority may appoint such number of officers and other employees may be prescribed by the State Government, in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court, for the efficient discharge of its functions under this Act.
(6) The officers and other employees of the State Authority shall be entitled to such salary and allowances and shall be subject to such other conditions of service as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(7) The administrative expenses of the State Authority, including the salaries, allowances and pensions payable to the Member-Secretary, officers and other employees of the State Authority shall be defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund of the State.
(8) All orders and decisions of the State Authority shall be authenticated by the Member-Secretary or any other officer of the State Authority duly authorised by the Executive Chairman of the State Authority.
(9) No act or proceeding of a State Authority shall be invalid merely on the ground of the existence of any vacancy in, or any defect in the constitution of the State Authority.
7. Functions of the State Authority.-
(1) It shall be the duty of the State Authority to given effect to the policy and directions of the Central Authority.
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the functions referred to in sub-section (1), the State Authority shall perform all or any of the following functions, namely:-
(a) give legal service to persons who satisfy the criteria laid down under this Act.
(b) conduct Lok Adalats, including Lok Adalats for High Court cases;
(c) undertake preventive and strategic legal aid programmes; and
(d) perform such other functions as the State Authority may, in consultation with the Central Authority, fix by regulations.
8. State Authority to act in co-ordination with other agencies etc., and be subject to directions given by Central Authority.- In the discharge of its functions the State Authority shall appropriately act in co-ordination with other governmental agencies, non-governmental voluntary social service institutions, universities and other bodies engaged in the work of promoting the cause of legal services to the poor and shall also be guided by such directions as the Central Authority may give to it in writing.
8A. High Court Legal Services Committee.-
(1) The State Authority shall constitute a Committee to be called the High Court Legal Services Committee for every High Court, for the purpose of exercising such powers and performing such functions as may be determined by regulations made by the State Authority.
(a) a sitting Judge of the High Court who shall be the Chairman; and
(b) such number of other Members possessing such experience and qualifications as may be determined by regulations made by the State Authority, to be nominated by the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(3) The Chief Justice of the High Court shall appoint a Secretary to the Committee possessing such experience and qualifications as may be prescribed by the State Government.
(4) The terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of the Members and Secretary of the Committee shall be such as may be determined by the regulations, made by the State Authority.
(5) The Committee may appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court for the efficient discharge of its functions.
(6) The officers and other employees of the Committee shall be entitled to such salary and allowances and shall be subject to such other conditions of service as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
9. District Legal Services Authority.-
(1) The State Government shall in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court, constitute a body to be called the District Legal Services Authority for every District in the State to exercise the powers and perform the functions conferred on, or assigned to the District Authority under this Act.
(2) A District Authority shall consist of :-
(a) the District Judge who shall be its Chairman; and
(b) such number of other Members, possessing such experience and qualifications as may be prescribed by the State Government, to be nominated by that Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(3) The State Authority shall, in consultation with the Chairman of the District Authority appoint a person belonging to the State Judicial Service not lower in rank than that of a Subordinate Judge or Civil Judge posted at the seat of the District Judiciary as Secretary of the District Authority to exercise such powers and perform such duties under the Chairman of that Committee as maybe assigned to him by such Chairman.
(4) The terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and Secretary of the District Authority shall be such as may be determined by regulations made by the State Authority in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(5) The District Authority may appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court for the efficient discharge of its functions.
(6) The officers and other employees of the District Authority shall be entitled to such salary and allowances and shall be subject to such other conditions of service as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(7) The administrative expenses of every District Authority, including the salaries, allowances and pensions payable to the Secretary, officers and other employees of the District Authority shall be defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund of the State.
(8) All orders and decisions of the District Authority shall be authenticated by the Secretary or by any other officer of the District Authority duly authorised by the Chairman of that Authority.
(9) No Act or proceeding of a District Authority shall be invalid merely on the ground of the existence of any vacancy in, or any defect in the constitution of, the District Authority.
10. Functions of District Authority.-
(1) It shall be the duty of every District Authority to perform such of the functions of the State Authority in the District as may be delegated to it from time to time by the State Authority.
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the functions referred to in sub-section (1) the District Authority may perform all or any of the following functions, namely:-
(a) co-ordinate the activities of the Taluk Legal Services Committee and other legal services in the District;
(b) organise Lok Adalats within the Districts; and
(c) perform such other functions as the State Authority may fix by regulations.
11. District Authority to act in co-ordination with other agencies and be subject to directions given by the Central Authority, etc. - In the discharge of its functions under this Act, the District Authority shall, wherever appropriate, act in co-ordination with other governmental and non-governmental institutions, universities and others engaged in the work of promoting the cause of legal services to the poor and shall also be guided by such directions as the Central Authority or the State Authority may give to it in writing.
11A. Taluk Legal Services Committee. -
(1) The State Authority may constitute a Committee, to be called the Taluk Legal Services Committee, for each Taluk or Mandal or for group of Taluks or Mandals,
(a) the senior Civil Judge operating within the jurisdiction of the Committee who shall be the ex-officio Chairman; and
(b) such number of other Members, possessing such experience and qualifications, as may be prescribed by the State Government, to be nominated by that Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(5) The administrative expenses of the Committee shall be defrayed out of the District Legal Aid Fund by the District Authority.
11B. Functions of Taluk Legal Services Committee.- The Taluk Legal Services Committee may perform all or any of the following functions, namely:-
(a) co-ordinate the activities of legal services in the taluk;
(b) organise Lok Adalats within the taluk; and
(c) perform such other functions as the District Authority may assign to it.
ENTITLEMENT TO LEGAL SERVICES
12. Criteria for giving Legal Services. - Every person who has to file or defend a case shall be entitled to legal services under this Act if that person is -
(a) a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe;
(b) a victim of trafficking in human beings or begar as referred to in Article 23 of the Constitution;
(c) a woman or a child;
(d) a mentally ill or otherwise disabled person;
(e) a person under circumstances of undeserved want such as being a victim of a mass disaster, ethnic violence, caste atrocity, flood, drought, earthquake or industrial disaster; or
(f) an industrial workman; or
(g) in custody, including custody in a protective home within the meaning of clause (g) of Section 2 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956(104 of 1956); or in a juvenile home within the meaning of clause(j) of Section 2 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 (53 of 1986); or in a psychiatric hospital or psychiatric nursing home within the meaning of clause (g) of Section 2 of the Mental Health Act, 1987(14 of 1987);or
(h) in receipt of annual income less than rupees nine thousand or such other higher amount as may be prescribed by the State Government, if the case is before a court other than the Supreme Court, and less than rupees twelve thousand or such other higher amount as may be prescribed by the Central Government, if the case is before the Supreme Court.
13. Entitlement to Legal Services.-
(1) Persons who satisfy all or any of the criteria specified in Section 12 shall be entitled to receive legal services provided that the concerned Authority is satisfied that such person has a prima-facie case to prosecute or to defend.
(2) An affidavit made by a person as to his income may be regarded as sufficient for making him eligible to the entitlement of legal services under this Act unless the concerned Authority has reason to disbelieve such affidavit.
FINANCE, ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT
14. Grants by the Central Government.- The Central Government shall, after due appropriation made by Parliament by law in this behalf, pay to the Central Authority, by way of grants, such sums of money as the Central Government may think fit for being utilised for the purposes of this Act.
15. National Legal Aid Fund.-
(1)The Central Authority shall establish a fund to be called the National Legal Aid Fund and there shall be credited thereto -
(a) all sums or money given as grants by the Central Government under Section 14;
(b) any grants or donations that may be made to the Central Authority by any other person for the purposes of this Act;
(c) any amount received by the Central Authority under the orders of any court or from any other source.
(2)The National Legal Aid Fund shall be applied for meeting-
(a) the cost of legal services provided under this Act including grants made to State Authorities;
(b) the cost of Legal services provided by the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee;
(c) any other expenses which are required to be met by the Central Authority.
16. State Legal Aid Fund.-
(1) A State Authority shall establish a fund to be called the State Legal Aid Fund and there shall be credited thereto-
(a) all sums of money paid to it or any grants made by the Central Authority for the purposes of this Act;
(b) any grants or donations that may be made to the State Authority by the State Government or by any person for the purposes of this Act;
(c) any other amount received by the State Authority under the orders of any court or from any other source.
2) A State Legal Aid Fund shall be applied for meeting -
(a) the cost of functions referred to in Section 7;
(b) the cost of legal services provided by the High Court Legal Services Committees;
(c) any other expenses which are required to be met by the State Authority.
17. District Legal Aid Fund.-
(1) Every District Authority shall establish a fund to be called the District Legal Aid Fund and there shall be credited thereto-
(a) all sums of money paid or any grants made by the State Authority to the District Authority for the purposes of this Act;
(b) any grants or donations that may be made to the District Authority by any person, with the prior approval of the State Authority, for the purposes of this Act;
(c) any other amount received by the District Authority under the orders of any court or from any other source.
(2) A District Legal Aid Fund shall be applied for meeting-
(a) the cost of functions referred to in Sections 10 and 11 B;
(b) any other expenses which are required to be met by the District Authority.
18. Accounts and audit. -
(1) The Central Authority, State Authority or the District Authority ( hereinafter referred to in this Section as 'the Authority'), as the case may be, shall maintain proper accounts and other relevant records and prepare an annual statement or accounts including the income and expenditure account and the balance sheet in such form and in such manner as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India.
(2) The accounts of the Authorities shall be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India at such intervals as may be specified by him and any expenditure incurred in connection with such audit shall be payable by the Authority concerned to the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India.
(3) The Comptroller and Audit-General of India and any other person appointed by him in connection with the auditing of the accounts of an Authority under this Act shall have the same rights and privileges and authority in connection with such audit as the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India has in connection with the auditing of the Government accounts and, in particular, shall have the right to demand the production of books, accounts, connected vouchers and other documents and papers and to inspect any of the offices of the Authorities under this Act.
(4) The accounts of the Authorities, as certified by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India or any other person appointed by him in this behalf together with the audit report thereon, shall be forwarded annually by the Authorities to the Central Government or the State Governments, as the case may be.
(5) The Central Government shall cause the accounts and the audit report received by it under sub-section (4) to be laid, as soon as may be after they are received, before each House of Parliament.
(6) The State Government shall cause the accounts and the audit report received by it under sub-section (4) to be laid, as soon as may be after they are received, before the State Legislature.
LOK ADALATS
18. Organisation of Lok Adalats. -
(1) Every State Authority or District Authority or the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee or every High Court Legal Services Committee or, as the case may be, Taluk Legal Services Committee may organise Lok Adalats at such intervals and places and for exercising such jurisdiction and for such areas as it thinks fit.
(2) Every Lok Adalat organised for an area shall consist of such number of -
(a) serving or retired judicial officers; and
(b) other persons,
of the area as may be specified by the State Authority or the District Authority or the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee or the High Court Legal Services Committee, or as the case may be, the Taluk Legal Services Committee, organising such Lok Adalats.
(3) The experience and qualifications of other persons referred to in clause (b) of sub-section (2) for Lok Adalats organised by the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee shall be such as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
(4) The experience and qualifications of other persons referred to in clause (b) of sub-section (2) for Lok Adalats other than referred to in sub-section (3) shall be such as may be prescribed by the State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court.
(5) A Lok Adalat shall have jurisdiction to determine and to arrive at a compromise or settlement between the parties to a dispute in respect of -
(i) any case pending before; or
(ii) any matter which is falling within the jurisdiction of, and is not brought before, any court for which the Lok Adalat is organised:
Provided that the Lok Adalat shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any case or matter relating to an offence not compoundable under any law.
20. Cognizance of cases by Lok Adalats .-
(1) Where in any case referred to in clause (i) of sub-section (5) of Section 19-
(a) the parties thereof agree; or
(b) one of the parties thereof makes an application to the court,
for referring the case to the Lok Adalat for settlement and if such court is prima facie satisfied that there are chances of such settlement; or
(ii) the court is satisfied that the matter is an appropriate one to be taken cognizance of by the Lok Adalat, the court shall refer the case to the Lok Adalat; Provided that no case shall be referred to the Lok Adalat under sub-clause (b) of clause ( i) or clause (ii) by such court except after giving a reasonable opportunity of being heard to the parties.
2) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, the Authority or Committee organising the Lok Adalat under sub-section (1) of Section 19 may, on receipt of an application from any, one of the parties to any matter referred to in clause (ii) of sub-section (5) of Section 19 that such matter needs to be determined by a Lok Adalat, refer such matter to the Lok Adalat, for determination; Provided that no matter shall be referred to the Lok Adalat except after giving a reasonable opportunity of being heard to the other party.
(3) Where any case is referred to a Lok Adalat under sub-section (1) or where a reference has been made to it under sub-section (2), the Lok Adalat shall proceed to dispose of the case or matter and arrive at a compromise or settlement between the parties.
(4) Every Lok Adalat shall, while determining any reference before it under this Act, act with utmost expedition to arrive at a compromise or settlement between the parties and shall be guided by the principles of Justice, equity, fair play and other legal principles.
(5) Where no award is made by the Lok Adalat on the ground that no compromise or settlement could be arrived at between the parties, the record of the case shall be returned by it to the court, from which the reference has been received under sub-section (1) for disposal in accordance with law.
(6) Where no award is made by the Lok Adalat on the ground that no compromise or settlement could be arrived at between the parties, in a matter referred to in sub-section (2), that Lok Adalat shall advice the parties to seek remedy in a court.
(7) Where the record of the case is returned under sub-section (5) to the court, such court shall proceed to deal such reference under sub-section (1).
21. Award of Lok Adalat. -
(1) Every award of the Lok Adalat shall be deemed to be a decree of a civil court or, as the case may be, an order of any other court and where a compromise or settlement has been arrived at, by a Lok Adalat in a case referred to it under sub-section (1) of Section 20, the court-fee paid in such case shall be refunded in the manner provided under the Court Fees Act, 1870 (7 of 1870).
(2) Every award made by a Lok Adalat shall be final and binding on all the parties to the dispute, and no appeal shall lie to any court against the award.
22. Powers of Lok Adalats.-
(1) The Lok Adalat shall, for the purposes of holding any determination under this Act, have the same powers as are vested in a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908), while trying a suit in respect of the following matters, namely:-
(a) the summoning and enforcing the attendance of any witness and examining him on oath;
(b) the discovery and production of any document;
(c) the reception of evidence on affidavits;
(d) the requisitioning of any public record or document or copy of such record or document from any court or office; and
(e) such other matters as may be prescribed.
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the powers contained in sub-section(1), every Lok Adalat shall have the requisite powers to specify its own procedure for the determination of any dispute coming before it.
(3) All proceedings before a Lok Adalat shall be deemed to be judicial proceedings within the meaning of Sections 193, 219 and 228 of the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860) and every Lok Adalat shall be deemed to be a civil court for the purpose of Section 195 and Chapter XXVI of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973(2 of 1974).
CHAPTER –VI A
PRE-LITIGATION CONCILIATION AND SETTLEMENT
22A. Definitions
In this chapter and for the purposes the Section 22 and 23, unless the context other requires.
a) “Permanent LokAdalat” means a Permanent LokAdalat established under sub-section (1) of Section 22 B;
b) “Public Utility Service” means any-
1.transport services for the carriage of passengers or goods by air, road or water; or
2.postal, telegraph or telegraph or telephone service; or
3.supply of power, light or water to the public by any establishment. Or
4.system of public conservancy or sanitation; or
5.service in hospital or dispensary; or
6.insurance service,
and includes any service which the Central Government or the State Government, as the case may be, may in the public interest, by notification, declare to be a public utility service for the purposes of this Chapter.
22B. Establishment of Permanent LokAdalat
1.Notwithstanding anything contained in section 19, the Central Authority or, as the case may be, every State Authority shall, be notification, establish Permanent LokAdalat at such places and for exercising such jurisdiction in respect of one or more public utility services and for such areas as may be specified in the notification.
2.Every Permanent LokAdalat established for an area notified under sub-section (1) shall consist of-
a) a person who is, or has been, a district judge or additional district judge or has held judicial office higher in rank than that of a district judge, shall be the Chairman of the Permanent LokAdalat; and
b) Two other persons having adequate experience in public utility services to be nominated by the Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government on the recommendation of the Central Authority or, as the case may, the State Authority, establishing such Permanent LokAdalat and the other terms and conditions of the appointment of the Chairman and other persons referred to in clause (b) shall be prescribed by the Central Government.
22 C. Cognizance of cases by Permanent LokAdalat.
(1) Any party to a dispute may, before the dispute is brought before nay court, make an application to the Permanent LokAdalat for the settlement of dispute; Provided that the Permanent LokAdalat shall not have jurisdiction in respect of any matter relating to an offence not compoundable under any law; Provided further that the Permanent LokAdalat shall also not have jurisdiction in the matter where the value of the property in dispute exceeds ten lakh rupees;
Provided also that the Central Government, may, by notification, increase the limit of ten lakhrepees specified in the second proviso in consultation with the Central Authority.
(2) After an application is made under sub-section (1) to the Permanent LokAdalat, no party to that application shall invoke jurisdiction of any court in the same dispute.
(3) where an application is made to a Permanent LokAdalat under sub-section (1), it
(a) shall direct each party to the application to file before it a written statement, stating therein the facts and nature of dispute under the application, points or issues in such dispute and grounds relied in support of, or in opposition to, such points or issues, as the case may be, and such party may supplement such statement with any document and other evidence which such party deems appropriate in proof of such facts and grounds and shall send a copy of such statement together with a copy of such document and other evidence, if any, to each of the parties to the applicant;
(b) may require any party to the application to file additional statement before it at any stage of the conciliation proceedings;
(c) shall communicate any document or statement received by it from any party to the application to the other party, to enable such other party to present reply thereto.
(4) When statement, additional statement and reply, if any, have been filed under sub-section (3), to the satisfaction of the Permanent LokAdalat, it shall conduct conciliation proceedings between the parties to the application in such manner as it thinks appropriate taking into account the circumstance of the dispute.
(5) The Permanent LokAdalat shall, during conduct of conciliation proceedings under sub-section (4), assist the parties in their attempt to reach an amicable settlement of the dispute in an independent and impartial manner.
(6) It shall be the duty of every party to the application to cooperate in good faith with the Permanent LokAdalat in conciliation of the dispute relating to the application and to comply with the direction of the Permanent LokAdalat to produce evidence and other related documents before it.
(7) When a Permanent LokAdalat, in the aforesaid conciliation proceedings, is of opinion that there exist elements of settlement in such proceedings which may be acceptable to the partes, it may formulate the tersm of a possible settlement of the dispute and give to the parties concerned for their observations and in case the parties reach at an agreement on the settlement or the dispute, they shall sign the settlement agreement and the Permanent LokAdalat shall pass an award in terms thereof and furnish a copy of the same to each of the parties concerned.
(8) Where the parties faile to reach at an agreement under sub-section (7), the Permanent LokAdalat shall, if the dispute does not relate to any offence, decide the dispute.
22D. Procedure of Permanent LokAdalat
The Permanent LokAdalat shall, while conducting conciliation proceedings or deciding a dispute on merit under this Act, be guided by the principles of natural justice, objectivity fail play, equity and other principles of justice, and shall not be bound by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
22E. Award of Permanent LokAdalat to be final
(1) Every award of the Permanent LokAdalat under this Act made either on merit or in terms of a settlement agreement shall be final and binding on all the parties thereto and on persons claiming under them.
(2) Every award of the Permanent LokAdalat under this Act shall be deemed to be a decree of a civil court.
(3) The award made by the Permanent LokAdalat under this Act shall be by a majority of the persons constituting the PermanentLokAdalat.
(4) Every award made by the Permanent LokAdalat under this Act shall be final and shall not be called in question in any original suit, application or execution proceedings.
(5) The Permanent LokAdalat may transmit any award made by it to a Civil Court having local Jurisdiction and such civil court shall execute tgeirder as if it were a decree made by that court.
23. Members and staff of Authorities, Committees and Lok Adalats to be public servants. -The Members including Member-Secretary or, as the case may be, Secretary , of the Central Authority, the State Authorities, the District Authorities, the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, High Court Legal Services Committees, Taluk Legal Services Committees and officers and other employees of such Authorities, Committees and the Members of the Lok Adalats shall be deemed to be public servants within the meaning of Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860)
24. Protection of action taken in good faith.- No suit, prosecution or other Legal proceeding shall lie against,
(a) the Central Government or the State Government;
(b) the Patron-in-Chief, Executive Chairman, Members or Member-Secretary or officers or other employees of the Central Authority;
(c) Patron-in-Chief, Executive Chairman, Members, Member-Secretary or officers or other employees of the State Authority;
(d) Chairman, Secretary, Members or officers or other employees of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, High Court Legal Services Committees, Taluk Legal Services Committees or the District Authority; or
(e) Any other person authorised by any of the Patron-in-Chief, Executive Chairman, Chairman, Member, Member-Secretary referred to in sub-clauses (b) to (d),
for anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under the provisions of this Act or any rule or regulation made thereunder.
25. Act to have overriding effect.- The provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act.
26. Power to remove difficulties.-
(1) If any difficulty arises in giving effect to the provisions of this Act, the Central Government may, by order published in the Official Gazette, make such provisions, not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act as appear to it to be necessary or expedient for removing the difficulty; Provided that no such order shall be made after the expiry of a period of two years from the date on which this Act receives the assent of the President.
(2) Every order made under this section shall, as soon as may be after it is made, be laid before each House of Parliament.
27.Power of Central Government to make rules.-
(1) The Central Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India may, by notification, make rules to carry out the provisions of this Act.
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such rules may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely:-
(a) the number, experience and qualifications of other Members of the Central Authority under clause (c) of sub-section (2) of Section 3.
(b) the experience and qualifications of the Member-Secretary of the Central Authority and his powers and functions under sub-section (3) of Section 3,
(c) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and Member-Secretary of the Central Authority under sub-section (4) of Section 3;
(d) the number of officers and other employees of the Central Authority under sub-section (5) of Section 3;
(e) the conditions of service and the salary and allowances of officers and other employees of the Central Authority under sub-section (6) of Section 3;
(f) the number, experience and qualifications of Members of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of Section 3A;
(g) the experience and qualifications of Secretary of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (3) of Section 3A;
(h) the number of officers and other employees of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (5) of Section 3A and the conditions of service and the salary and allowances payable to them under sub-section (6) of that section;
(i) the upper limit of annual income of a person entitling him to legal services under clause (h) of Section 12, if the case is before the Supreme Court;
(j) the manner in which the accounts of the Central Authority, the State Authority or the District Authority shall be maintained under Section 18;
(k) the experience and qualifications of other persons of the Lok Adalats organised by the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee specified in sub-section (3) of Section 19;
(l) other matters under clause (e) of sub-section (1) of Section 22;
(m) any other matter which is to be, or may be, prescribed.
28. Power of State Government to make rules.-
(1) The State Government in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court may, by notification, make rules to carry out the provisions of this Act.
(a) the number, experience and qualifications of other Members of the State Authority under clause (c) of sub-section (2) of Section 6;
(b) the powers and functions of the Member-Secretary of the State Authority under sub-section (3) of Section 6;
(c) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and Member-Secretary of the State Authority under sub-section (4) of Section 6;
(d) the number of officers and other employees of the State Authority under sub-section (5) of Section 6;
(e) the conditions of service and the salary and allowances of officers and other employees of the State Authority under sub-section (6) of Section 6;
(f) the experience and qualifications of Secretary of the High Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (3) of Section 8A;
(g) the number of officers and other employees of the High Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (5) of Section 8A and the conditions of service and the salary and allowances payable to them under sub-section (6) of that Section;
(h) the number, experience and qualifications of Members of the District Authority under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of Section 9;
(i) the number of officers and other employees of the District Authority under sub - section (5) of Section 9;
(j) the conditions of service and the salary and allowances of the officers and other employees of the District Authority under sub-section (6) of Section 9;
(k) the number, experience and qualifications of Members of the Taluk Legal Services Committee under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of Section 11A;
(l) the number of officers and other employees of the Taluk Legal Services Committee under sub-section (3) of Section 11A;
(m) the conditions of service and the salary and allowances of officers and other employees of the Taluk Legal Services Committee under sub-section (4) of Section 11A;
(n) the upper limit of annual income of a person entitling him to legal services under clause (h) of Section 12, if the case is before a court, other than the Supreme Court;
(o) the experience and qualifications of other persons of the Lok Adalats other than referred to in sub-section (4) of Section 19;
(p) any other matter which is to be, or may be, prescribed.
29. Power of Central Authority to make regulations.-
(1) The Central Authority may, by notification, make regulations not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act and the rules made thereunder, to provide for all matters for which provision is necessary or expedient for the purposes of giving effect to the provisions of this Act.
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such regulations may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely:-
(a) the powers and functions of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (1) of Section 3A;
(b) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of the Members and Secretary of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (4) of Section 3A.
29A. Power of State Authority to make regulations .-
(1) The State Authority may, by notification make regulations not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act and the rules made thereunder, to provide for all matters for which provisions is necessary or expedient for the purposes of giving effect to the provisions of this Act.
a) the other functions to be performed by the State Authority under clause (d) of sub-section (2) of Section 7;
(b) the powers and functions of the High Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (1) of Section 8A;
(c) the number, experience and qualifications of Members of the High Court Legal Services Committee under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of Section 8A;
(d) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of the Members and Secretary of the High Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (4) of Section 8A;
(e) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of the Members and Secretary of the High Court Legal Services Committee under sub-section (4) of Section 9;
(f) the number, experience and qualifications of Members of the High Court Legal Services Committee under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of Section 8A;
(g) other functions to be performed by the District Authority under clause (c) of sub-section (2) Section 10;
(h) the terms of office and other conditions relating thereto, of Members and Secretary of the Taluk Legal Services Committee under sub-section (3) of Section 11A.
30. Laying of rules and regulations.-
(1) Every rule made under this Act by the Central Government and every regulation made by the Central Authority thereunder shall be laid, as soon as may be after it is made, before each House of Parliament, while it is in session, for a total period of thirty days which may be comprised in one session, and if, before the expiry of the session immediately following the session or the successive sessions or in two or more successive sessions aforesaid, both Houses agree in making any modification in the rule or regulation, or both Houses agree that the rule or regulation should not be made, the rule or regulation shall thereafter have effect only in such modified form or be of no effect, as the case may be; so, however, that any such modification or annulment shall be without prejudice to the validity of anything previously done under that rule or regulation.
(2) Every rule made under this Act by a State Government and every regulation made by a State Authority thereunder shall be laid, as soon as may be after it is made, before the State Legislature.
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One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution
by Nancy Stout and Alice Walker and with a Foreword by
Visit the One Day in December website for more information.
Read Alice Walker’s foreword in Monthly Review
Read an excerpt, “The Arrival of the Granma,” in LINKS: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Celia Sánchez is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. She collected the documents that would form the official archives of the revolution, and, after its victory, launched numerous projects that enriched the lives of many Cubans, from parks to literacy programs to helping develop the Cohiba cigar brand. All the while, she maintained a close relationship with Fidel Castro that lasted until her death in 1980.
The product of ten years of original research, this biography draws on interviews with Sánchez’s friends, family, and comrades in the rebel army, along with countless letters and documents. Biographer Nancy Stout was initially barred from the official archives, but, in a remarkable twist, was granted access by Fidel Castro himself, impressed as he was with Stout’s project and aware that Sánchez deserved a worthy biography. This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who exemplified the very best values of the Cuban Revolution: selfless dedication to the people, courage in the face of grave danger, and the desire to transform society.
I love this book. Biographer Nancy Stout is to be congratulated for her insightful, mature and sometimes droll exploration of a profoundly liberated, adventuresome and driven personality. I love the life of Celia Sánchez, a life that was singular, sui generis, and true to its time of revolution and change in Cuban society, but also archetypal in its impact and relevance to all times of social struggle and revolt, including this one.
—Alice Walker, author, The Color Purple; winner, Pulitzer Prize & National Book Award
Nancy Stout’s One Day in December, in addition to being a penetrating and startling biography, is a new generation’s view into a world previous generations have been locked out of with words like: “dictator,” “communist,” “anti-American,” and “communist sympathizer/traitor.” As we move into an era of multiculturalism, an era which continues to upset old racial paradigms, and an era of interconnectivity and globalism from which there is no turning back, Nancy Stout’s One Day in December takes on the importance of the work of Arundhati Roy or Noam Chomsky in its insistence on looking at facts rather than self serving capitalist and neocolonialist myth. And One Day in December is also a damn good read about a passionate, sensuous, and brilliant woman!
—Sapphire, author of Push and The Kid
Engrossing, endearing, and eloquent, this sympathetic and superbly crafted portrait of the ‘True Flower of the Revolution’ unfolds in magnificent detail. Nancy Stout leaves us breathless in admiration for this fearless revolutionary—a brilliant organizer, recruiter, and Fidel Castro’s most precious aide. So intimate is Stout’s well-informed tour de force that the description of Sánchez’s death brings the reader to tears, inspired by a deep sense of love and loss.
—Christopher P. Baker, author, Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro’s Cuba, the Moon Cuba Handbook, and Cuba Classics: A Celebration of Vintage American Automobiles
Nancy Stout has accomplished a genuine tour de force with One Day in December. In this riveting and eloquent portrait, Celia Sánchez finally emerges as a major star in Cuba’s revolutionary drama: a political animal, a management consultant, a historian, and of course, a confidante to Fidel Castro. Thrust into the arena of clandestine politics in the 1950s, Celia spent the next two decades of her life helping to institutionalize the Cuban revolution. Her legacy, especially for women and girls’ education and health, and as the chief archivist of the insurgency, comes alive in Stout’s exhaustively researched biography.
—Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and Director, Latin America Studies and Global Brazil Initiative, Council on Foreign Relations
This excellent book tells us about Celia Sánchez, an early leader of the Cuban Revolution and a fascinating character. From Oriente province, she helped organize the 26th of July forces there and plan Fidel’s landing in January of 1956. She soon joined him in the mountains and became not only a leader of the Revolution but his ‘closest companion.’ That they were intimate seems clear but it was a sui generis relationship. As Nancy Stout suggests, ‘he was free to come and go.’ And he certainly had relationships with other women. As Stout movingly describes her, Celia was totally devoted to Fidel and to the Cuban Revolution. And she loved and was loved by the Cuban people. I was in Havana at the time of her death in January of 1980 and well remember the deep sadness it occasioned.
—Wayne S. Smith, senior fellow and director of the Cuba Project, Center for International Policy; former head, U.S. Interests Section in Havana
In this impressive biography Stout utilizes interviews, Cuban archives (to which she was granted special access by Castro himself), letters, and other documents to provide an accurate portrait of Sanchez, who ran the planning organization of the revolution after the death of Pais in 1957… Stout’s biography tells her story as well as offering insights into other revolutionaries and their contributions… Highly recommended for readers and scholars of Cuban history.
—Library Journal (starred review)
Nancy Stout is a writer and photographer living in New York City, currently employed by Fordham University as a Reference Librarian. Her books include Great American Thoroughbred Racetracks, Homestretch, The West Side YMCA: A Social and Architectural Retrospective, Havana/La Habana (with architect Jorge Rigau, who wrote the text), and Habanos: the Story of the Havana Cigar (author and photographer). Alice Walker is an author, poet, and activist; she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her novel The Color Purple.
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One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution quantity
SKU: mrp3171 Categories: Books, Cloth, eBooks
Topics: Biography Feminism Places: Latin America
Publication Date: April 2013
Additional Information: 28 images, 3 maps
Cloth ISBN: 9781583673171
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28 images, 3 maps
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The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know
Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now
Why Unions Matter: 10th Anniversary Update
Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health
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Join us on January 10 for "Trump's Wall at Nixon's Border"
Please join us on January 10th in New York City for a talk with Professor Patrick Timmons—
Trump’s Wall at Nixon’s Border: Citizenship and Belonging between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso
King Juan Carlos Center Auditorium
53 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012
Time: Wednesday, January 10 at 6:30pm
Admission is free and open to the public. Please RSVP on Facebook here.
Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon made closing the U.S. border to unwanted people and products from Mexico part of his successful 1969 campaign for the presidency. In 2016, Donald Trump’s calls to “build that wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border characterized his presidential campaign. But many residents of El Paso, Texas, met the idea not with shock but with begrudging acceptance, while many newspaper headlines from neighboring Juárez screamed foul. Why? This talk suggests five decades of accommodation and resistance to U.S. drug, immigration, environment, and border policies have shaped citizenship and belonging in the transfrontier metropolis of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. Adding a wall to the divisive repertoire of border practices casts in concrete what had already been achieved throughout late twentieth century border policing strategies: the divorce of Juárez from El Paso.
This presentation builds on an article from NACLA’s Spring 2017 issue, and is part of a book-length project of the border history of the upper Rio Grande Valley. Patrick Timmons holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Texas at Austin and an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex. Timmons lectures in History at El Paso Community College.
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Cannabis Consortium Posts a Copy of the Conditional Use Permit, "CUP" to Otcmarkets
- City approves minor modification
- CUP allows Cannabis Consortium to manufacture, cultivate and distribute THC
- Final building upgrades being completed
COCONUT CREEK, Fla., Sept. 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via OTC PR WIRE--Bahamas Development Corporation (OTCPINK: BDCI) affiliate company Global Consortium, Inc. dba Cannabis Consortium and its partners received a copy of the CUP (conditional use permit) for the building they are purchasing.
The City of Sacramento has approved the minor modification that will allow the manufacturing, distribution, and cultivation of THC immediately. A copy of the CUP has been posted to otcmarkets.com https://backend.otcmarkets.com/otcapi/company/financial-report/201994/content.
The CUP will transfer with the sale of the building, and was attached to the lease of the space until the closing occurs. Cannabis Consortium and its partners made sure that they locked down the CUP for themselves.
The City of Sacramento has supplied a list of upgrades that need to be completed prior to the issuance of the city business permit. These upgrades have been started and will be completed in the next couple weeks. Once the upgrades have been inspected, the business permit should be issued.
Indulge Oils will be operational in September or October, and revenue producing within 10 days from the start of production.
Bahamas Development Corporation, in compliance with SEC regulations, may in the future use social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter and its own website to announce key information in compliance with Reg FD.
This news release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in Section 27(a) of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, estimates of services and equipment markets, release of corporate apps, growth of platform, target markets, product releases, product demand and, business strategy. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with new projects and development stage companies. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also consider that any investment in securities is at risk.
Details of the Company's business, finances, appointments and agreements can be found as part of the Company's continuous public disclosure on otcmarkets.com.
For additional information about this release please contact:
Matt Dwyer
matt@cannabisconsortium.net
www.cannabisconsortium.net
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NEWT’S GIANT TAX CUT
Cut those taxes.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Every Republican presidential hopeful has a plan to cut taxes.
But one candidate’s plan has been described as so aggressive that it would blow a hole in the federal budget, lead to huge deficits and give the richest Americans a gigantic tax break.
That candidate is current frontrunner Newt Gingrich.
According a new analysis, Gingrich’s tax plan would reduce government revenue by a staggering $1.3 trillion — or 35% — in 2015, the first year the plan could be fully implemented.
“It’s mind boggling. It’s a very large tax cut,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, which performed the analysis.
What would Gingrich’s plan do?
Gingrich wants to add to the current tax code by putting an optional 15% flat tax on income in place, with a $12,000 per-person deduction. And Gingrich would like to eliminate the estate and capital gains taxes.
Swing state economies complicate 2012 picture
For businesses, Gingrich wants to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 12.5% — a move that would take the rate from one of the highest in the industrialized world to one of the lowest.
All those tax cuts mean the federal government would take in much less money. In order to balance the budget — or get even remotely close — government spending would have to be slashed by huge amounts.
And that, as the current Congress has made clear, is near impossible.
The super committee, for example, was trying to find $1.2 trillion in savings over a ten-year period. They failed. The Gingrich plan would create a gap of $1.3 trillion in just a single year.
“This plan means big deficits,” Williams said. “Or huge forced spending cuts. Or both.”
But taxes would definitely go down. A lot.
Billionaires with 1% tax rates
A full 70% of Americans would pay lower taxes under the Gingrich plan, according to the analysis, an average savings of over $7,000 compared to current policy.
The highest-income individuals would see the greatest benefit. A full 99.9% of Americans with more than $1 million in income would get a tax cut. The average savings: $613,000, for an after-tax income boost of 28.7%.
The tax rate paid by those individuals would fall to 11.9%, a reduction of almost 20%. Meanwhile, Americans making less than $100,000 would see their rates drop by between 0.5% and 3.1%.
The Gingrich campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Gingrich tax plan was not heavily scrutinized when first released, but as the former long-shot candidate’s fortunes have improved, his plans for the economy have received more attention.
The plan is similar in some respects to that of Texas Governor Rick Perry, but Gingrich’s proposed rate cuts go even further.
For example, Perry would add a 20% optional flat tax and cut the corporate rate to the same level, while Gingrich wants to take the flat tax down to 15%, and the corporate rate to 12.5%.
Similar to the plan proposed by Rick Perry, taxpayers would be able to choose whether to pay the flat tax, or file under the existing tax code.
Both Perry and Gingrich have touted their optional flat taxes as a way to simplify the tax preparation process.
But tax experts have thrown cold water on that idea — arguing that adding an additional tax option would necessitate the preparation of multiple returns to ensure the lowest rate.
“It’s not tax reform,” Williams said. “As long as you leave the old code in place, you’re not doing tax reform. This would absolutely make it more complex.”
And if Gingrich survives the primary process and emerges as the Republican nominee, his tax plan could provide ammo for the White House, which has signaled in recent days that income inequality will be central to its general campaign message.
After all, the top 1% of earners would get a tax break of more than $340,000 under Gingrich’s plan, even if you assume the Bush tax cuts are extended.
Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/money_topstories/~3/MQxkDtTBHTo/index.htm
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UGA-Griffin names 2019 Classified Employees of the Year
By Sharon Dowdy for CAES News
Anthony Flint, Julie Peters and Gary Ware were honored as the University of Georgia Griffin campus 2019 Classified Employees of the Year during the annual Classified Employee Recognition Ceremony held March 26.
“This is one of my favorite events each year. We come together to celebrate some of those who are the most important in making the Griffin campus what it is. I am proud of all the nominees and honorees this year and can say without hesitation that we have many more across campus who we also consider employees of the year,” said Lew Hunnicutt, assistant provost and director at UGA-Griffin.
Flint has been a part of the campus’ Facilities Management Division for the past six years. Through his dedication, leadership and exemplary work ethic, he quickly rose through the ranks from custodian to custodian supervisor and now serves as facilities coordinator.
In this role, he oversees the campus custodial staff to ensure the campus is a clean and inviting place to work. He also maintains an up-to-date inventory of supplies and works with cleaning-supply vendors to evaluate alternative products for efficiency and value while striving to provide the safest, most economical products. He also handles all of the records and maintenance of campus vehicles, is responsible for receiving, sorting and delivering campus mail, and handles surplus property, including collection, sale, recycling, disposal and record keeping.
Peters joined the UGA-Griffin Office of Continuing Education in 2014 as an administrative associate. She handles logistics for continuing education, including scheduling space, managing the activities of the student workers and helping to execute event requests, and she's entrusted to make many day-to-day office operation decisions.
She is responsible for registration management for some of the largest events held at UGA-Griffin, including organizing all payments and registration and coordinating volunteers, logistics and event details for hundreds of participants. Last year, these events included the 2018 Turfgrass Research Field Day and Agroforestry and Wildlife Field Day, two Dow Chemical Field Days, a two-week international workshop, home-school testing groups, children’s programs and numerous community events.
Ware joined the Statewide Variety Testing Program at UGA-Griffin in April 2007 following a 20-year career at Akins Feed and Seed as a fertilizer plant manager. His knowledge of fertilizers and other agricultural products makes him an invaluable part of the Statewide Variety Testing team.
He is the primary equipment operator for the Griffin team and assists with field work to support variety testing and related research programs, which include layouts, planting, plant and soil sampling, and harvesting operations on campus and at UGA research and education centers across the state. Ware receives, inventories, labels and packages the seeds for each test.
When he is not harvesting a crop, Ware spends his work days monitoring research plots for insects, diseases, bloom dates and bird damage. He also collects data — such as leaf-to-stem ratio — counting yields and measuring the height of plants.
Each of the three winners received a $500 award and a recognition plaque. Other nominees for the award were Susie Autry (Center for Food Safety), Tyler Brannon (Department of Field Research Services), Brett Byous (Department of Entomology) and Donna Kent (Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit). Nominees each received a $100 award.
Sharon Dowdy is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Sharon Dowdy
Lew K. Hunnicutt
UGA specialist optimistic recent rains will help improve state's corn crop Posted on 07/05/19 by Clint Thompson
After suffering a three-week dry spell in May, Georgia corn crops benefitted from rains during the month of June.
One-hundred and eighty gather at UGA research farm to celebrate corn in the field, corn on the plate Posted on 06/27/19 by Merritt Melancon
About 180 northeast Georgians and University of Georgia faculty and staff toured the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Research and Education Center on June 25 as part of the center’s Annual Corn Boil and Field Day.
UGA Extension precision agriculture expert Wes Porter honored Posted on 06/26/19 by Clint Thompson
A University of Georgia scientist’s dedication to educating Georgia farmers about the benefits of precision agriculture has garnered him international recognition. Wes Porter, a UGA Cooperative Extension precision agriculture and irrigation specialist, will receive the Educator/Researcher Award from the PrecisionAg Institute at the InfoAg Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, on Tuesday, July 23.
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Press Release: Citi’s 2014 Global Citizenship Report Highlights Efforts to Enable Economic Progress in Communities Around World
Citi today released its 2014 Global Citizenship Report highlighting efforts underway in the past year to empower people, support economic progress in cities, and catalyze sustainable growth. The report, Progress: Responding to Global Challenges,examines how Citi lends, invests and facilitates growth through core business activities and philanthropic efforts, as well as partnerships and new approaches to address pressing needs.
“Given the pace and scale of global challenges and opportunities, from providing access to basic banking services for the two billion people who lack it to training the workforce of tomorrow, Citi has a unique capacity to support economic progress in the communities where we operate around the world,” said Citi CEO Michael Corbat. “We are living during a period of unprecedented urban growth, and the challenges facing cities and the people living in them cannot be underestimated. Access to financing, innovation and new partnerships are needed now more than ever, and Citi is well positioned to help finance and scale solutions with impact.”
Issues core to Citi’s citizenship efforts include:
Sustainable growth: Citi committed to lend, invest and facilitate $100 billion toward environmental solutions and climate change reduction activities. Citi established 2020 environmental footprint goals, including 35% GHG emissions reduction, 30% energy and water reductions, 60% waste reduction and 33% of its real estate portfolio to be LEED certified. In 2014, Citi screened more than 400 client transactions for environmental and social risk.
Youth empowerment: In 2014, the Citi Foundation launched Pathways to Progress, a three-year, $50 million initiative to help 100,000 low-income young people in 10 major U.S. cities prepare for employment. During its first year, the program assisted nearly 25,000 youth.
Financial inclusion: Citi lent $406 million to more than 1.2 million entrepreneurs—97% of them women—through 44 microfinance institutions in 25 countries and four continents and in partnership with the U.S. Government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Citi also founded the Better Than Cash Alliance – a coalition of public, private and NGO partners focused on financial inclusion, transparency and accelerating the transition to digital payments globally.
Innovation in cities: The Citi Foundation collaborated with Living Cities to launch the City Accelerator, a $3 million program helping U.S. cities embed innovation into their service delivery to low-income residents. Citi also expanded Cities for Citizenship, a program originally launched with the mayors of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, that empowers immigrants eligible for citizenship with access to financial and legal assistance in 15 U.S. cities.
Small business and housing: In the U.S., Citi lent $9.2 billion to over 75,000 small businesses and was recognized as #1 affordable housing lender, providing $3.2 billion of financing in 2014.
Volunteerism: More than 70,000 Citi employees, families and friends across nearly 500 cities volunteered over 900,000 hours as part of Citi’s Global Community Day.
Acting with integrity: Citi introduced a more robust Code of Conduct and launched ethics training for all employees worldwide.
“In 2014, we strengthened our focus on the economic needs of urban youth and harnessed the expanding role cities now play to help create economic opportunities in low-income communities around the world,” said Brandee McHale, Director of Corporate Citizenship at Citi and President of the Citi Foundation. “By expanding financial capability, addressing the social and economic costs of youth unemployment, and deepening collaborations across the public and private sectors, we are helping provide a platform for financial success that is both sustainable and impactful.”
“Citi’s strategy for expanding financial inclusion and community development is to partner with creative community organizations and social entrepreneurs and align with key public policy priorities, using research and a data-driven approach,” added Bob Annibale, Global Director of Inclusive Finance and Community Development at Citi. “We leverage the expertise of Citi’s businesses and client relationships, including municipal governments and development agencies, to develop innovative financing, savings and asset-building products, small business services, neighborhood revitalization programs and immigrant integration services to expand access and economic opportunities, particularly for underserved communities.”
Citi’s citizenship efforts are informed by the perspectives of partners and experts, many of whom are highlighted in this report. To learn more about Citi’s citizenship efforts across the globe and to review the 2014 Global Citizenship Report, visithttp://citizenship.citigroup.com/citi/about/global_citizenship.html. Citi self-declares a B application level under the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework, a global voluntary standard for corporate environmental, social and governance reporting.
Source: MarketWatch (link opens in a new window)
Citi, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, sustainability
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Andrew McCarthy's McCarthyism
By Jonathan Chait
The spittle-flacked National Review contributor claims to have a list of all the times President Obama has used the word terror. Conor Friedersdorf, beginning the dark and lonely work of fact-checking McCarthy's crackpot claims, shows that the number is wholly false:
Excerpt number one is titled, “Obama Afraid to Call It a War on Terror.” It begins as follows:
President Obama’s administration has been roundly ridiculed, and deservedly so, for its aversion to the language of war — indeed, for the word war itself. From the Bush language purge, though, it was but a short hop to this sorry destination. Short and inevitable.
Saul Alinsky, Obama’s community-organizing inspiration, waxed at length about language in “Rules for Radicals,” about the power of words to inspire … or to enervate.
The president learned his lessons well: bloodless prolixity deftly imposed from who knows where within Leviathan’s sprawl. It was not the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or even the National Intelligence Directorate but the Office of Management and Budget that advised the Pentagon that the word war is now out.
“This administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror,’ ” said the new, March 2009 guidance. Our warriors were curtly told, “Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’"
The most amusing aspect of this passage is the pejorative invocation of Saul Alinsky, who is cited as if the notion that words have the power to inspire or enervate is a radical leftist insight. As Mr. McCarthy well knows, the power of words is something politicians have understood for the whole of human history. It insults the intelligence of his readers to pretend that it is unique or radical for a politician to marshal them strategically.
The headline and opening passage also leads readers to believe that President Obama is “afraid” to use the word war. Is that true? Let’s peruse his major speeches. Near the beginning of his inaugural address, he said, “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” In his most recent State of the Union address, he said, “One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt.” In the 2009 State of the Union address, he talked about the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying, “For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price.”
President Obama goes on:
We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war. And with our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away.
There is ample evidence — far more than I’ve quoted — demonstrating that President Obama is perfectly willing to use the word war, and to acknowledge Al Qaeda, the threat from terrorism, and the need to combat extremists half a word away. Mr. McCarthy objects to the strategic renaming of what President Bush called The War on Terrorism, but rather than make a straightforward argument against a change in how we refer to that struggle inside the federal bureaucracy, he dishonestly asserts that President Obama has a radical, ideological opposition to the word war itself, something that would indeed be troubling were it true.
Jonathan Chait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Conor Friedersdorf, Office of Management and Budget, McCarthy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Saul Alinsky, Pentagon
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COMMENT: The CFA Charter vs. the CAIA Charter - my experience
by Jai Doshi 14 May 2019
The CFA exams are coming up. If you pass Level III and get your CFA Charter this year, you might think that's the end of studying. Bad luck! Once you've got the CFA, you might want to go on to the CAIA too.
A lot of people wonder whether to study for a CFA Charter or a CAIA Charter, but take my advice. - Do both. I did, and they're complementary.
More people will have a CFA Charter and a CAIA Charter
It makes a lot of sense to study the CAIA if you're already a CFA Charterholder. - Early last year, CAIA announced the release of their “stackable credential pilot program”, which allows eligible CFA Charterholders to get a waiver for the CAIA level I exam, and therefore to earn the CAIA Charter with a single exam! With this change in place, the CAIA program is likely to grow in popularity, having already seen a significant increase in its member base over the years.
Unfortunately for me, this new pilot program was released too late. - I already passed the CAIA Level I exams in 2018 after achieving my CFA Charter the year before. This year, I sat the second and final CAIA exam.
Completing the full CAIA program without taking advantage of the waiver means I have a holistic view on the similarities and differences between the two qualifications. - And they are very similar. The waiver makes sense because a lot of the CAIA Level I content is covered in all three levels of the CFA exam.
CFA vs. CAIA pass rates
The CFA program is infamous for its notoriously low pass rates. The pass rate for Level I normally trends between 42%-44%, while Levels II and III are slightly higher, at 45% and 56% respectively (in 2018).
By contrast, the pass rates for CAIA are significantly higher. For the recent March sitting, for example, 54% of people passed the Level I exam, while the Level II pass rate was a whopping 69%. Yes, this high pass rate may be attributable to an increasing number of CFA Charterholders cutting straight to the Level II exam, but even before the waiver then pass rates for CAIA Level II typically ranged between 60% and 70%.
CFA vs. CAIA exam difficulty
These higher pass rates often lead people to assume that the CAIA exams are easy, or a “watered down” version of the CFA program. This isn't the case. There were several parts of the CAIA program which I found difficult. And while Level I CAIA had significant overlaps with the CFA program, Level II was much more challenging.
There were three things which I found particularly difficult on level II of the CAIA program:
The ethics portion was NOT in multiple choice format, but rather was in the form of a constructed response. This can trip up even the most skilled of test takers.
Half of the exam is in constructed response format, but this doesn’t account for half the marks. Unlike CFA level III, where the written morning paper and multiple choice afternoon paper have the marks allocated equally, the CAIA level II exam has its marks split unequally. The 2-hour multiple choice morning section accounts for 70% of total marks, while the 2-hour written afternoon section only accounts for 30% of the total marks. Because of this, “revising smart” and “selective revision” are tactics which may not work as effectively, due to the obscure weightings.
Some questions can be tested from a different perspective. While the CFA typically tends to test the core concepts, I felt that the CAIA tends to ask questions from different perspectives which meanyou to know the curriculum to a nitty-gritty level of detail. This does not necessarily equate to difficult questions - it just means that it will be impossible to answer a question if you don’t know the content to a high level of detail. For the CFA, if you don’t know an answer, more often than not, logical reasoning can be used to make an educated guess.
CFA vs. CAIA exam format
The CAIA exam is offered twice a year in March and September, in computerised testing facilities. Each of the two levels are 4 hours long, with an optional 30-minute break, offered halfway through. This means that it is possible to obtain the CAIA charter in less than a year.
The CFA exam is offered every June, with the exception of Level I which is offered in December in addition to June. Each level is 6 hours long, broken up by a lunch break.
In terms of format, I found the CAIA program to be much friendlier to candidates. Firstly, as the exam was held at computerised testing facilities, this meant that you could choose a time slot. I chose my exam slot for 11am, which meant I didn’t have to worry about the stresses of sleeping early the night before. By contrast, for each level of the CFA program, I woke up at 5.30am to get to the test centre (around 50 minutes away from home) for 8am. This took its toll in the afternoon paper, where I felt totally shattered and often had mind blanks due to sheer exhaustion. The computer testing facility was also much more relaxed than the hustle and bustle caused by thousands of candidates sitting the same exam on the same day.
Jai Doshi is a Hedge Fund Researcher at Mercer, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder and a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Charterholder.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available.
Answers to questions about the CFA exam you may never have thought to ask
Here's who will actually employ you when you get your CFA
Are the CFA exams necessary for your finance career?
Private Equity Analyst/ Associate (Shanghai- based)
Executive, Finance – Shanghai
Team Leader, Business Development
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You are at:Home»Faculty»For Presidents and Citizens Alike: Get to Know Your Constitution
For Presidents and Citizens Alike: Get to Know Your Constitution
By Nate Svogun on November 20, 2018 Faculty, Law School News
“The 2020 election should be a referendum on the Constitution of the United States,” says Corey Brettschneider, visiting professor at Fordham Law. The question then becomes how well do the American people—and their presidential candidates—understand the Constitution?
On November 14, Fordham Law hosted a book talk featuring Corey Brettschneider, who is also professor of political science at Brown University, and Professor John D. Feerick ’61. The topic of discussion was Brettschneider’s new book, The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents, which offers its readers a detailed history of how the Constitution has been interpreted and practically implemented throughout U.S. history.
“What the book did for me is focus me on our values,” said Feerick. Brettschneider elaborated on this, saying that the book’s underlying idea is that constitutional law draws from multiple sources. To adhere strictly to the words as they were written back in the 18th century would be to violate the intentions of the Founders, he argued.
The strict originalism of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and others has focused too much on just the words and thus “lost the ideas behind the words,” said Brettschneider. “If you don’t see the themes behind the document, I think that’s an impoverished way of interpreting it.”
The book explores many of the country’s foundational ideas. Brettschneider starts each chapter with a principle—a short, punchy statement that summarizes a key concept that presidents must understand, followed by a piece of practical, pointed advice. Chapter 1, for instance, which is titled “Article II and the Limited Presidency,” begins with the following: “The president is not a king or dictator. See yourself as a public servant whose powers are limited by the Constitution.”
While Brettschneider’s book is ostensibly a guide for future presidents, it serves as a practical guide to the Constitution for every U.S. citizen. In a starred review Kirkus calls the book “a clear-eyed, accessible, and informative primer: vital reading for all Americans.” Alan Ryan, the former Warden of New College, Oxford and a current lecturer at Princeton University, named the book as one of two of the best of 2018 in New Statesman.
“The Constitution is independent of any one branch,” Brettschneider said at the Thursday event, “and any one branch can get it wrong.” Ultimately the power is with the people who vote the president into office.
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EU: Iran Deal Must be Saved to Avoid Regional Nuclear Arms Race
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Teacher Talks
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Project RESET
News Judge Richard Dinkins To Be Inducted Into Public Schools Hall of Fame
Judge Richard Dinkins To Be Inducted Into Public Schools Hall of Fame
MPF July 11, 2019 Press Releases
Judge Richard Dinkins, passionate civil rights activist and judge for the Tennessee Court of Appeals, will be honored with the Nelson C. Andrews Distinguished Service Award at the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF)’s 15th annual Public Schools Hall of Fame event on Wednesday, Oct. 2. Kasar Abdulla, Dr. Adrienne Battle and Jimmy Granbery will also be inducted into the Public Schools Hall of Fame as Distinguished Alumni Award honorees.
The annual Hall of Fame luncheon, presented by First Tennessee, raises funds to support NPEF’s work and aims to inspire future innovators and leaders in the city by honoring those who are making a difference for public schools.
Dinkins is being honored with the Nelson C. Andrews Award, sponsored by Education Networks of America, in recognition of his dedication and service to the Nashville community, and his fierce advocacy for civil rights in public education. During his third year of law school at Vanderbilt University, Dinkins clerked for the Honorable Avon N. Williams Jr. and became involved in Nashville’s long-running desegregation case. Dinkins went on to successfully represent the plaintiffs in the case.
“Judge Dinkins’ life and career are marked by an exemplary commitment to service, and he stands as a pillar of civic leadership in Nashville,” said Janet Miller, event co-chairwoman and CEO of the Nashville office of Colliers International. “I can think of few people who have made such a profound impact on Nashville’s public schools – and few people as deserving of NPEF’s highest honor – as Judge Richard Dinkins.”
The Distinguished Alumni Award, presented by Belmont University, recognizes outstanding Metro Nashville Public Schools graduates who go above and beyond to support our city and its public schools. This year’s winners are not only outstanding MNPS graduates, they also all give back to our public schools in their own unique and impactful ways, representing the necessary collaboration of nonprofit, public and private sectors in supporting our students.
● Kasar Abdulla has a lifelong dedication to empowering others, and gives back to the community through her work with schools, nonprofits and social justice organizations. This dedication can be traced back to her youth, when she spent part of her childhood in a Kurdish-refugee camp in Turkey. After immigrating to the United States, Abdulla became a first-generation college graduate and became involved in several organizations for change, including the YWCA, Kurdish Women for Better Health, and Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. She was even honored by President Barack Obama as a Welcoming America Champion for Change in 2013. She now serves as chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Valor Collegiate Academies, and serves on the board of PENCIL Foundation. She is a graduate of Antioch High School.
● Dr. Adrienne Battle is a devoted public servant whose career is marked by her commitment to serving Nashville’s public schools. She is the first female director of Metro Nashville Public Schools, and the first director to graduate from the district. Her 20-year career in education spans all the way back to her elementary school days in Nashville. She has held multiple executive principal positions through the elementary and high school levels, and was named the 2015 Academies of Nashville Executive Principal of the Year. Because of her leadership as executive principal of Antioch High School, the school made tremendous academic gains and was even designated a Tennessee Reward School for progress in 2014. She is a graduate of Overton High School.
● Jimmy Granbery is a prominent leader in the Nashville business community, serving as chairman and CEO of the H.G. Hill Realty Company and chairman of the H.G. Hill Company. He serves as a commissioner of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, was recently appointed to the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission, and serves as vice chairman of the Martin Methodist College board and the Nashville Zoo board. He is also a longtime supporter of the YMCA of Middle Tennessee, which recently awarded him the organization’s highest honor, the Order of the Red Triangle Award. His support of the Y’s Youth Outreach was instrumental in the success of YCAP’s Achievers Program. Last year, the program awarded over $600,000 in college scholarship money to MNPS students; a 1,000% increase over the previous year. He is a graduate of Hillwood High School.
“In order to tackle the problems facing our public schools, it is necessary for the entire community to come together. These three honorees, with their diverse backgrounds and career paths, are the embodiment of that,” said Joey Hatch, event co-chairman and former executive vice president and general manager for Skanska’s Midwest region. “As a fellow MNPS graduate, I am proud to help honor these three individuals, who’ve found such success in their careers, while also supporting public schools and giving back to the city in such meaningful ways.”
NPEF will also be presenting the Inspiring Innovation Award and the second annual Inspiring Educator Award at the event. Those winners will be unveiled at the Oct. 2 luncheon. Miller and Hatch are joined by Anne Lowry Russell, Ron Corbin and Harry Allen, who are serving as table host chairs for the event.
To purchase tickets, visit nashvillepef.org/hall-of-fame or call 615-727-1515. All proceeds support NPEF’s work to support and strengthen our public schools.
© 2017 Nashville Public Education Foundation
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Select ratingGive Haywood, William 1/5Give Haywood, William 2/5Give Haywood, William 3/5Give Haywood, William 4/5Give Haywood, William 5/5
Haywood, William
by Alan D. Watson, 1988
William Haywood, merchant and politician, was the oldest of seven children of John Haywood and his wife Mary Lovatt of New York (perhaps born in Beverly, Mass., on 27 Nov. 1695). John Haywood was born near St. Michael in Christ Church Parish on Barbados, British West Indies, in 1685; he arrived in North Carolina about 1730. He served as vestryman and churchwarden of the Anglican parish in Edgecombe County, sheriff, colonel of the county militia, member of the Provincial Assembly, and treasurer for the northern counties. He was also employed by Earl Granville as surveyor for Edgecombe County, an office that embroiled him in political disturbances and caused the exhumation of his body after his death in 1758 to verify his demise.
William Haywood's public career spanned two decades beginning in 1760 when he was named justice of the peace of Edgecombe County, commissioned colonel of the Edgecombe militia, and appointed surveyor of the county by Granville. Haywood proved active in county affairs as magistrate by serving on commissions to build bridges, erect a jail, and examine the sheriff's accounts. During the year of his death he was one of the tax assessors of the county. His devotion to public duty is best exemplified by his constant attendance as justice of the peace at the sessions of the county court. Between 1760 and 1775, he missed only eight quarterly court gatherings.
Haywood was also active in provincial politics. He represented Edgecombe County continuously in the Provincial Assembly from 1760 to 1775, and served on committees of propositions and grievances, public accounts, public claims, and privileges and elections. In 1764 legislation he was designated one of the commissioners to relocate the courthouse of Edgecombe County. In 1774, Haywood introduced legislation for the better observance of the Sabbath and the suppression of vice and immorality in the province.
During the colonial struggle with Great Britain for independence, Haywood demonstrated his allegiance to the American cause. The Third Provincial Congress, which met at Hillsborough in 1775, appointed him to the Committee of Safety for the Halifax District. In 1776, he represented Edgecombe in the Fourth and Fifth Provincial Congresses at Halifax. In the Fifth Congress he was chairman of the committee on privileges and elections and sat on the committee that drafted the state constitution. The same Congress elected Haywood to the Council of State, in which capacity he remained until resigning in 1778. In 1779, he was elected to represent Edgecombe in the lower house of the state legislature.
Haywood belonged to the Anglican church and served as vestryman in St. Mary's Parish. On 2 Mar. 1754 he married Charity Hare, daughter of Moses Hare of Hertford County. They had nine children: Jemima, who married John Whitfield of Lenoir County; John, who was state treasurer for forty years; Ann, who married Robert Williams of Pitt County; Charity, who married Josiah Lawrence of Pitt County; Mary, who married Ethelred Ruffin of Edgecombe County; Sherwood, who was U.S. commissioner of loans; Elizabeth, who married Henry Irwin Toole of Edgecombe County; William, who was clerk of a U.S. district court; and Stephen, who was a state senator of North Carolina. William Haywood died in late 1779 and presumably was buried at his home, Dunbar Plantation, in Edgecombe County.
Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, vol. 3 (1905).
Walter Clark, ed., State Records of North Carolina, vols. 11–25 (1895–1905).
Hubert B. Haywood, Sr., Sketch of the Haywood Family in North Carolina (1956).
Minutes, Edgecombe County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, 1760–79 (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh).
William L. Saunders, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, vols. 6–10 (1888–89).
"Haywood, William, patriot" 325. The National cyclopaedia of American biography Volume 4. New York: J. T. White company. 1895. http://books.google.com/books?id=190DAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA325#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed January 14, 2013).
Battle, Kemp P. "The First City Fathers." Early history of Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina. A centennial address delivered by invitation of the Committee on the centennial celebration of the foundation of the city, October 18, 1892. Raleigh, N.C.: Edwards & Broughton, printers. 1893. 49-50. http://digital.ncdcr.gov/u?/p249901coll26,3378 (accessed January 14, 2013).
Wheeler, John Hill. "Geneaology of the Haywood Family." Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians: An Extract : Genealogy of the Blount, Haywood and Phifer Families. Washington: Henkle & Company, 1885 lxiii-lxv. http://books.google.com/books?id=ljQ2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PR63#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed January 14, 2013).
Watson, Alan D.
1 January 1988 | Watson, Alan D.
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North Carolina Academy of Science
by Nancy Smith Midgette, 2006
See also: Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society.
The North Carolina Academy of Science is a significant part of the professional lives of the state's scientists. Organized in 1902, the academy sought to fill the need for collegiality among scientists who, as faculty members of underfunded colleges and universities, often could not attend national disciplinary meetings. State academies of science had proliferated in other regions of the country during the late nineteenth century, an outgrowth of the emerging spirit of professionalism among the nation's scientists. In addition to sponsoring annual meetings, these organizations endeavored to publish modest journals and to provide an avenue whereby scientists could offer their expertise for the public good.
The idea for the North Carolina Academy of Science originated with William Willard Ashe, who, as forester for the North Carolina Geological Survey, did not benefit from even the limited professional contact within a university community. A group of Raleigh biologists, including Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, Franklin Sherman, and F. L. Stevens, quickly turned the idea into reality by soliciting support among their colleagues throughout the state and calling an organizational meeting in March 1902.
The academy limped along until 1909, when minor changes in membership requirements and the meeting format, as well as a membership drive, brought in 45 new associates. By 1920 membership totaled 112 persons; ten years later that figure had climbed to 305 persons. Membership declined a bit during the Great Depression, but following World War II it skyrocketed, reflecting primarily the expansion of institutions of higher education.
Although the North Carolina Academy of Science has always sought a broad membership, welcoming high school science teachers, industrial scientists, and state government employees, most members have come from colleges and universities. Consequently, the goals of the organization have reflected the professional needs of this group of scientists, including an opportunity to meet to discuss their research, a forum for the formal presentation of research results, and a publication outlet.
The academy achieved the first two of these goals; since 1909 annual meetings have attracted broad participation and offered wide-ranging programs. Prior to World War II, these meetings were often the only professional conventions that scientists attended. After the war, established scientists began to use the forum to announce research that they would flesh out in future publications, and young scholars, having discovered the difficulty of accessing the programs of national meetings, were able to find a place on the agenda of the state academy and thus enter the professional world.
The academy was less successful in publishing a journal. In 1904 it teamed up with the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society to sponsor a joint publication and was able to produce a quarterly journal fairly regularly. The volumes, though, were often small and frequently appeared late. With minimum funding, editors who had academic responsibilities as well, and a membership that preferred to submit their most promising scholarship to a national journal first, the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society was regarded as a secondary but nonetheless creditable professional publication.
Beginning in the 1920s, the North Carolina Academy of Science expressed concern over environmental issues and the quality of public education and made a number of efforts to influence legislation in these areas. These issues continued in the post-World War II era, culminating in such actions as the sponsorship of a Junior Academy of Science and high school science fairs (funded to a considerable extent by National Science Foundation grants). With the decline of federal funds in the early 1970s, the outreach programs contracted. In the early 2000s the academy continued to maintain both education and conservation committees that served a watchdog function, reacting when some aspect of their area of interest seemed threatened.
Nancy Smith Midgette, "In Search of Professional Identity: Southern Scientists, 1883-1940," Journal of Southern History 54 (November 1988).
Midgette, To Foster the Spirit of Professionalism: Southern Scientists and State Academies of Science (1991).
The North Carolina Academy of Science: http://www.ncacadsci.org/
William Willard Ashe created the idea for the Academy of Science. Image courtesy of UNC. Available from http://www.herbarium.unc.edu/Collectors/ashe.htm (accessed November 7, 2012).
Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, a founder of the Academy of Science, working in the Museum of Natural History, ca. 1937. Image courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.
N.C. Industrial Revolution (1900-1929)
Science, technology, and innovations
Societies, clubs, and organizations
Midgette, Nancy Smith
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You are here: Home / Reviews / Exhibition Reviews / Nothing Stable under Heaven at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Nothing Stable under Heaven at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
November 23, 2018 /in Autumn 2018_#Mapping, Exhibition Reviews, Reviews /by Greg DeCuir
Tags: art, exhibition, museum, San Francisco
At its best, it is carefully-constructed chaos. At its worst, it is equally chaotic but less carefully constructed. Nothing Stable under Heaven (https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/nothing-stable-under-heaven/) is an exhibition that bombards you from all angles as it forces you to juggle different and sometimes jumbled social issues and themes. Running at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 3 March through 16 September 2018 and curated as a large-scale joint effort by five SFMOMA departments,[1] this exhibition takes its name from a line in James Baldwin’s 1962 essay ‘The Creative Process’, in which he states that ‘a society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven’.[2] The featured artists of this show certainly live up to the Baldwinian archetype in pointing out underlying instability, as this exhibition attempts to tackle scores of ‘social, ecological, and civic issues’ and asks ‘provoking questions about systems of power, mass surveillance, and environmental degradation’.[3] Ambitious in its scope – and presenting itself more effectively at first than in the later rooms – Nothing Stable under Heaven highlights a new problem at every turn and raises a new concern on every wall.
The first room in the exhibition is anchored by two well-devised and well-curated three-dimensional pieces. Suspended from the ceiling of this room is An Te Liu’s Cloud (2008), an amalgamation of ‘air purifiers, ionizers, sterilizers, washers, humidifiers, and ozone air cleaners’ that emits a continuous series of somewhat-audible, high-pitched whirs as the many machines cycle through and purify the air of the gallery.[4] The bulky purifying systems jut out sharply, crawling across the gallery’s overhead space like blocky tentacles while providing a cleansing service to the museum-going public. Cloud is not natural, not a wispy cirrus or a fluffy cumulus; rather, it is machinic, an embodied harbinger of mechanised artificiality. It offers not the pitter-patter of rain falling from a nimbus but instead the hums and whizzes of a sanitised future.
Fig. 1: An Te Liu, Cloud, 2008. Air purifiers, ionisers, sterilisers, washers, humidifiers, and ozone air cleaners; various dimensions. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Purchase through gifts of anonymous donors. © An Te Liu. Photograph: An Te Liu.
In the work’s seemingly expanding mass of utilitarian architecture, I cannot help but be reminded of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 complex, built for the 1967 World’s Fair (Expo 67) in Montreal. Both Liu’s Cloud and Safdie’s Habitat 67, with their sprawling aggregations of angular, cubic forms, exist at the boundary of promise and threat; in looking at either of them I do not know whether to marvel or tremble at a scene that is simultaneously utopian and dystopian. Just as Habitat 67 thrusts upward into the Montreal sky, its blocks of manmade modularity repeating themselves ominously even as they provide living space for the apartment complex’s tenants, Cloud hovers over the gallery floor, its humming household appliances casting foreboding shadows even as they purify the room’s air.
Across from Cloud is the other three-dimensional centrepiece of this first room: Hans Haacke’s News. This installation, created originally in 1969 and updated in 2008, features a printer that rests upon a table and intermittently adds to a never-ending stream of newsfeed. It physically prints out news from various media outlets in not-quite-real-time onto one long sheet of paper, which accumulates in flowing loops on the ground of the exhibition space. Visitors are invited to touch the paper, picking it up to read a recent story from ABC or CNN or FOX News. Installing News in such close proximity to Cloud is a brilliant curatorial decision, for these pieces simultaneously pull at and push back from one another. Both works are expansive – Cloud offers the illusion of sprawling growth while News literally grows by the minute – but in such distinct ways. Cloud expands rigidly, angularly, and in the sky; News expands with looping mounds and coiling curves on the ground. Both works also make mechanical sounds, but they are different in their timbre. The soft, regular buzz of the filtration systems finds a shrill rejoinder in the sporadic, piercing cries of the printer. And as these two sculptural installations engage in this visual and auditory tension, they create the exact chaotic instability that this exhibition sets out to reveal. From above, the machinery of purification looms over you. From below, the logorrheic cascades of the physicalised 24-hour news cycle pool at your feet. There is no stable calm; there is no escape; there are no answers.
Fig. 2: Trevor Paglen, Autonomy Cube, 2014. Plexiglass cube with two functional motherboards, W-lan server; 13 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (34.29 x 34.29 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase. © Trevor Paglen. Photograph: Katherine Du Tiel. Courtesy of the artist; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; and Metro Pictures, New York.
Adding to the chaos of this first room are the invisible reverberations of one other piece – a piece which is, in my opinion, the most singularly compelling work of the show. In a darkened side gallery to the right of the main room, Arthur Jafa’s seven-minute film Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2016) plays on repeat. The montage – which splices together sports highlights, vertically-oriented iPhone videos, police dashcams, and various other forms of archival or found footage – is simultaneously a celebration of black pride and accomplishments and a lamentation of institutional racism in America. This luminous film of agony and ecstasy is riveting, with images and juxtapositions that sear themselves into the minds of viewers. In one haunting moment, a Civil Rights Movement-era clip of policemen unleashing gallons of pressurised water from fire hoses onto a scattering group of protestors is followed immediately by a slow-motion shot of NFL quarterback Cam Newton smiling as he charges straight toward the endzone. The triumphant pumps of Newton’s powerful arms echo the frenzied pumps of the arms of a scared protestor who, seconds before, appeared fleeing on the screen. The film relishes in these visual rhymes, conjuring an array of emotions and creating diachronic conversations about the black experience between disparate figures, famous and anonymous alike.
But in the context of Nothing Stable under Heaven perhaps even more interesting than the content of Jafa’s remarkable work is what the film adds to the ambiance of the exhibition’s main gallery. Because of the thinness of the film screening room’s wall, the soundtrack to the montage – Kanye West’s 2016 song ‘Ultralight Beam’ – can be heard from the main hall. And at this particular moment in time the soulful melodies of ‘Ultralight Beam’ that resound through the gallery take on a very unique character. In a way that Jafa could not have predicted when he selected the song in 2015, West has become a lightning rod of political controversy due to his peculiar endorsement of Donald Trump. Almost serendipitously, then, do the fraught dynamics of celebrity, politics, race, and discrimination further mark West’s rap-gospel hymn as it wafts into the exhibition space. The loud resonances of ‘Ultralight Beam’ compound the cacophony of the faint hum of Cloud and the sharp screeches of News. At times, when ‘Ultralight Beam’ is blaring and News is printing and visitors are congregating to ooh and aah at the new article emerging from the printer (for News does, in Bourriaudian fashion, create a momentary community of museum-goers who huddle together in front of the printer each time it comes alive), it can become difficult to hear yourself think.
Fig. 3: Penelope Umbrico, 5,377,183 Suns (from Sunsets) from Flickr (Partial) 4/28/09, 2009, 1440 chromogenic prints; dimensions variable. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Members of Foto Forum purchase. © Penelope Umbrico. Photograph: Ben Blackwell.
The curatorial goal here, of course, is not to evoke Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics in creating a micro-utopia (that is, a momentary community produced when works of art offer a space of shared activity), but rather to establish a Baldwinian awareness of our own instability. In this charge, this room is wildly effective. You experience a visceral instability through the variety of noises pelting you from one side or another or suffusing themselves into the gallery space. But also, you experience a social instability through the barrage of challenging questions that the individual works – the angular fog of mechanical advancement, the ever-growing lake of newsprint, the spectres of institutional racism and celebrity culture – ask about our sociopolitical climate.
I would thus consider the first room quite a triumph in the auditory and visual chaos it is capable of creating. But while this room actualises Baldwin’s phrase in all the right ways, from here I believe the exhibition begins to take a downward turn. The next few rooms lack the exhibition’s initial sonic energy and feel like a chaos that is more disjointed than carefully constructed. To begin with the most obvious point about the rest of Nothing Stable under Heaven, there is nowhere beyond the first room where you are faced with anything resembling the cacophonous din of Cloud, News, and Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death all working in discordant synchronicity. In fact, there is only one other piece in this exhibition that makes any sound at all – a single-channel video by the director and graphic designer Mike Mills, far quieter and less grand than Jafa’s montage, tucked away into an alcove behind the exhibition’s second room, inaudible to all but those sitting in close proximity. Make no mistake, I do not believe that there is anything inherently wrong with art that is not noisy, but in this specific instance, the sonic dissonance of the first room so effectively evoked the instability central to the exhibition’s thematic thrust that I was disappointed when it died down in the following galleries to nothing more than the characteristic murmurs of a well-populated museum. If there is a redeeming quality to this auditory fade-out, it is that it perhaps draws even more attention to the chaotic clamor in the first room. I grant that I may not have singled out the genius of the first gallery’s noisiness if the next two were equally noisy – in which case, I would probably instead be praising a more unified curatorial vision.
Fig. 4: Jim Campbell, Tilted Plane, 2011. Custom electronics, LEDs, light bulbs, wire, and steel; dimensions variable. Gift of the artist and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco. © Jim Campbell. Photograph: Ruth Clark.
But sound is not the only thing that subsides in the final two rooms of the exhibition, for the show’s coherence trails off as well. Coherence may seem like a strange concept to be striving for in a show about instability, but the chaos in the first room is so compelling precisely because it coheres. Cloud and News converse with each other dynamically; Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death feels like it is meant to be heard but not seen in that first room. This type of chaos, this deliberate clamorous polyphony, gives way to a cheaper chaos as the exhibition begins to resemble less a thoroughly-planned uproar and more a wunderkammer of various pieces of art and social criticism that are vaguely thematically grouped.
The most immediately eye-catching work of the second room, Trevor Paglen’s Autonomy Cube (2014), does little to dispel this thought. Perched atop a tall white pedestal, Autonomy Cube features a motherboard housed inside of a one-and-a-quarter foot cube of thick acrylic vitrine. The piece, resembling a relic in some space-age cabinet of curiosities, provides anonymous Tor Wi-Fi capability to all museum-goers, commenting on government internet surveillance and the erosion of privacy in the Information Age. On the opposite wall, Penelope Umbrico’s 5,377,183 Suns (from Sunsets) from Flickr (Partial) 4/28/09 (2009) tackles some different aspects of the online experience via an aesthetically appealing arrangement of 1440 Flickr photographs of sunsets, and Glenn Ligon’s We’re Black and Strong (I) (1996) screenprint finds itself somewhat randomly on the room’s back wall.
This is not to say, of course, that there is nothing of value beyond the first room of the exhibition. In fact, one of the best works of the entire show hangs quietly, almost understatedly, in the hallway between the second and third galleries. It is a selection of small (28 x 37 cm) untitled photographs from a series shot by Richard Misrach in and around New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. These framed pictures – of houses, cars, and other personal property – are all devoid of any human figures, seemingly set in a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, but each photograph depicts a spray-painted message left by the residents of the home or the owners of the property. Some show a strong sense of gallows humor, like the one with ‘YARD SALE’ written on a tree that stands uprooted next to garbage cans overflowing with rubble and debris; others, including a picture of ‘BROKEN DREAMS’ sprayed onto a tall wooden fence obscuring a dilapidated house, are heartbreaking. These disembodied photographs depict the instability of houses, neighborhoods, and lives. They show, in all shades of spray paint, the ways – humor, anger, grief – that battered humans cope with the realisation that there truly is nothing stable under heaven. Nevertheless, in spite of bright moments like Misrach’s photographs, the exhibition begins to feel lazier after its tour de force of a first gallery. In the second room, it seems as though the curators dug up some contemporary pieces in their collection that relate to digital culture (e.g. Paglen’s, Umbrico’s), interspersed them with a few other works (e.g. Ligon’s), and called it a day. The result is a more haphazard and unsuccessful chaos than the calculated chaos of the first room, and it only gets less cogent from here.
The last room of the exhibition features mainly three-dimensional works and is the least dynamic of all. Even the crowds gathered around Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (1992-1993) and rolling up their newly-acquired posters do little to offset the strange and stilted stillness of the gallery. Tony Feher’s sculptural It Seemed a Beautiful Day (2002) hangs with an intentional homemade aesthetic on the back wall; the opposite corner houses Jessica Jackson Hutchkin’s rough newspapered Couch for a Long Time (2009); Tobias Wong’s Bulletproof Quilted Duvet (2004), in its thick textile blackness, occupies the centre of the space. Alone, none of these works is necessarily a failure, but together they turn this gallery into a somewhat sparsely-populated resting place for inert found objects and detritus. Chaotic, indeed, but not particularly energetic, compelling, or well-crafted.
The lack of energy in this room manifests itself most prominently with Wong’s piece, Bulletproof Quilted Duvet, which is displayed atop a large white box not unlike the pedestal on which Paglen’s Autonomy Cube sits in the preceding room. Situating the Bulletproof Quilted Duvet (which is exactly what it sounds like, a quilted duvet ‘made of ballistic fabric’[5]) atop the crisp, antiseptic, museum-grade white box inhibits us from even beginning to experience Wong’s work as a raw, affecting art object. Instead, it looks like an artifact in some sort of anthropological museum, dwarfed by the furniture on which it stands, defanged by the sterility of the white box below. And so, in this way, Nothing Stable under Heaven progresses from the pulsating sonic discord of the first room to the ossified inertness of the last.
Setting aside this gradual decline in curatorial quality through the course of the exhibition, I believe that one of the larger overarching problems of Nothing Stable under Heaven is the way that the show can at times be (mis)read as pandering to sensationalism. I must admit that this complaint is not altogether fair, for much of it centres on a piece that is not technically part of the exhibition, but it is something I would like to mention regardless. Just beyond the final gallery of the exhibition is a large darkened room housing Jim Campbell’s Tilted Plane (2011). This immersive installation is technologically complex and all-encompassing, allowing museum-goers to navigate a flickering ‘angled image plane’ of ‘hundreds of lightbulbs whose filaments have been replaced by light-emitting diodes (LEDs)’.[6] The experience, I believe, is best summed up by a response I overheard from a middle-aged man in jeans and a Nike t-shirt as he walked out of Tilted Plane: ‘Woah, that was f*****g cool!’
Tilted Plane is certainly cool, but that feels like pretty much all that it is. It seems wrong to encounter a piece like this at the end of an exhibition that is about so much more than Instagramable aesthetics and ‘f*****g cool’ traversable landscapes. Although, as I said before, Tilted Plane is not part of Nothing Stable under Heaven, that fact is not made abundantly clear by any signage or placards, and I got the sense that many visitors entered into the LED grid thinking that it was the climax of the exhibition they had just seen. And as I retraced my steps back from Tilted Plane through Nothing Stable under Heaven, I realised just how much of this show could be experienced as mere interactive sensation. I saw a family laughing as they each rolled up one of Gonzalez-Torres’ posters to take home as a souvenir; a teenager striking a cheeky pose as her friend snapped her picture in front of Umbrico’s wall of sunsets; a few boys excitedly unlocking their iPhones as they read Paglen’s wall text about how to log onto the Tor network; a man cracking a surprised smile as a security guard informed him that, yes, he was actually allowed to bend down and pick up some of Haacke’s newsprint to read for himself. It is not these works’ fault that they tip their cap – intentionally or not – to a sensational or at least interactive impulse. In fact, it is only against the backdrop of Tilted Plane that this dynamic truly begins to emerge. I will not go so far as to blame the curatorial staff for the way Tilted Plane interacts with the works in Nothing Stable under Heaven (after all, Tilted Plane is not part of the show, and I understand that curators must work within an existing museum floor plan), but the nearby presence of a work as spectacular and aestheticised as Tilted Plane does undoubtedly undermine some of the urgency and social commentary of the art in the exhibition.
But this observation about sensationalism in Nothing Stable under Heaven points to a paradox in this show’s relationship with media and mediation. An artist’s shrewd use of media and visual culture allows for what I think is the single greatest work of the entire exhibition, and yet the way that visitors interface with the show’s art through their own personal media devices brings out the worst in the show. Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death operates as an affecting tapestry of emotions stitched together from the fabric of mediated images – the shaky footage of a startled black teenager in a bathing suit being thrown to the ground by a police officer, with the YouTube username of the person who uploaded the clip in a large font at the top of the screen; the TV coverage of Serena Williams’ victory dance at the 2012 Olympics, with the network’s ‘LIVE’ graphic in the video’s upper right corner. But in the main galleries of the exhibition, as the audio of Jafa’s film fades slowly from earshot, scores of similar mediated images are created daily – the out-of-focus iPhone video of Haacke’s News printing out a fresh set of headlines, a clip that could soon be making its way onto YouTube; the selfie snapped in front of Umbrico’s 5,377,183 Suns, a photograph that will probably be run through a filter or two before popping up on Instagram. For these images, though, there is no Arthur Jafa to spin them into a poignant montage, and they instead stand (at least, for someone who has walked out to Tilted Plane and back) as accumulating testaments to the filtering, aestheticising, and defanging of a show that has something to say.
I recognise that my comments about mediation within the gallery space are not groundbreaking, nor are they necessarily unique to Nothing Stable under Heaven. Moreover, I hope not to come across as a curmudgeonly spoilsport penning a polemic against the museum in the age of Instagram, because I do feel that personal digital culture can and should have its place in the gallery, but I think that this exhibition is unique in that media simultaneously lifts it to its greatest heights and contributes to its undoing. Nevertheless, as an exhibition of contemporary art, Nothing Stable under Heaven is certainly a success. It does resound more effectively in some places than others, and its initial deliberate sense of overwhelming chaotic instability sputters as the exhibition presses on. Still, it is a show that the curators can be proud of – and a show that I could see Baldwin, at least based on his musings on ‘The Creative Process’, being proud of too.
Justin Ross Muchnick (Stanford University)
James Baldwin, ‘The Creative Process’, c. 1962: https://www.sfmoma.org/read/creative-process/. (The essay that inspired this exhibition.)
Aaron Betsky, ‘An Te Liu and Memorials to Waste’, Architect Magazine, 2016: http://www.architectmagazine.com/design/exhibits-books-etc/an-te-liu-and-memorials-to-waste_o. (A short article on An Te Liu’s practice.)
Arthur Jafa and Tina Campt, ‘Love is the Message, The Plan is Death’, e-flux journal, 2017: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/126451/love-is-the-message-the-plan-is-death/. (e-flux interview with Jafa.)
Baldwin, J. ‘The Creative Process’, Library of America, c. 1962: https://www.sfmoma.org/read/creative-process/.
‘Nothing Stable under Heaven’, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018: https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/nothing-stable-under-heaven/.
[1] Nothing Stable under Heaven, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/nothing-stable-under-heaven/. The departments that collaborated are Architecture + Design, Education + Public Practice, Media Arts, Painting + Sculpture, and Photography.
[2] Baldwin 1962.
[3] Wall text for Nothing Stable under Heaven, SFMOMA, 2018.
[4] Wall text for Cloud, SFMOMA, 2018.
[5] Wall text for Bulletproof Quilted Duvet, SFMOMA, 2018.
[6] Wall text for Tilted Plane, SFMOMA, 2018.
https://www.necsus-ejms.org/wp-content/uploads/Necsus-01.png 0 0 Greg DeCuir https://www.necsus-ejms.org/wp-content/uploads/Necsus-01.png Greg DeCuir2018-11-23 17:41:342018-12-12 08:10:49Nothing Stable under Heaven at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Racial phantasmagoria: The demonisation of the other in Richard Mosse’s �... Codes of conflux: Collaborations between human and computer in MoMA’s Thinking...
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From “The Cup of Worlds” by Jacelyn “Bali Mojo” Marina
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: association football, fiction, humor, soccer, sports, story, Transylvania, World Cup |
CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming at you live from the NBS Sports Channel 3’s telecast of the Cup of Worlds.
TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, renewing my objection to the pointlessness of this endeavor while one of the left wings for Transylvania’s soccer team writhes in agony and calls for a priest in a futile attempt to get a time-out.
CARL: We’ve been over this before, Tom, we’re to call it “football,” not soccer, or NBS will stick us on the Canadian National High School Field Hockey tournament in Calgary.
TOM: That’s right, Carl, but I am long past the point of caring on this. “Soccer,” a contraction of “Association Football,” has just as much of an inalienable etymological right to exist as “football.” It’s not even an Americanism; they used it in the UK for 50 years before they began to root it out with the zealotry of a Salem witchfinder.
CARL: That may be so, but all the signs say “football” on the field and in the logo of our sponsoring organization, l’Association Mondial pour la Pratique du Football or AMPF.
TOM: That’s right Carl, but surely you can’t fail to appreciate the perversity inherent in a sport invented in the UK using an affected French name for its governing body, to say nothing of the sport’s name remaining untranslated therein. Linguistic perversity does seem to be a particular facet of this girls’ game.
CARL: Now Tom, you’re not going to tell me that you still hold to that hoary old American stereotype of association football being merely a sport for girls. It’s got a large and growing–and passionate–following among Americans of all stripes. In fact, many have predicted that it is finally getting a toehold in our society.
TOM: That’s right, Carl, but I for one am sick of the implication that not being as nutty about the sport as the rest of the world is a sign of some sort of innate inferiority. It’s a game, and telling someone that they are less of something for preferring a different game is like criticizing someone for not enjoying Super Mario Bros. It’s ultimately meaningless, and only the continued AMPF lusting after American dollars keeps it in the conversation at all.
CARL: Maybe we should continue this conversation at a later time, Tom. It looks like Picodegallo is about ready to drop the charade and rejoin the fray now that the referee has ignored his pleas to be administered the Last Rites.
TOM: That’s right, Carl. Perhaps we’re better off reflecting on the significance of the Cup of Worlds and what it means for the victors.
CARL: It’s certainly worth reflecting upon, Tom. As many of our international viewers are already aware, the winner of the Cup of Worlds–be it Transylvania or the People’s Republic of Katanga–will gain total control over the world’s resources for a year. They will also be granted dominion over the Great Portal, free to invade or demand tribute from any of the scattered realms of the multiverse during their tenure.
TOM: That’s right, Carl. They are both lusting after former champion Riograndia, which used the phenomenal cosmic power of the Cup of Worlds to annex large sections of the neighboring Republica Juliana and to set its president-for-life atop the Throne of Skulls.
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one small window…
on the world: a view on human rights
Articles published elsewhere
Could Your Mosque (Other Religious/Community Space) Offer Shelter to the Homeless this Winter?
One in five adults and one in four children, or fourteen million people in the UK live in poverty. Rising rents, fewer state benefits and public service cuts, coupled with low and stagnant wages, mean at least 57% of households living in poverty include a member in paid work.
One of the most obvious manifestations of this poverty is homelessness, with the current housing crisis recognised even by the government. According to housing charity Shelter, the number of homeless people in the UK is at least 300,000: one in every 200 people in the UK and in London, one in every 59.
In addition, the number of rough sleepers [1] in England alone has more than doubled over the past decade to 4751 people, according to the latest government statistics. Bucking the trend, Greater London Authority (GLA) figures for 2017/2018, which put the number of people sleeping rough in the capital at 7484, show the figure has fallen by 8% in that time.
Copyright: Al Manaar Cultural Heritage Centre
Homelessness industry and traditional responses
Homelessness and rough sleeping have long existed. In response, a homelessness industry has grown up over the past few decades, worth £700 million in London alone [2], sometimes focused more on its own survival than the wellbeing of the homeless community it is supposed to serve.
Traditional responses to rough sleeping are failing to deal with the current size and scope of the rough sleeping crisis across the country. This is inevitable given the lack of support services that are required, through cuts to and the decimation of mental health, rehabilitation and domestic violence services, for example.
Recent research by the London Assembly and charity No Second Night Out (NSNO) shows that a minority of rough sleepers turn to their local authority, which has a primary duty of care if a person becomes homeless, for help; often people do not know about services or how to access them, or had a bad experience when attempting to do so. A 2014 mystery shopping exercise by Crisis found that in most cases, in the 16 local authorities in England it visited, single homeless people were turned away without being offered adequate advice. Increasingly digitalised council services also means that it can be almost impossible for vulnerable people to physically access services.
Community response
Many people have not turned a blind eye to the increasing numbers of rough sleepers. Over the past few years, grassroots community initiatives have sprung up to fill the gaps created by the lack of public services and support. A sector traditionally served by churches of various denominations, other religious and secular groups have started to play a very active role, particularly in community and street kitchens for the homeless and the provisions of clothing, sleeping bags and other requirements and services.
In 2017, following its massive response to survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, the Al-Manaar Cultural Heritage Centre became the first mosque in the UK to join a local night shelter scheme, the Westminster night shelter which runs from October to May each year by the West London Mission, which also runs a day centre, offering an important life line and services to rough sleepers in central London. The scheme also includes 13 churches and one synagogue.
In 2017-2018, 15 guests were accommodated on a rotating basis, with Al-Manaar hosting with a hot meal, activities for guests and bedding in a secure and sheltered hall each Tuesday for several months. Over the winter, the shelter scheme managed to help 64 people move into permanent housing and since May, an additional 24 have moved into their own homes.
After a successful first year, Al-Manaar will take part in the scheme again this year, and mosques in Barnet and Merton will be joining their local schemes. In London, night shelters, mainly run voluntarily by churches, are in place in most boroughs and are credited with having contributed to the reduction in rough sleeper numbers in London over the past year, among other factors. Westminster is the area with the largest number of rough sleepers in the UK, or 29% of all rough sleepers in London.
Mosques also played an important role during the freezing weather conditions in March 2018 opening their doors across the UK to rough sleepers in Manchester, Leeds, Canterbury and elsewhere. There is so much more they and other places of worship and community-focused centres can do.
Pivotal role
Across London there are numerous night shelter projects; some boroughs like Islington, have several simultaneously. There is a need for more. While the schemes run in some boroughs accept a handful of rough sleepers other can take several dozen. Some run for 3 months and others for over 6 months.
The models they use vary too, although a rotating model whereby guests spend one night a week at seven different venues in the same area each week, as in Westminster, seems to work best; in some areas rough sleepers stay at the same venue for a week or two – which they may not have access to during the day – before moving on to the next one.
While some venues offer just an evening meal and sleeping bags, others offer showers, washing machines, legal and medical advice, and some allow accompanying pets too. Some offer breakfast whereas others do not. Facilities depend on the capacity of both the host venue and volunteers. Usually, rough sleepers admitted to such schemes are low-risk (for example, without dependency issues or disabilities) and are vetted in advance by a community hub or day centre. Some schemes, such as Glass Door in south London, allow individuals to refer themselves. For many there must be a local connection to the area which often excludes foreign rough sleepers.
In recent years there has been a shift towards programmes that get rough sleepers off the streets altogether, such as Housing First, currently being piloted in three regions of England. Community-run night shelters have been found to play an important support role for such schemes and in preparing people for life in the community.
Run by the community, night shelters offer rough sleepers a way back into community life and also help to create a support network, often in coordination with professional support services. Volunteers bring their own skills and knowledge which they can share and use to help rough sleepers in their own community. Night shelter schemes also help to create community cohesion and unity between different faith and social groups through a cause of immediate common and local concern.
Whereas local authorities once sought to criminalise community groups for helping the homeless, they are now starting to appreciate the value of the community-based approach. Encouraged by falling rough sleeper numbers in London, the GLA and Westminster Council are now working with the West London Mission on the winter shelter being run in 2018-2019. Not just faith groups, Haringey and Islington councils are working with grassroots NGO Streets Kitchen on projects to help rough sleepers in north London. The GLA is also offering grants for projects to support and set up new shelters.
NGO Housing Justice is working with the GLA on this. Housing Justice supports around 80 night shelter schemes nationally as part of the Housing Justice Church and Community Night Shelter network, which in 2015-16 hosted 1920 people and helped over 500 guests to find permanent accommodation. The scheme is not open just to churches but to all religious and non-religious groups who wish to set up a shelter. Housing Justice offers a Shelter in a Pack package to help set up a shelter and asks for a £1500 fee towards the costs of setting up a scheme. Nonetheless, before setting up a durable scheme in the long-term, potential hosts are welcome to pilot a short-term scheme, of perhaps 4-6 weeks.
The role of local authorities, however, must not be limited to offering money. Most areas contain empty council-owned buildings or those the council can gain access to, which could be used to host night shelters by groups who may have the will but not the facilities. An example of this was given by footballer Gary Neville, when he allowed a homeless group to run a Manchester shelter in a hotel he owns in the winter of 2015-2016.
Thank you to Al-Manaar for a seminar it hosted with Housing Justice on Mosques and Homelessness on 26 September 2018.
The Westminster night shelter starts in the first week of October; referrals are made via the West London Mission. A list of London night shelters is usually available at www.homeless.org.uk from late October/November and an Atlas of London’s Homelessness services is due to be made available shortly.
[1] Rough sleeping is defined as “People sleeping, about to bed down (sitting on/in or standing next to their bedding) or actually bedded down in the open air (such as on the streets, in tents, doorways, parks, bus shelters or encampments). People in buildings or other places not designed for habitation (such as stairwells, barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations, or “bashes” which are makeshift shelters, often comprised of cardboard boxes). The definition does not include people in hostels or shelters, people in campsites or other sites used for recreational purposes or organised protest, squatters or travellers.”
[2] Figure from Housing Justice
This entry was posted on September 29, 2018 by Aisha Maniar in human rights, Other and tagged Al-Manaar Cultural Heritage Centre, austerity, church, community, council, Crisis, grassroots, Greater London Authority, homelessness, housing, housing crisis, Housing First, Housing Justice, local connection, London, mosque, night shelter, poverty, rough sleeping, Shelter, volunteers, Westminster.
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Where is The Privatisation of Court Interpreting Heading? July 18, 2019
5 Years of Hate in India April 22, 2019
The global housing crisis: a crisis in access to justice? March 27, 2019
Could Your Mosque (Other Religious/Community Space) Offer Shelter to the Homeless this Winter? September 29, 2018
Can You Hear Us? Interpreters and Detainee Welfare in Immigration Removal Centres September 23, 2018
Follow me on Twitter @AishaManiar
Guantánamo Bay/ Extraordinary Rendition
Justice and Security Bill
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Jamie Chadwick Wins in Misano
British driver Jamie Chadwick has won for the second time in three races for the all-female W Series, and has extended her lead at the top of the roster for the championship. 21-year-old Chadwick won in Misano, Italy, and currently holds a 13-point lead over her closest rival, Dutch driver Beitske Visser at the halfway point of the series’ debut.
Visser came in second place with Liechtenstein’s Fabienne Wohlwend, who had ended the race in third place after starting on pole. Chadwick, talking to reporters, stated that she didn’t want to make any mistakes, and that it had felt like a long race for her. She added that in previous races, she had always made one or two mistakes, so she was just trying to be disciplined and make any mistakes.
Fellow English driver Alice Powell crashed out of the race due to a broken suspension and wheel after she collided with Wohlwent, had had had a slow start. The incident forced them to bring out the safety car, but after the race had resumed, Chadwick pulled away with Wohlwend and Visser close behind for most of the event. Other Britons, Esmee Hawkey, Sarah Moore, and Jessica Hawkins finished in 11th, 9th and 15th place respectively. The six races series, which makes use of identical Formula Three cars for all of the drivers, was designed to help women move up the motorsport ladder, and the winner of the series will receive $500,000.
July 19, 2019 by Trent Wilson
Jean-Eric Vergne has become the first double Formula E championship for the season finale that took place in New York after two rivals crashed during the final lap. Mitch Evans and Lucas Di Grassi were the favourites for win going into the race, and both needed a victory in order ….
Overview of The Saudi Arabian Formula E race
The EPrix racing series is starting in Riyadh for the first time ever, promising to be one of the most exciting racing events of recent memory. Saudi Arabia is getting ready to host its first Formula E race, where 22 drivers from around the world will be racing for the ….
Verizon IndyCar Series Looking Promising for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
March 9, 2018 by Trent Wilson
Gearing Up for the Verizon IndyCar Series With the 17-race Verizon IndyCar Series season kicking off now, things are looking good for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. As a starter, the team was able to confirm that they have expanded their two full time entries, something they have not been able ….
Pennzoil 400 And A Super Speedway
Las Vegas Motor Speedway And The Pennzoil 400 Las Vegas may be best known for being the casino entertainment capital of the world, but it is also home to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which is in turn, home to NASCAR’s Pennzoil 400. We delve deeper into the history and ….
Antron Brown To Set Pace At Pennzoil 400
Antron Brown To Set The Pace At Pennzoil 400 Three-time Top Fuel World Champion Antron Brown will be driving the official pace car at this year’s inaugural Pennzoil 400. The Pennzoil 400 will take place at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday the 4th of March and Brown, no ….
Top NZ Auto Racing Betting Odds
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Dr. Jean Moss
For her inspirational leadership, outstanding intellectual contribution to the field of chiropractic education and research, and her unwavering commitment to improving access to health care, we are proud to confer upon Dr. Jean Moss the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
Described by colleagues as “the first lady of the chiropractic profession”, Dr. Moss is an admired pioneer leader among the chiropractic and health-care professionals.
She was drawn to the chiropractic profession after her mother received successful treatment for a serious low-back condition. In 1965, she enrolled in the first class of the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic in Bournemouth, England during a time when chiropractic was not well known. Seeking new horizons, she moved to Canada in 1967 and continued her chiropractic education at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC) in Toronto, Ontario.
After graduating in 1970, she began a private practice and also joined the CMCC faculty. For the next 20 years, she enjoyed a successful career as an educator, clinician and administrator. In 1988 she obtained her Master of Business Administration degree from York University in Toronto, Ontario. In 1991 she became CMCC’s first female president and held this position until 2014. Under her leadership CMCC prospered – building historic clinical relationships with universities and hospitals, supporting the pursuit of chiropractic research, implementing a new integrative curriculum and building a new campus.
A tenacious advocate and tireless spokesperson for the chiropractic profession, Dr. Moss is the recipient of many honours including the World Federation of Chiropractic Honour Award for outstanding service and contributions to the international growth of the profession. As CMCC President, she opened Canada’s first chiropractic clinic within a teaching hospital. In 2005, under Dr. Moss’ leadership, CMCC obtained degree-granting status making it the first private institution in Ontario to offer a profession-oriented health care degree. Upon stepping down as CMCC President after a 23-year tenure, she was named President Emerita, in honour of her leadership to CMCC and to the chiropractic community.
Mr. Grantley Morris
Mr. Desmond Newman
Mrs. Helen Vari
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Orlando City SC New Stadium Location
Orlando City SC President Rawlins Comments on New Stadium Location
Stadium Remains on Schedule for 2016 Season Opener, Enhanced Fan Experience, Commitment to Parramore
Orlando City SC President Phil Rawlins joined Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer today to announce an updated location for the downtown soccer stadium along Church St., just one block west of the original location.
“We applaud the Mayor for finding an alternative solution that is a win for everyone involved,” said Rawlins. “The new location allows us to remain on schedule to play our matches in the new stadium starting with the home opener in 2016. Our fans will benefit from added amenities created by the new location such as more entertainment areas prior to and after the matches.
“Importantly, this is also a win for the community of Parramore. Orlando City is committed to Parramore’s future and we will serve as a role-model for service and citizenship. We have a proven track record of delivering on our promises, and we look forward to working closely with our community partners.”
Enhanced Fan Amenities:
The basic design of the stadium remains unchanged, with initial seating expected for approximately 19,500 fans, a dedicated supporters’ stand, club and suites, and the larger-than-life-sized lion statue overlooking all the action!
The new site will enhance the match day experience by creating:
Additional plaza areas for future development that can be used for amenities and entertainment zones pre and post matches, including potential kids’ areas, concerts, etc.
More space for infrastructure and improved operations.
More room for premium amenities including year-round on-site parking for stadium guests, providing a true end-to-end first-class experience.
Orlando City SC Dedicated to the Past and Future of Parramore:
Rawlins continued, “We recognize the rich tradition of the community and its deep connection to residents. Therefore, we will incorporate elements into the stadium, such as the Carver name in respect to the legendary theatre that resided on the site many years ago, to honor the heritage and educate visitors on the history of Parramore. Also, the Orlando City Foundation will continue to expand its work within the community.”
Orlando City announced it will form a committee of Parramore leaders, including District 5 Council Woman Regina Hill and Florida Senator Geraldine Thompson, to help stadium designers incorporate elements of the community into the structure.
The Orlando City Foundation, a 501(c)(3), is an ardent supporter of Parramore organizations like the Parramore Kidz Zone, New Image Youth Club, Summer of Dreams, Parramore Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan and others, helping to raise funds, donating equipment and volunteering time throughout the year.
Most recently, the Foundation’s free soccer clinics in Parramore have drawn hundreds of kids throughout the summer, introducing them to the game of soccer while teaching the importance of good nutrition.
For more information on Orlando City SC, 2015 MLS Season Tickets or tickets to the Club’s remaining USL Pro home games, visit www.OrlandoCitySC.com or call 855-ORL-CITY. Also, follow the latest Orlando City news and updates via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
About Orlando City SC:
Orlando City Soccer Club (OCSC) is Major League Soccer’s newest expansion team. The club will begin play in MLS in 2015, becoming the league’s 21st club. The Lions’ first team has won two USL PRO regular season titles and two postseason championships and will continue play in USL PRO in 2014 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Outside of the first squad, OCSC also has a youth club, Orlando City Youth Soccer (OCYS) and a U-23 team that participates in the PDL. For more information on the pro and youth clubs, visit www.OrlandoCitySC.com and www.OrlandoCityYouth.org.
Author NewsPosted on August 5, 2014 August 6, 2014 Categories Orlando City Soccer ClubLeave a comment on Orlando City SC New Stadium Location
AVP: Alien vs. Predator Coming to Halloween Horror Nights
For The First Time Ever, The Epic Battle of
AVP: Alien vs. Predator
Becomes Reality at Universal Orlando Resort
Whoever Wins…We Lose.
In collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products, Universal Orlando Resort are putting Halloween Horror Nights’ guests in the middle of an epic and primal war between the universe’s most deadly species in an all-new, horrifying maze inspired by the cult sci-fi franchise AVP: Alien vs. Predator, beginning Friday, September 19, 2014.
AVP: Alien vs. Predator is a sci-fi horror franchise that brings together the two iconic species spawned from two blockbuster films, Alien and Predator, to create a terrifying crossover of eponymous monsters in a raging battle against mankind struggling to survive amid the chaos that ensues from these two vengeful creatures. To mark the 35th anniversary celebration of Alien, and the 10th anniversary of AVP: Alien vs. Predator, “Halloween Horror Nights” guests and fans of these celebrated films will have a chance to live the horror of these diabolical beasts as they come face to face with the terror of Aliens and Predators.
httpv://youtu.be/fbpJJErGwgI
“The introduction of AVP into the immensely popular ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ is further proof of the indelible mark this incredibly powerful franchise has left on fans and the horror genre itself. Bringing AVP to life in a new maze is a perfect way to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the film as well as mark the 35thanniversary of Alien, the film that started it all, and etched in our collective psyche the meaning of modern terror,” said Greg Lombardo, vice president of global live and location based entertainment at Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products. “We’re thrilled to be working with Universal Studios to create mazes in Orlando and Hollywood that will bring fans face-to-face with the horrifying and iconic characters of AVP. The technology being leveraged will surely be a new benchmark and provide a uniquely terrifying and visceral encounter that puts guests right in the middle of an epic extraterrestrial battle for survival.”
In Universal Orlando’s spine-chilling maze, guests will find themselves thrust right into the middle of the primordial battle between the Aliens and Predators as they visit one of Weyland-Yutani’s secret facilities to assist with a situation that has surfaced. Communication has been lost with a bio-weapons research facility in Central America which houses many divisions dealing in extra-terrestrial technologies, specifically the Alien Xenomorph species. Pieces of transmissions were received detailing that the facility has become compromised and another alien species called Yautja – commonly known as Predators – are hunting both the Xenomorphs and any human presence found. Guests will have to navigate through the labyrinth of destruction within the facility as they struggle to survive the ancient feud between these two deadly species.
The terrifying new “AVP: Alien vs Predator” maze at Universal Studios Hollywood will answer the proverbial question asked by mankind since the beginning of time: Are we alone in this dark, vast universe? “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” will once and for all shed light on the answer when it brings to life the violent creatures cohabitating our world as it pits two rival alien species in a fight to the death with Earth as their battleground. This menacing maze will uncover a dangerous alien spaceship carrying a race of hunter aliens known as Predators and a threatening new alien life form that uses human hosts to propagate its species. After crash landing in a remote section of America and escaping to the countryside, the alien and predator become hunter and prey with guests caught in the crossfire.”
“When attempting to bring two of the most iconic creatures ever put on film to ‘Halloween Horror Nights,’ you need to rely on everything you’ve learned up to this point” said Michael Aiello, Director of Entertainment – Creative Development, Universal Orlando Resort. “We’re employing our full arsenal of tricks and techniques in translating the AVP: Alien vs. Predator brand into an authentic and horrific maze experience. Puppetry, elaborate costumes and unique environments have all been created in close collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox. Our guests are going to be thrown head first into this epic battle where only the strong will survive. This is truly going to be an out-of-this-world maze experience that the fans have been waiting for.”
“‘AVP: Alien vs. Predator’ is by far the most technically complicated and ambitious maze we’ve ever created for ‘Halloween Horror Nights,’” said John Murdy, Creative Director for Universal Studios Hollywood and Executive Producer of “Halloween Horror Nights.” “It’s a monumental undertaking to recreate these massive, iconic characters for a live event. Fortunately, we have the expert assistance of Academy Award®-winning make-up artists, Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis from Amalgamated Dynamic Inc. (ADI), the special effects geniuses behind the original creatures for the AVP film franchise. Tom and Alec and the ADI team are excited about our maze and have graciously allowed us to cast from their original molds so that our maze will be absolutely authentic to the movies.”
Universal Studios’ “Halloween Horror Nights” events have a more than 20-year history of creating incredibly entertaining, horrifying Halloween experiences that are consistently rated the nation’s best. The events on each coast feature highly-themed, disturbingly real, haunted mazes based on everything from films to nightmares – and streets filled with hundreds of specially trained “scareactors.” Other announced “Halloween Horror Nights” experiences include, “The Walking Dead: The End of the Line,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Face Off: In the Flesh” and “The Purge: Anarchy.”
Universal Orlando Resort is home to two incredible theme parks: Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure; four magnificently themed on-site hotels: Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel, Loews Royal Pacific Resort and the newest addition, Universal’s Cabana Bay Beach Resort; and Universal CityWalk – a unique dining and entertainment complex featuring one-of-a-kind restaurants, shops and nightclubs. And located just minutes from Universal Orlando Resort is Wet n’ Wild, Orlando’s premier waterpark.
Tickets and vacation packages for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando are on sale now at HalloweenHorrorNights.com\Orlando. More information about the event will be available soon.
Updates on Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights are available on Facebook at Halloween Horror Nights – Universal Orlando and on Instagram at @HorrorNightsORL. Plus, fans can get exclusive updates from Creative Development Director Mike Aiello on Twitter at@HorrorNightsORL.
Author NewsPosted on August 5, 2014 August 6, 2014 Categories Halloween Horror Nights, Universal Orlando, Universal Orlando ResortLeave a comment on AVP: Alien vs. Predator Coming to Halloween Horror Nights
Great Expectations At The Enzian
Saturday Matinee Classics:
SATURDAY, AUGUST 9TH AT 12PM
One of the finest literary adaptations ever put to film, this stunning version of the Charles Dickens classic about a young orphan and his mysterious benefactor features masterful direction by Lean. Nominated for five Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, Director and Screenplay, and featuring an outstanding ensemble cast, including John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, and Alec Guinness, GREAT EXPECTATIONS won Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.
Shown in conjunction with “What the Dickens Orlando” – celebrating the life, works,
and world of English novelist Charles Dickens.
Author NewsPosted on August 5, 2014 July 31, 2014 Categories Enzian, Enzian Theater, Florida, Maitland, Saturday Matinee ClassicsTags Enzian, Maitland, MovieLeave a comment on Great Expectations At The Enzian
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Rereading The River Ophelia in the era of #MeToo
By Jay Daniel Thompson
18.Jan.18
When published in 1995, Justine Ettler’s debut novel The River Ophelia received a lively critical reception. For some, the book exemplified a genre of gritty, in-ya-face writing then known as ‘grunge lit’, named after the contemporaneous music movement from Seattle (think Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam).
In October 2017, after some years out of print, The River Ophelia was republished, and it’s a novel worth re-examining during this moment of #MeToo, because it has significance beyond the ‘grunge lit’ classification. Set in inner-city Sydney, the novel focuses on a sexually violent relationship between literary studies student Justine and misogynist Playboy reporter Sade.
Justine stalks Sade, obsesses over him, and subjects herself to his mental and physical cruelty. At one point, she asks rhetorically:
Why don’t I leave him? How can I still love him? What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I see this for what it is? … I cry even harder. Nothing can help me. Not feminism, not psychoanalysis. I’m never going to be happy. I’m never going to believe I can be happy. I’m never going to be in control of my life.
In fact, Justine does see her relationship with Sade ‘for what is is’: degrading. Dehumanising. She’s aware of how feminists have critiqued male violence. Nonetheless, Justine seems unwilling or unable to abandon her pernicious paramour.
Writing in Australian Book Review after Ophelia was first published, Don Anderson described Ettler as ‘Sydney’s Empress of Grunge’. Anderson was one of several writers to align Ophelia with the ‘grunge lit’ genre – a genre comprised of novels that were published during the mid-1990s by ‘young’ (late twenties to early thirties) Australian authors such as Ettler and Christos Tsiolkas, and that featured protagonists within that age group. The protagonists led lives characterised by drug use, rough sex and perpetual ennui.
At the time, Ophelia’s publishers evidently saw the commercial viability in the grunge tag: the ‘Empress of Grunge’ quote appears on the back cover of my 1995 edition. The front cover features a grainy black-and-white shot of a naked woman with her head between her legs. This shot is accompanied by the tagline ‘an uncompromising love story’.
Ophelia’s republication in 2017 might seem like an appeal to ’90s nostalgia. But actually, the book has a greater significance, as suggested on its Pronoun.com page, where the novel is described as ‘a dark anti-romance’ and ‘a postmodern account of domestic violence’. The page contains a shot of the new edition’s cover: sombre black background, red and white lettering, and a shot of long hair.
This repackaging or reframing of Ophelia is important for a few reasons. First, the anti-romance’ tag hints at the novel’s critique of male violence in a way that ‘uncompromising love story’ never could. Then there’s the new cover design, which alerts readers to the fact that this will be a bleak read, indeed. There’s none of the stylised, soft focus titillation invoked by the initial cover.
We’re also advised that this is a novel about domestic violence. Like many who have experienced domestic violence in real-life, Justine is conscious of and appalled by her partner’s cruelty, but nonetheless keeps returning to him. Justine’s friend, Ophelia, sums up the dynamic at the heart of this relationship:
The thing is … the thing about all this pain (women) go through, all this love that just hurts all the time, the thing about all this pain is that it’s really exquisite. It’s exquisite pain. That’s what makes us keep going back for more.
Throughout the novel, this ‘exquisite pain’ is described in the same dispassionate manner that one might describe a trip to the supermarket. Justine has, it seems, resigned herself to being the object, not the subject, of her sexual encounters. She has resigned herself to having no agency.
Which is why Ophelia’s importance also lies in the timing of its republication, which coincides with the rise of #MeToo. The women who have publicly spoken about experiences of abuse and assault under this title have collectively contested the myth that men’s violence against women is rare, trivial and ignorable.
The shining of a spotlight on male violence and gender inequality that is crucial to #Me Too is also crucial to The River Ophelia. In the spirit of ‘postmodern’ novelists such as Kathy Acker, Ettler reworks canonical literary texts in order to highlight their (frequently dubious) sexual politics. Her novel’s characters include the Marquis de Sade’s Justine and Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Even though these women live in the apparently woman-friendly 90s, they’re still miserable as ever. The Justine and Ophelia of 1995 are still suffering at the hands of shitty men.
My point is that to classify The River Ophelia as ‘grunge lit’ and leave it there does the novel a disservice. Ettler’s novel provides an unflinching examination of male violence – an issue that is as depressingly pervasive in the #MeToo era as it was in de Sade’s day.
Image: crop from 1995 cover of The River Ophelia.
Dr Jay Daniel Thompson lectures in media writing in the Media and Communications program, School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is also a freelance journalist, blogger and editor.
More by Jay Daniel Thompson
From Melanie on 18 January 2018 at 6.55 pm
Thanks for this piece, Jay. The republication of this novel comes as no surprise to me. I suggested its inclusion in a CW course that I teach a few years ago, given it ticks a number of literary boxes that I needed to bundle into one lecture: it’s postmodern in that it explicitly borrows from other texts (as pointed out), it’s transgressive, and it also exemplifies some of the aims of ecriture feminine (‘writing the body’) as proposed by Cixous. And bonus, it’s by an Australian female author. The text presents interesting questions about how women (and men, and trans and gender-fluid people) can write about power, sex, relationships, and the body (the diarrhea scene always gets a reaction) and whether writing with visceral, cringe-worthy honesty about these things is an exercise, no matter how debasing, in empowerment. Or not. I like to pose the question whether students think the The River Ophelia is a ‘feminist text’ (the consensus is generally ‘no’), but that doesn’t seem to be the point of it. Some of the best creative writing I’ve seen from students at an undergrad level has come from their creative responses to this text. The sanitised, pretty imagery CW 101 writing falls away and something else emerges that is ‘gritty’, honest and compelling.
From Jay Daniel Thompson on 18 January 2018 at 11.18 pm
Thanks, Melanie, for your kind words. I’m so glad to hear that your students benefited from reading TRO. I’m pleased, too, that this book continues to be read and taught, all these years later.I hope the republication generates a new wave of interest in Ettler’s text.
And yes, TRO engages with a range of post-structuralist perspectives on women, the body, writing. This engagement tended to be overlooked in the book’s critical reception, which focused on the more salacious aspects, and on the ‘grunge’ label.
From Melanie on 19 January 2018 at 8.00 am
It did, you’re right. It got slapped with the ‘grunge’ label and put in literary box with Tsiolkas, Andrew McGahan, Linda Jarvin, etc (which the writers themselves did not identify with) and that was kind of the extent of any real critique of text. Here’s hoping for a TRO revival then and some retrospective critical analysis of Ettler’s work (in the age of #metoo).
From Gus on 25 January 2018 at 8.58 am
Gee, I wonder how much dick Ettler was forced to suck at Pan Macmillan, or Pronoun, to get her book published? I vomit on your professional opinions, especially if you can not distinguish between Kathy Acker on the one hand and Ettler, Carter and the love letters of James Joyce on the other.
Leave a Reply to Gus Cancel reply
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Women's Swimming To Face WSU & Idaho
By Pac-12 Conference
THIS WEEKEND: The Washington women's swimming team has a pair of road meets this weekend, facing Washington State on Friday, Nov. 19 at 6 p.m., and Idaho on Saturday, Nov. 20 at 11 a.m. Washington State is 2-0 this season with wins over San Jose State and Arkansas. Washington has already faced Idaho this year, defeating the Vandals 110-12 at the Big West Shootout. The 2004-05 season marks the first for the Idaho program after a 19-year hiatus. The Husky men are idle this week.
WOMEN'S LAST TIME OUT: The women's team placed second the two-day Big West Shootout in Irvine, Calif., Nov. 5-6. The Huskies won their pool on the first day, notching wins over UC Santa Barbara (102-20), Cal State Northridge (110-12), Cal Poly (110-22), San Diego (106-26) and Idaho (110-12). Washington won 13 of 14 swimming events on the opening day, including two victories by Sharon Olson and two apiece by Anissa Hilyard and Desiree Johnson. UW advanced to the Big West Shootout Cahmpionship on Nov. 6 and placed second behind Hawaii (32-79). The women defeated UC Santa Barbara (84-11), UC Irvine (75-36) and San Diego (84-16). Olson won two events in the title meet, while Jessica Buchanan tallied a win.
MEN'S LAST TIME OUT: The men's team placed second at the two-day Big West Shootout in Irvine, Calif., Nov. 5-6. The Huskies won their pool on the first day, defeating UC Santa Barbara (82-40), Cal State Northridge (104-18) and Cal Poly (104-18) to advance to the championship meet. The men won 10 of the 14 swimming events, including two victories apiece for Diogo Bezerra and Bruno Barbic. Washington placed second in the Big West Shootout Championship behind Hawaii (27-76). The Huskies defeated UC Santa Barbara (76-19) and host UC Irvine (61-42). Barbic was a double event winner for the men in the title meet.
NATIONAL RANKINGS: The men's swimming team dipped two positions in the College Swim Coaches Association Top 25 Poll on Nov. 4 from No. 25 to the second team listed under 'receving votes'. The women's team jumped into the poll for the first time this season and held the No. 25 spot. The men are 0-1 against top 25 teams, falling to No. 21 Hawaii at the Big West Shootout. The women are 1-2 against teams ranked in the top 25, defeating No. 17 Indiana and losing to No. 9 SMU and No. 22 Hawaii.
TOP-25 TIMES: Three Husky women have posted swims fast enough to rank among the nations top-25. Freshman Caitlyn Shortt appears three times on the top times chart and is the only Husky to rank among the top-10. Shorrt ranks ninth in the 400 IM (4:20.34), 11th in the 200 breaststroke (2:16.58) and 21st in the 100 breaststroke (1:04.00). Junior Sharon Olson ranks in two events, including 12th in the 500 freestyle (4:51.05) and 13th in the 200 IM (2:04.00). Freshman Jessica Buchanan ranks 20th in the 200 breaststroke (2:17.48). The women's team also ranks among the top-25 in four relays, including 11th in the 800 FR (7:32.97), 14th in the 200 MR (1:44.91), 18th in the 400 MR (3:48.15) and 21st in the 200 FR (1:35.62). Four Husky men rank among the top-25. Freshman Bruno Barbic ranks 11th in the 100 freestyle (44.99) and 15th in the 50 freestyle (40.48). The three other UW men that rank in the top-25 are all listed in the 1650 freestyle. Kevin Quinn ranks 19th (16:03.52), Lorant Divald ranks 21st (16:07.70) and Hunter McCallister ranks 22nd (16:10.68). The men's 400 FR ranks 20th (3:04.23).
NCAA QUALIFIERS: Washington's women's team has posted NCAA provisional qualifying times in eight events this season. Junior Sharon Olson has posted NCAA B cut times in the 100-yard freestyle (51.27), 200 freestyle (1:49.30), 500 freestyle (4:51.05) and 200 IM (2:03.03). Freshman Caitlyn Shortt has tallied NCAA B cut times in the 200 breaststoke (2:16.58), 200 IM (2:03.30) and 400 IM (4:20.34) events. Freshman Jessica Buchanan logged a provisional qualifying time in the 200 breaststroke (2:17.48).
WOMEN PLACE SECOND AT SMU CLASSIC: The Washington women's swimming team captured second place at the SMU Women's Swimming and Diving Classic on Oct. 24. The Huskies tallied 282.5 points to place second in a field of six teams. Meet host SMU won the meet with 346 points, while South Carolina placed third (274), Indiana fourth (267), British Columbia fifth (207.5) and Rice sixth (199). Sharon Olson won two events for the Huskies, posting NCAA consideration times in the 500 freestyle and 200 IM. Her time of 4:51.05 in the 500 freestyle set a Husky record. Freshmen Caitlyn Shortt and Rachel Seely also won individual events for Washington. Shortt won the 200 breaststroke and placed second in the 400 IM. Both times were fast enough to place her second on the UW all-time charts. Seely won the 50 freestyle in a time of 23.68 to rank sixth on the Husky all-time list.
MEN DEFEAT UBC: The Washington men's swimming team defeated the visiting British Columbia Thunderbirds 204-164 on Oct. 2 in its season-opener. The meet followed the NCAA relay format and the Huskies won all 10 events. Washington's freshmen carried the load as five newcomers tallied three or more wins. Freshman Bruno Barbic led all swimmers with four victories, including wins in the 800 freestyle relay, 500 freestyle relay, 200 freestyle relay and 400 freestyle relay. Six men earned three wins for the Huskies, including seniors Cameron Barclift and Jim Wolfe and freshmen Taylor Brugh, Jake Salaz, Peter Wicklund and Brenton Dowdy. Washington placed first and second in both the 300 breaststroke and 800 freestyle relays.
BARBIC COMPETES AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Freshman Bruno Barbic swam three events at the 2004 World Swimming Championships with the Croatian National Team, Oct. 7-11. The World Championships, considered the most prestigious and largest international swimming event outside of the Olympic Games, was held in the United State (Indianapolis) for the first time ever. Barbic posted top-30 finishes in both of his individual events, placing 22nd in the 100-meter freestyle (50.20) and 26th in the 50-meter freestyle (22.86). Barbic is the first Washington swimmer to compete at the World Championships since Wender took over the reigns of Husky swimming in 1998.
TEAM CAPTAINS: The Washington swimming team selected Diogo Bezerra, Jim Wolfe, Erin Kloos and Desiree Johnson team captains for the 2004-05 season.
ROSTER BREAKDOWN: The 25-player Washington men's roster includes 14 returning letterwinners. The 2004-05 team includes six seniors, four juniors, four sophomores and 12 freshman. The team represents nine states and four countries, including Washington (11), Nevada (1), Ohio (1), Missouri (1), Oregon (3), Brazil (1), Slovakia (1), Croatia (1), Alberta (1), Alaska (1), California (1), New York (1), Montana (1). On the women's side the 23-player roster, includes 15 returning letterwinners. The 2004 team includes eight seniors, five juniors, two sophomores and eight freshman. The team represents eight states, including Washington (9), Nevada (2), California (6), Colorado (1), Idaho (1), Arizona (1), Texas (1), Oregon (2).
COACH WENDER: Mickey Wender (Vermont, 1989) begins his seventh year at the helm of the Washington swimming program. He boasts a 59-23 men's dual meet record and a 67-24 women's dual meet record. Since joining the Huskies coaching staff in 1998, Washington swimmers have broken the school's record 70 times and have crowned seven All-American's. Wender is assisted by Joe Dykstra (Washington, 1998), Kim Harada (Washington 2002) and Beth Slaughter (Linfield, 1997).
2003-04 REVIEW: Washington had seven swimmers compete at the NCAA Championships, including five men and two women. The men's team posted its best NCAA finish in 30 years, tying for 25th place. Phil Davis earned All-America honors in the 200 breaststoke with a sixth place finish at national's in a school record time of 1:53.00. Justin Adrian earned second team All-America honors with a 16th place finish in the 100 butterfly (48.04). The men's 400 medley relay team of Derek Rose, Davis, Adrian and Ekhoff also earned All-America honors with a 14th place finish. Sharon Olson and Desiree Johnson swam at the NCAA Championships for the Husky women.
RELATED NEWS & VIDEOS
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Pac-12 names Tom Hansen Conference Medal Winners
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Posted 3 weeks ago by pelikulamania 2019
FDCP Releases New Policies & Guidelines on the Theatrical Release of Films in PH Cinemas
Following several consultations with the film industry stakeholders and the public, the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) has released Memorandum Circular (MC) No. 2019-01 with Policies and Guidelines on the Theatrical Release of Films in Philippine Cinemas.
“This [Memorandum Circular] is the culmination of FDCP’s efforts to strengthen our industry practices and level the playing field for all our stakeholders—from film producers, to distributors, to our exhibitors, and even the audience—through a transparent and fair set of guidelines that addresses the gaps that have long plagued our industry when it comes to screening films in commercial theatres,” said FDCP Chairperson Liza Diño, who spearheaded meetings and dialogues regarding industry practices since she came to office in 2016. Following several formal consultations with producers, theatres, and distributors to draft the contents of the guidelines, a public consultation with stakeholders was also conducted last April 25, 2019 at the Cinematheque Centre Manila. Partner government agencies like the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), the Department of Trade and Industry-Export Management Bureau (DTI-EMB), and the Office of the Presidential Legal Counsel and Spokesperson were also part of the dialogues and have lent support to the development of the guidelines.
FDCP and stakeholders, including filmmakers, distributors, and more
To push for Philippine cinema’s growth and development, new policies have been introduced via the MC which applies to both local and foreign films, including the switching of the theatrical release of local and foreign films nationwide from Wednesday to Friday to accommodate more potential moviegoers during the weekend. Every film booked for theatrical release must also have a minimum run-length of at least seven (7) days. Moreover, the theater assignments will be guaranteed for the first three (3) days to avoid movies from getting pulled out of cinemas.
“Full screens” must be assigned to the film booked for the first three (3) days of its run. This means there will be no “screen splitting,” or a double booking and exhibition for a single theatre screen.
Ongoing discussion between FDCP and stakeholders about the industry’s policies and guidelines
An equitable ratio between Filipino films and foreign films should also be observed in regular playdates to give local films a higher chance of being seen by the audience, except in cases where a national film festival, such as Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino (PPP) and Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).
To encourage watching local films at the cinemas among the youth, the recommended national average movie ticket prices every Wednesdays for students of ages 18 years and below will now be priced at Two Hundred Pesos (P200.00) in Metro Manila and a maximum of One Hundred Fifty Pesos (P150.00) in provinces.
Ongoing dialogue between FDCP and stakeholders
Meanwhile, films that have been theatrically released should be screened to other platforms in the country only after a holdback period of one hundred fifty (150) days after the first day of exhibition to maximize the movies’ revenue opportunity in local cinemas.
After the full contents of the circular have been released in a national newspaper this June 25, the policies and guidelines will take effect fifteen (15) days thereafter.
2019, Filipino, Film, Film Development Council of the Philippines, Movies, Philippines
2019, Filipino, Film Development Council of the Philippines, Film Festival, Movies, Philippines
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Pelikula Mania FDCP Releases New Policies & Guidelines on the Theatrical Release of Films in PH Cinemas
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Nature: Age, extent and carbon storage of the central Congo Basin peatland complex
Peatlands are carbon-rich ecosystems that cover just three per cent of Earth’s land surface, but store one-third of soil carbon. Peat soils are formed by the build-up of partially decomposed organic matter under waterlogged anoxic conditions. Most peat is found in cool climatic regions where unimpeded decomposition is slower, but deposits are also found under some tropical swamp forests. Here we present field measurements from one of the world’s most extensive regions of swamp forest, the Cuvette Centrale depression in the central Congo Basin.
We find extensive peat deposits beneath the swamp forest vegetation (peat defined as material with an organic matter content of at least 65 per cent to a depth of at least 0.3 metres). Radiocarbon dates indicate that peat began accumulating from about 10,600 years ago, coincident with the onset of more humid conditions in central Africa at the beginning of the Holocene. The peatlands occupy large interfluvial basins, and seem to be largely rain-fed and ombrotrophic-like (of low nutrient status) systems. Although the peat layer is relatively shallow (with a maximum depth of 5.9 metres and a median depth of 2.0 metres), by combining in situ and remotely sensed data, we estimate the area of peat to be approximately 145,500 square kilometres (95 per cent confidence interval of 131,900–156,400 square kilometres), making the Cuvette Centrale the most extensive peatland complex in the tropics.
This area is more than five times the maximum possible area reported for the Congo Basin in a recent synthesis of pantropical peat extent. We estimate that the peatlands store approximately 30.6 petagrams (30.6 × 1015 grams) of carbon belowground (95 per cent confidence interval of 6.3–46.8 petagrams of carbon)—a quantity that is similar to the above-ground carbon stocks of the tropical forests of the entire Congo Basin. Our result for the Cuvette Centrale increases the best estimate of global tropical peatland carbon stocks by 36 per cent, to 104.7 petagrams of carbon (minimum estimate of 69.6 petagrams of carbon; maximum estimate of 129.8 petagrams of carbon). This stored carbon is vulnerable to land-use change and any future reduction in precipitation.
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Phnom Penh Post - Hun Sen vows to ignore ‘politician’
Hun Sen vows to ignore ‘politician’
Sam Rainsy and Hun Sen stand on the steps of the National Assembly in 2014 after a meeting. HENG CHIVOAN
Thu, 10 January 2019
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday insisted he will not react to comments from a politician – seemingly Sam Rainsy – saying he had already made his position clear.
“Politics . . . I have stopped talking because I have already made everything clear. I want the other side to pay attention to what I said the last time . . . whether you understand it or not, it’s up to you."
“I won’t talk [about politics] anymore. I won’t respond to anyone,” he said when addressing some 20,000 factory workers in Takeo province’s Tram Kak district.
On November 11 last year, Rainsy, “acting president” of the Supreme Court-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), initiated a bet with Hun Sen on CNRP president Kem Sokha’s freedom.
Rainsy said Sokha would be released any time between December 29 last year and March 3, and that he would end his political career should he lose the bet.
In response, Hun Sen accepted the wager and vowed to step down should he lose it. “I dare to bet with Sam Rainsy. If Kem Sokha were to be released [as Rainsy describes] I, Hun Sen, am willing to step down.
“But if Kem Sokha is not released between December 29, 2018 and March 3, 2019, Sam Rainsy must dare to surrender and immediately turn himself in for arrest,” he said.
‘We have to care’
In Takeo province on Wednesday, Hun Sen said: “Whoever wants to go and die anywhere, I don’t care. There are around 16 million compatriots in the country, and we find ways for them to have enough to eat, to put clothes on their backs, to have medicine and get thorough treatment. The treatment for factory workers is free.
“Having a house, transport, [home] appliances . . . these are what human beings need [in this age]. This is what we have to care about,” he said.
Hun Sen said he was not bothered about someone living 10,000km away and was better off listening to music.
He appealed to the workers to work hard and not cause trouble which could make factory owners relocate their businesses to other countries where the wages were lower.
Comparing Cambodian workers’ wages to that of Bangladesh, he said the workers there earned less than $100 a month while Cambodian workers got almost $190.
“Bangladesh is the same as Cambodia. In [December’s] elections, [Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] won a landslide victory just like the [ruling] Cambodian People’s Party did. But there were groups who condemned it."
“It is like this – if anyone won the election with a great majority, they [the opposition] don’t accept it. But she is like me – they don’t accept it, I don’t care. I just know that my citizens went to cast their ballots."
“She did not need to get recognition from the UN because there are no conditions that require it,” he said.
‘Show of strength’
Social analyst Meas Nee said this was the fourth time that Hun Sen has vowed not to respond to Rainsy. He said that he believed the prime minister would soon react to comments from Rainsy.
“This is not the first time [he has made such comments]. I can say this is the third or fourth time. But Rainsy always creates something and we sometimes see that Hun Sen cannot control his feelings [on Rainsy’s claims]."
“This is a natural characteristic of both leaders – one side likes to create something and the other reacts,” Nee said.
Rainsy lives in France to avoid court action on numerous criminal charges and a five-year sentence for conspiracy to forge public documents, using fake public documents and incitement causing chaos.
He has often claimed he will return to Cambodia but has as yet failed to do so.
Political analyst and general director of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, Kin Phea, said Hun Sen’s comments likely referred to Sam Rainsy. He said Hun Sen’s words were merely rhetoric and that he would again react to Rainsy depending on the issue.
The analyst said that by taking such a stance, Hun Sen was showing his strength by not bowing to international pressure.
“Hun Sen’s reaction is a show of strength that he will not bow to anyone. He won’t bow his head to international pressure or pressure from any politician. We have to understand Hun Sen’s character. He was the prime minister who went through decades of economic and military sanctions."
“But [despite it all] he struggled to provide everything [to run] the government, so he doesn’t need to respond to anyone. He wants to show that he is strong and that he has the power to control the political situation in Cambodia,” he said.
Sar Kheng: Stability at risk from ill-willed politicians
Women make few gains at polls
Journalists want more upfront public figures
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Milton Lodge
State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science
Distinguished University Professor
Stony Brook, 11794-4392
The Rationalizing Voter: Unconscious Thought in Political Information Processing
Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber
State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science and Stony Brook University - Department of Political Science
political psychology, public opinion, rationality, automaticity, political cognition, affect
Judicial Symbols and the Link Between Legitimacy and Acquiescence
APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper
Ben Woodson, Milton Lodge and James L. Gibson
State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook, State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science and Washington University in St. Louis - Department of Political Science
Judicial Symbols, framing, Supreme Court, Legitimacy, Acquiescence
A Computational Model of the Citizen as Motivated Reasoner: Modeling the Dynamics of the 2000 Presidential Election
Sung-youn Kim, Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge
affiliation not provided to SSRN, Stony Brook University - Department of Political Science and State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science
political cognition, information processing, motivated reasoning, political attitudes, computational modeling
Legitimacy, Losing, But Accepting: A Test of Positivity Theory and the Effects of Judicial Symbols
James L. Gibson, Milton Lodge and Ben Woodson
Washington University in St. Louis - Department of Political Science, State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science and State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook
Does Affective Contagion Promote Coherent Political Thinking?
APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper
Cengiz Erisen, Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber
Yeditepe University, State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science and Stony Brook University - Department of Political Science
Is Beauty Skin Deep? the Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Immigration Attitudes
Julie Wronski, Gallya Lahav and Milton Lodge
George Washington University - School of Media and Public Affairs, State University of New York at Stony Brook - Department of Political Science and State University of New York (SUNY) - Department of Political Science
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Researchers find source of deadly 2015 Southeast Asia smoke cloud
by University of California, Irvine
"This was all human-driven," says study co-author James Randerson, UCI's Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Chair in Earth System Science, of the 2015 environmental catastrophe. "The fires help a small part of the population, but the costs for people far away in cities such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are enormous." Credit: Fuu Ming Kai
Smoke from widespread fires in Indonesia in the summer and fall of 2015 hung heavily over major urban centers in Southeast Asia, causing adverse health effects for millions of people. The afflicted could not have known that the polluted air they were breathing contained carbon from plants that were alive during the Middle Ages.
During the prolonged conflagration, which was triggered by an El Nino-driven drought, scientists collected smoke particles on the campus of the National University of Singapore and sent samples to their colleagues at the University of California, Irvine. UCI's researchers dated the isotopes of the particles' carbon atoms, finding them to have an average age of 800 years.
Combining this analysis with atmospheric modeling of the movement of smoke plumes from the fall 2015, the team sleuthed out the source of the hazardous cloud: smoldering peat on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. The findings were published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our research shows that almost all of the smoke emissions originated from the burning of Holocene-aged peat," said first author Elizabeth Wiggins, a postdoctoral research fellow at NASA's Langley Research Center who led the study as a Ph.D. candidate in Earth system science at UCI, graduating in 2018. "Although this peat has functioned as a terrestrial carbon storage reservoir over the last several thousand years, it is now a significant source of carbon to the atmosphere."
The scientists' work provides independent confirmation that Indonesian peats were the flashpoint of the blazes, highlighting the role of humans in the environmental catastrophe.
"These are the first direct measurements showing the smoke originated from combustion of peat layers that are hundreds to thousands of years old," said study co-author James Randerson, UCI's Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Chair in Earth System Science. "Farmers drain the peats because waterlogged soils are bad for growing oil palms and other crops, and they seek to burn off surface layers to get to the mineral soil below."
Indonesia's peatlands, which hold as much carbon as all of the living biomass of the Amazon rainforest, according to Randerson, had been left alone for millennia, serving mainly as habitat for rare species such as orangutans and Sumatran tigers. In recent decades, expansion of agriculture in remote southern Borneo and uninhabited parts of Sumatra has led to the degradation of these critically important ecosystems.
"This was all human-driven," Randerson said. "The fires help a small part of the population, but the costs for people far away in cities such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are enormous."
Co-author Claudia Czimczik, UCI associate professor of Earth system science, said that the peatlands are "doing us a favor" if left unperturbed. "These peats, in general, perform a lot of important services for people in the region and also for the climate," she said. "They store carbon that otherwise would be in the atmosphere, and they can contain a lot of water during excess rainfall and help prevent flooding."
Czimczik also pointed to the importance of finding better ways to manage these ecosystems.
"We need to find more sustainable agricultural solutions in which we preserve tropical forests and peatlands to provide all of these benefits while at the same time enhancing food security."
Peat fires in Sumatra strengthen in El Nino years
More information: Elizabeth B. Wiggins el al., "Smoke radiocarbon measurements from Indonesian fires provide evidence for burning of millennia-aged peat," PNAS (2018). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1806003115
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of California, Irvine
Citation: Researchers find source of deadly 2015 Southeast Asia smoke cloud (2018, November 19) retrieved 19 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2018-11-source-deadly-southeast-asia-cloud.html
10x more U in Earth's core?
Peat fires—a legacy of carbon up in smoke
Wildfires may cause long-term health problems for endangered orangutans
Scientists take to the skies to measure emissions from Yorkshire moor fires
Peatlands will store more carbon as planet warms
Agricultural fires blaze in Borneo
Iceland tries to bring back trees razed by the Vikings
Protecting a forgotten treasure trove of biodiversity
Radiation from atomic testing in Marshall Islands still too high for human habitation
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Manufacturers position each bat's label over the mechanically weaker side of the wood.[9] To reduce chance of fracture,[9] and maybe deliver more energy to the ball,[10] a bat is intended to be held so the label faces sky or ground when it strikes the ball during a horizontal swing.[9] In this orientation, the bat is considered stiffer and less likely to break.[11]
In 1990, Bruce Leinert came up with the idea of putting an axe handle on a baseball bat. He filed a patent application for the 'Axe Bat' in 2007 and the bat started being used in the college and pro ranks over the following years. In 2012, the Marietta College Pioneers baseball team won the NCAA Division III World Series using axe handled bats.[2] Several Major League Baseball players have adopted the bat handle including Mookie Betts, Dustin Pedroia, George Springer, Kurt Suzuki and Dansby Swanson.[3][4]
To practice throwing around the infield, Bates recommends several drills you can use. The first involves placing four fielders in a square, about 15 feet apart. The players flip the ball underhanded to each other, like in a double play. Keep their arms straight, using a stiff wrist, with gloves on their hips once the ball is out. Every fielder follows their flip, glove side first, rotating around the square. The idea is to have a sequence of catch, flip and follow. The ball should be caught with two hands, palms open. After about two minutes, repeat the process rotating the other way for another two minutes.
The origin of the word "fungo" is unknown and argued upon as there are many possible options as to the origins of this unique word. It is assumed by many to be derived from the Scottish word fung meaning to pitch, toss, or fling. This would make sense, as fungo bats are designed to do just that. Or, the alternative to this origin is that fungo comes from 1937 where David Shulman, writer for the American Speech, said, "My guess is that the word, which is baseball slang, may be explained through the elements of a compound word, fun and go." Lastly, a third belief is that the word fungo comes from an old game, similar to that of baseball, where the players used to chant, "One go, two goes, fun goes."
Before we get started, we have to define the word "fungo" or "fungoes." To summarize, fungo (fungoes for plural) is a ball tossed into the air by the batter and struck as it comes down during practice sessions. If you are a coach, you are more than likely familiar with a fungo bat. Or, if you are a player who has ever worked on ground balls or pop-flys in practice, you should know what a fungo bat is, as well. For the rest of us, a fungo bat might as well be a foreign object. What is that oddly shaped, extra long practice bat? So, let's answer the most common fungo bat questions:
“They’re not moving, their feet are apart, their gloves are on the ground, backs are flat, and they’re working down to up, out to in, basically a steady roll back and forth probably 15 to 20 each,” Bates said. “Then they’ll turn their body, work glove side for another 15 to 20, and backhand 15 to 20. No movement, really, just making sure we’re watching the ball roll into our glove, fielding it, and doing all the things fundamentally correct.”
There are limitations to how much and where a baseball player may apply pine tar to a baseball bat. According to Rule 1.10(c) of the Major League Baseball Rulebook, it is not allowed more than 18 inches up from the bottom handle. An infamous example of the rule in execution is the Pine Tar Incident on July 24, 1983. Rules 1.10 and 6.06 were later changed to reflect the intent of Major League Baseball, as exemplified by the league president's ruling. Rule 1.10 now only requires that the bat be removed from the game if discovered after being used in a game; it no longer necessitates any change to the results of any play which may have taken place. Rule 6.06 refers only to bats that are "altered or tampered with in such a way to improve the distance factor or cause an unusual reaction on the baseball. This includes, bats that are filled, flat-surfaced, nailed, hollowed, grooved or covered with a substance such as paraffin, wax, etc." It no longer makes any mention of an "illegally batted ball". In 2001, MLB approved the use of Gorilla Gold Grip Enhancer in major and minor league games as an alternative to pine tar.[23][24]
For starters, we should clarify just what we’re talking about when we say fungo bat. Longer, lighter and thinner than a regulation bat (but a larger barrel), a fungo bat is typically 35 to 37 inches long, and weighs between 17 and 22 ounces. As David Allison wrote in the June 1978 edition of Country Journal, “A fungo bat looks to be a cross between a baseball bat and a broomstick.”
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Opposition to Sexual Assaults Brings Out Liberal Insanity
Posted on January 8, 2016 January 8, 2016 by Joe Scudder
I recently wrote that coordinated sexual assaults and robberies in Germany have stirred up opposition to immigration. Now it seems that the opposition has provoked all sorts of insanity from left-liberals.
The New York Times reports, “Cologne Mayor’s ‘Arm’s Length’ Advice on Sexual Attacks Stirs Outcry.”
The mayor of Cologne has inflamed a debate in Germany about migrants and sexual harassment by suggesting that women can protect themselves from men on the streets by keeping them more than an arm’s length away.
The remarks by the mayor, Henriette Reker, were made Tuesday to reporters after the Cologne police said they had received more than 90 complaints of robbery and sexual assault, including two accounts of rape, by groups of men who targeted young women in and around the city’s main train station in the crush of revelers on New Year’s Eve.
By Wednesday, Ms. Reker was being widely ridiculed by commentators and across social media for putting the onus on the victims of the attacks.
“It is always possible to keep a certain distance that is longer than an arm’s length,” Ms. Reker told reporters on Tuesday, suggesting that the city authorities would provide guidelines for young women who find themselves surrounded by aggressive men trying to grope them.
I’d like to think that Reker was simply encouraging situational awareness, but I don’t think that is the case. First of all, it is simply false that the average woman has the power to keep the average man at arm’s length if he is intent on sexual assault. This is especially true when a woman is stalked and surrounded by several men.
Secondly, Reker is a prominent advocate of immigration. It certainly seems like she was blaming the victims in order to justify her position.
There are other examples. Infowars.com reports,
The sex attackers bragged to police about how their refugee status gave them special privileges.
“I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly. Mrs Merkel invited me,” said one of the culprits.
However, Interior Minister Ralf Jaeger directed an equal share of his anger towards Germans who cited the attacks as a reason why Angela Merkel should reconsider her open border refugee policy.
“What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women,” said Jaeger. “This is poisoning the climate of our society.”
What people say in outrage over crimes is at least as awful as the crimes themselves? I wonder what the women victims think of this?
Also, the guardians of the internet attempted to suppress the story. According to Breitbart,
Moderators on /r/worldnews, a subreddit with over 9.5million subscribers, repeatedly deleted links to stories about the recent New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, which saw over a thousand Arab and North African migrants engage in hundreds of acts of sexual assault and robbery.
Users made a dozen attempts to post links to the story on /r/worldnews, where they were promptly deleted by moderators. It was only when German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented on the attacks that one news link was allowed to be posted. Comment from the German head of state made it impossible for the moderators to deny the story’s relevance to world news.
Even then, user comments underneath the news link faced mass censorship as well as a temporary lockdown due to what one moderator called “vile rule violating.” Go1dfish, a site which tracks censorship on Reddit and maintains a permanent copy of deleted comments, reveals that users had their comments deleted simply for asking why others had been deleted.
To summarize, in response to rape and sexual assault, liberals attack the victims, the critics, and try to censor the news.
Posted in Crime, ImmigrationTagged Germany, refugees
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Explains Why Young Women Lack Enthusiasm for Hillary
When We Have an Immigrant Flash Mob, Will the Media Report It?
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Home » Education » The Confirmation Circus
The Confirmation Circus
Dr Snyder February 6, 2017 February 6, 2017
Confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominees have become quite a circus. It was to be expected, unfortunately. I remember when Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was putting forth his agenda a few years ago. Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature ran away to Illinois so there wouldn’t be a quorum to conduct business. Senate Democrats seem to be copying that strategy, refusing to show up to vote on whether to send nominees to the full Senate.
It’s a tried and true method used by toddlers, angry juveniles, and immature people everywhere.
Republicans had to alter the rules even to get the nominees out of committee. Perhaps it’s the only way to deal with temper tantrums.
In the Democrats’ crosshairs now is Betsy DeVos, slated to be the new education secretary. Since she’s an advocate for private schooling, the teachers’ unions are up in arms. They’ve been busy consolidating their support with the Democrats:
I’m always amused by cries of “influence” when aimed at various conservative groups who donate to Republicans. The National Education Association (NEA) and its allies practically own Democrats; they have more money to throw around than all conservative groups combined.
Soon we’ll be treated with the confirmation hearing for Neil Gorsuch, chosen to take Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. The circus will continue. Over a decade ago, Gorsuch received a unanimous vote for his current judicial position. That’s history.
I trust Gorsuch is prepared for what he is about to experience:
Will Republicans have to turn to what is called the “nuclear option,” not allowing a filibuster on the nomination?
What a shame that this scenario has turned into an unbridgeable political divide. Democrats have become unhinged over these nominees, using their outrage to raise even more funding for their theatrics.
I know that theatrics have played a role throughout American political history, but I don’t believe we’ve ever witnessed the kind of role-playing that has come to the forefront ever since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, at least not on such a sustained basis. We are a nation that is verging on a complete cultural and political division not seen since the Civil War.
What will be the result?
Education, Politics & Government Civil War, Democrats, DeVos, Education, Gorsuch, NEA, Reagan, Scalia, Senate confirmation, Supreme Court, Trump, Walker
The Lewis & Chambers Blessing
The Left Going Crazy, Trump Being Trump
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Here’s a good idea: Put a booze hound behind the CMO wheel of a driving client
Sep 11, 2018 |
Steve’s breakdown: Sometimes I just can’t. I just can’t understand what some companies are thinking. Even though Uber has seemed to sober-up from the days before Dara Khosrowshahi, they bring in a Jim Beam marketer. Okay, so here we are.
They can’t keep on airing the CEO talking about how they have changed. They’re eventually going to have to do real advertising.
Enter their first CMO. Will she finally hire an AOR? Worth a look.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Uber has tapped seasoned packaged goods executive Rebecca Messinaas its first-ever global chief marketing officer as the 9-year-old ride-hailing company looks to bolster its global marketing capabilities in preparation of going public next year.
Messina, 46, has spent the last two-and-half years as global CMO at liquor maker Beam Suntory. Before that she spent 22 years at Coca-Cola Co. in roles including senior VP-marketing and innovation for venturing and emerging brands. At Uber she will be charged with “building a global marketing organization that can support the company’s growth going forward,” according to statement from Uber.
She arrives three months after Uber parted ways with high-profile marketer Bozoma Saint John. She was named CMO of entertainment conglomerate Endeavor in June.
Saint John was Uber’s chief brand officer. The CMO title puts Messina at a higher executive level. Saint John was focused on projects aimed at connecting Uber to pop culture, like an NBA-themed campaign in 2017 that featured pros like the L.A. Lakers’ Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma riding in Ubers.
Messina, in an interview, characterized her duties as being more “holistic,” than Saint John’s. She arrives as Uber “is really reshaping its leadership team and its overall agenda,” she says.
“When you have one brand that happens to also be a company brand it’s really an opportunity to bring that single mindedness, and to get us really tight on who is Uber what does Uber stand for and how do we do that everywhere around the world,” she says.
Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a statement called Messina “exactly the right leader to build our marketing efforts globally and to showcase the ways Uber is igniting opportunities for our customers around the world.”
Beam Suntory in a statement credited Messina with “taking our brands and marketing capabilities to the next level.” The company added that “we are determined to build on her success, and we will commence an external search for her successor.”
Messina, who worked from Beam Suntory’s global headquarters in Chicago, will be moving to Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco. She is expected to remain at Beam Suntory until early October.
Uber has revolutionized the transit industry, giving people in urban areas one more reason to skip car ownership. It is one of the pioneers in the so-called sharing economy. But the company has also dealt with negative publicity stemming from allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination that led to the departure of co-founder Travis Kalanick in June 2017. His replacement, Khosrowshahi, stars in a TV ad called “Moving Forward” that began airing earlier this year in which he pledges that the company has a “new culture.”
Messina says she did not have a previous relationship with Khosrowshahi but has met with him multiple times since being recruited. “He is super committed to marketing,” she says.
In regards to Uber’s previous internal issues, she says, “I have found a culture that is just hungry to do the right thing,” adding, “I think definitely it’s a new era.” Asked if there is more work to be done to repair Uber’s image, she says, “I would expect there is. A company this big who touches this many people, I am certain it hasn’t been able to completely turn that corner.”
“This is a brand that has a tremendous place in society and culture so I feel like its got to pull all those forces together,” she says.
Beam’s agencies include Starcom for media and Adam & Eve DDB as the lead creative shop on its flagship whiskey brand, Jim Beam, which has used Mila Kunis in its ads for several years. Beam also uses an in-house, 40-person agency called Proof. Uber also uses an internal agency. It took the lead on the ad starring Khosrowshahi. Uber does not have an external agency-of-record but has relied on 72andSunny for several projects.
Asked if she favors an in-house or external shop, Messina says, “I am really open minded. Maybe it’s a hybrid model. I don’t have an answer on that until I see what we need.”
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Monster merger making mega-brand: Who’s going to calm the masses
Aug 31, 2017 |
Steve’s breakdown: DuPont & Dow Chemical are now DowDuPont. Not sure how they are handling it because, frankly, this merger freaks me out and they’ll probably need to manage that situation.
WILMINGTON, DE & MIDLAND, MI: DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co., rival developers of plastics, pesticides, explosives, and other useful and dangerous-to-make materials — combine Thursday into one big global corporation, DowDuPont. It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange as DWDP beginning Friday, cramming into DuPont’s old spot in the Dow Jones industrial average, next to Apple, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart.
Staff at some offices will gather for “town hall” talks to review their realignment. But there are no plans to hang signs mashing the Dow diamond with the DuPont oval, and executives won’t speed to New York to ring the stock market bell, or hold public ceremonies at the now-co-headquarters. This is a temporary marriage of convenience, with a goal of tax and cost savings, faster product development and sales, higher profits and shareholder payouts — and then a planned breakup, into at least three independent companies, over the next 18 months.
Dow contributes two-thirds of the combined $77 billion in yearly sales, and more than half of the 100,000 employees and $150 billion in market value, but the companies call this a “merger of equals,” with eight directors from each side on the combined board. That allows the bosses to do their spin-offs without paying income tax on sales proceeds — “very, very tax-efficient and one of the reasons we are doing it this way,” as DuPont chief executive Edward Breen told shareholders when he announced the deal in December 2015.
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Khalil Gibran – Selected Works
Feb1 by readkutub
We met on Monday, February 1st at 7:45 to discuss the selected works by Khalil Gibran (in Arabic جبران خليل ). Gibran was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose and an early example of Inspirational fiction.
Given that Khalil Gibran is so well known for The Prophet, this was our focus, however we also talked about Gibran’s impact more broadly….
Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man Gibran emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. While most of Gibran’s early writings were in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English.
For more about Gibran and to read his work online:
Read about Gibran, his work, the museum in Lebanon – http://leb.net/~mira/
The Prophet in English online – http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Prophet
Works by Gibran in English and Arabic online – http://tyros.leb.net/gibran/
Gibran’s poems in English – http://www.poemhunter.com/khalil-gibran/poems/page-1/
Gibran’s works include both works originally written in Arabic…
Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (1905)
Ara’is al-Muruj (Nymphs of the Valley, also translated as Spirit Brides, 1906)
al-Arwah al-Mutamarrida (Spirits Rebellious, 1908)
al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira (Broken Wings, 1912)
Dam’a wa Ibtisama (A Tear and A Smile, 1914)
al-Mawakib (The Processions, 1919)
al-‘Awāsif (The Tempests, 1920)
al-Bada’i’ waal-Tara’if (The New and the Marvellous,1923)
...And works published in English, prior to his death:
The Madman (1918) (downloadable free version)
Twenty Drawings (1919)
The Forerunner (1920)
The Prophet, (1923)
Sand and Foam (1926)
Kingdom Of The Imagination (1927)
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
The Earth Gods (1931)
…And several published Posthumous, in English:
The Wanderer (1932)
The Garden of the Prophet(1933)
Lazarus and his Beloved (1933)
Prose and Poems (1934)
A Self-Portrait (1959)
Thought and Meditations (1960)
Spiritual sayings (1962)
Voice of the master (1963)
Mirrors of the Soul (1965)
The Vision (1994)
Eye of the Prophet (1995)
Beloved Prophet, The love letters of Khalil Gibran and Mary Haskell, and her private journal (1972, edited by Virginia Hilu)
More About Khalil Gibran
[Biography adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran%5D
Born Khalil Gibran bin Mikhā’īl bin Sa’ad on January 6, 1883 in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri to the daughter of a Maronite priest. His mother Kamila was thirty when he was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband. Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth. Gibran’s father initially worked in an apothecary but, faced with gambling debts he was unable to pay, he went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator where he later became imprisoned for alleged embezzlement. Kamila Gibran decided to follow her brother to the United States. Although Gibran’s father was released in 1894, Kamila remained resolved and left for New York on June 25, 1895, taking Khalil, his younger sisters and his elder half-brother.
The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, at the time the second largest Syrian/Lebanese-American community in the United States. Due to a mistake at school he was registered as Kahlil Gibran. His mother began working as a seamstress peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door to door. Gibran started school in 1895, enrolled in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran’s drawings for book covers in 1898.
Gibran’s mother and elder brother, wanted him to retain his Lebanese heritage, so at the age of fifteen Gibran returned to Beirut to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and higher-education institute. He started a student literary magazine with a classmate and was elected “college poet”. He returned to Boston in 1902, coming through Ellis Island on May 10. Two weeks before he got back, his sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at the age of 14. The next year, his brother Bhutros died of the same disease and his mother died of cancer. His sister Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker’s shop.
Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day’s studio. During this exhibition, Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran’s life. Though publicly discreet, their correspondence reveals an exalted intimacy. Haskell influenced not only Gibran’s personal life, but also his career. In 1908, Gibran went to study art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. He later studied art in Boston.
His first book for the publishing company Alfred Knopf, in 1918, was The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran also took part in the New York Pen League, also known as the “immigrant poets” (al-mahjar), alongside important Lebanese-American authors such as Ameen Rihani, Elia Abu Madi and Mikhail Naimy. Much of Gibran’s writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love. His poetry is notable for its use of formal language, as well as insights on topics of life using spiritual terms. Gibran’s best-known work is The Prophet, a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. The book became especially popular in the USA during the 1960s. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Having been translated into more than twenty languages, it was one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century. Gibran was greatly influenced by `Abdu’l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá’í Faith during his visit to the United States, circa 1911-1912.
Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931: the cause was determined to be cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis. Before his death, Gibran expressed the wish that he be buried in Lebanon. This wish was fulfilled in 1932, when Mary Haskell and his sister Mariana purchased the Mar Sarkis Monastery in Lebanon, which has since become the Gibran Museum. The words written next to Gibran’s grave are “a word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you ….”
Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. There she discovered her letters to him spanning twenty-three years. She initially agreed to burn them because of their intimacy, but recognizing their historical value she saved them. She gave them, along with his letters to her which she had also saved, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library before she died in 1964. Excerpts of the over six hundred letters were published in “Beloved Prophet” in 1972. Mary Haskell Minis (she wed Jacob Florance Minis in 1923) donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 1950. Haskell had been thinking of placing her collection at the Telfair as early as 1914. In a letter to Gibran, she wrote “I am thinking of other museums … the unique little Telfair Gallery in Savannah, Ga., that Gari Melchers chooses pictures for. There when I was a visiting child, form burst upon my astonished little soul.” Haskell’s gift to the Telfair is the largest public collection of Gibran’s visual art in the country, consisting of five oils and numerous works on paper rendered in the artist’s lyrical style, which reflects the influence of symbolism. The future American royalties to his books were willed to his hometown of Bsharri, to be “used for good causes”, however eventually the Lebanese government became the overseer.
Gibran is often quoted and has had a large cultural influence across the English and Arabic speaking worlds. For example, an excerpt of his poem “Sand and Foam” (1926), which reads : “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you” was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song Julia from The Beatles’ 1968 album The Beatles (a.k.a. “The White Album”).
About The Prophet:
The Prophet begins with a man named Almustafa living on an island call Orphalese. Locals consider him something of a sage, but he is from elsewhere, and has waited twelve years for the right ship to take him home. From a hill above the town, he sees his ship coming into the harbor, and realizes his sadness at leaving the people he has come to know. The elders of the city ask him not to leave. He is asked to tell of his philosophy of life before he goes, to speak his truth to the crowds gathered. What he has to say forms the basis of the book.
The Prophet provides timeless spiritual wisdom on a range of subjects, including giving, eating and drinking, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, teaching, time, pleasure, religion, death, beauty and friendship. Corresponding to each chapter are evocative drawings by Gibran himself.
Our discussion questions included:
In what ways has The Prophet – in style and content – been influenced by canonical works of Western literature? In what ways is it original?
Exile – chosen or imposed – is a key aspect of both Almustafa and Gibran.
Is Lebanese or Arab patriotism discernible in his work? What is his view of America?
Gibran as a poet and a mystic, was thrice exiled – not only geographically exiled, but also estranged from conventional society at large, as well as from his desire for higher truths – he was continually experiencing a longing for the country of his birth, for a utopian human society of his imaginations, for the higher world of metaphysical truth… (From the Journal of Arabic Literature)
Consider the final lines of Gibran’s bitter poem “My Countrymen,” which reads: I hate you, my countrymen, because / You hate glory and greatness. I / Despise you because you despise / Yourselves. I am your enemy, for / You refuse to realize that you are / The enemies of the goddesses.
In a 1919 article for Fatat-Boston, an Arab publication in Boston, he called on “the children of the first generation Arabs to proudly preserve their heritage in their quest for citizenship.” In a later article in Syrian World (where he was a regular contributor), he wrote: “It is to stand before the towers of New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your heart, ‘I am the descendant of a people that built Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon, and Antioch, and now I am here to build with you, and with a will.’ It is to be proud of being an American, but it is also to be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid his gracious hand and raised his messengers. Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you.”
As the most famous Arab émigré writer, he had a great influence over future generations of Arab-Americans such as Eugene Paul Nassar whose collection of poems, Wind of the Land, bears strong stylistic resemblances to Gibran’s poetry (Majaj, 1996). In the context of Arab immigration to America he represented one who has “made it” to immigrants in the 1920’s.
Can you identify with any of the characters? Does he want you to identify with them?
What Gibran would be saying if he were alive today? What issues would he address? Are they different from the ones he addressed in the 20’s? What would his Prophet be saying today?
Does his style of writing feel artificial to the modern reader? It has been at times criticized for being too saccharine, too self-consciously florid; how would a contemporary writer in his style be received? Are his sentiments and ideals outdated? Is he merely a product of his time or does he speak universal truths? If the latter, Why is Gibran not recognized in the canon of American literature? What is the difference between his poetry and “real” poetry.
While he was very popular in the US, he was not very well-known in the Arab world until his death. He did not have a very strong political influence in the Ottoman province of Greater Syria. While much of literature by Arab authors has struggled to be received in the West, why is he so popular among Western readers? His books have been translated into more than 50 languages and sold over 8 million copies – and The Prophet, is now in its 117th printing. What aspects of The Prophet account for its undiminished widespread popularity some 70 years after Gibran’s death? ·
What is the prophet’s message? What is his vision of human relationships in society?
Relation to Religion / Spirituality? Gibran was strongly attached to the Maronite Catholic tradition, though he was excommunicated by the Maronite church for Spirits Rebellious, a book that criticized the structure of the church and the state. He wanted to show the basic similarities and unity between Islam and Christianity. He had previously dreamed of building an edifice in Beirut with a church’s dome and a mosque’s minaret.
Gibran said that the prophet was an “exiled island god.” What do you think was his primary source of inspiration for that? The Old Testament, Jesus in the Gospels, the Quran? Who might have been a model for this prophet? Jesus, Mohammad, Gibran himself?
Consider the balance between writing for a popular audience as opposed to writing for the academy. Is one more worthy than the other? Was Gibran successful or unsuccessful in what he was trying to do with this book? What is the role of Inspirational literature?
One critic has described The Prophet as “spiritual self-help that celebrates conventional thinking, a genre the likes of Steven Covey and Deepak Chopra have put to immense profit, primarily to themselves, but at great debt to Gibran.”
The critic Joan Acocella described the Prophet in The New Yorker as “a warm, smooth, interconfessional soup that was perfect for twentieth-century readers, many of whom longed for the comforts of religion but did not wish to pledge allegiance to any church, let alone to any deity who might have left a record of how he wanted them to behave.”
Alfred A. Knopf, who published The Prophet and made millions from it derisively referred to Gibran’s following as “a cult”
The book explores theme of passing on to generations and worldly concerns: Almustafa’s preparations to return to his home are reminiscent of a man preparing to pass into the next world. The city of Orphalese here stands in for a metaphor for this world. The people of Orphalese are asking him mostly about everyday things and earthly matters. In a manner, as we are all “people of Orphalese”.
How has Gibran been a political figure? How has he been used by political factions to make a point? He advocated the independence of Lebanon and Syria and believed in an independent Syrian Arab state, separate from the Ottoman Empire, and encouraged Arab uprisings around the time of the First World War. He also championed women’s education, modernism and liberalism. He has influenced many public figures with his message of peace, compassion and his faith in the human race (note Kennedy’s famous line “Ask not…” from Gibran’s “Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?” in The New Frontier.)
Was the Prophetess a stand in for the women figures in his life? Remember that two women took care of him throughout his life: his sister Marianna, and, beginning in 1908, Mary Haskell, his lover / patron / confidant / editor / guardian of his estate.
Understanding Gibran’s attitude towards authority gives greater insight to his work. He opposed Ottoman Turkish rule and the Maronite Church’s strict social control. Understanding Gibran’s attitude towards authority gives greater insight to his work. We recommend reading the short story collection Spirits Rebellious and the poem You Have Your Lebanon and I Have My Lebanon (written after the first World War, in the 1920’s).
NOTE: Thank you to the ADC Lesson Plan – http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=1171 on Gibran – and to the profile by Pierre Tristam – http://middleeast.about.com/od/booksopinions/p/me081214.htm – for providing the basis of these discussion questions.
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5 comments on “Khalil Gibran – Selected Works”
Love Bricourt says:
Thank you for this information on Gibran’s life.
Cemil says:
I am researching Khalil Gibran’s “An Open Letter to The Muslim Brothers”.Please could you send to me the text of that letter?Please!
my mail:
ccaygozoglu@gmail.com
readkutub says:
Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran wrote the following poem to his Arab American compatriots, the majority of whom came from the land known as “Greater Syria” in Gibran’s time, which comprised today’s Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
TO YOUNG AMERICANS OF SYRIAN ORIGIN
By Kahlil Gibran
I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny.
I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization.
I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.
I believe that you can say to the founders of this great nation, “Here I am, a youth, a young tree whose roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon, yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful.”
And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, the blessed, “Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written.”
I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born to produce riches by intelligence and labor.
I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.
And what is it to be a good citizen?
It is to acknowledge the other person’s rights before asserting your own, but always to be conscious of your own.
It is to be free in word and deed, but it is also to know that your freedom is subject to the other person’s freedom.
It is to produce by labor and only by labor, and to spend less than you have produced that your children may not be dependent upon the state for support when you are no more.
It is to stand before the towers of New York and Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your hearts, “I am the descendant of a people the built Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon and Antioch, and I am here to build with you, and with a will.”
It is to be proud of being an American, but it is also to be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid His gracious hand and raised His messengers.
Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you.
Raimundo D'suza says:
I have almost all the works of Gibran except one “The Tempest” in which Yusif says to the writer that he left home not because of religious purpose but to avoid people and their laws…” In fact, I had that one too but I donated the compiled book to a school. Now again I unable to find it. Can you help me to find that work? Is there any soft copy of that story? Thanks!
A portion of the Tempest I found on net…..
“No, my brother, I did not seek solitude for religious purposes, but solely to avoid the people and their laws, their teachings and their traditions, their ideas and their clamour and their wailing.
I sought solitude in order to keep from seeing the faces of men who sell themselves and buy with the same price that which is lower than they are, spiritually and materially.
I sought solitude in order that I might not encounter the women who walk proudly, with one thousand smiles upon their lips, while in the depths of their thousands of hearts there is but one purpose.
I sought solitude in order to conceal myself from those self-satisfied individuals who see the spectre of knowledge in their dreams and believe that they have attained their goal.
I fled from society to avoid those who see but the phantom of truth in their awakening, and shout to the world that they have acquired completely the essence of truth.
I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength.
I sought solitude because my soul wearied of association with those who believe sincerely that the sun and moon and stars rise save from their coffers, and do not set except in their gardens.
I ran from the office-seekers who shatter the earthly fate of the people while throwing into their eyes the golden dust and filling their ears with the sounds of meaningless talk.
I departed from the ministers who do not live according to their sermons, and who demand of the people that which they do not solicit of themselves.
I sought solitude because I never obtained kindness from a human unless I paid the full price with my heart.
I sought solitude because I loathe the great and terrible institution which people call civilization – that symmetrical monstrosity erected upon the perpetual misery of human kinds.
I sought solitude for in it there is a full life for the spirit and for the heart and for the body. I found the endless prairies where the light of the sun rests, and where the flowers breathe their fragrance into space, and where the streams sing their way to the sea. I discovered the mountains where I found the fresh awakening of Spring, and the colourful longing of Summer, and the rich songs of Autumn, and the beautiful mystery of Winter. I came to this far corner of God’s domain for I hungered to learn the secrets of the Universe, and approach close to the thrown of God.”
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Internet Explorer 9 Preview Now Available – Microsoft Steps Up
March 25, 2010 by Scot Desort, posted in Tech Corner
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has not been the shining star in their software arsenal for some time. Internet Explorer 8 was a valiant effort to try to get IE to compete with the likes of Firefox and Google Chrome. But Microsoft has not been able to keep up. Internet Explorer 8 is significantly slower than it’s competition, particularly in it’s Javascript engine (used by all but the most basic websites) and it’s graphics rendering. They may sometimes be late to the game, but they, by no means, site back and watch.
Enter Internet Explorer 9
This week, Microsoft has made the Internet Explorer 9 Preview publicly available, although it’s in very rough form and only really intended for developers. Incorporated into this new browser version is a brand new javascript engine, code named “Chakra” that incorporates numerous enhancements to Javascript performance in IE9. And since so many websites today used advanced Javascript to provide a rich user experience, it was critically important for Microsoft to focus on major speed issues in this area
Compatibility and Standards
Microsoft has also had the reputation of being “slow to market” when incorporating emerging web standards into the Internet Explorer browser. One of the most important new standards is HTML5 support, which is lacking in IE8, but present in Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome and Safari 4. In addition to numerous new HTML tags being introduced with HTML5, the most talked-about feature is HTML5 video. The HTML <video> tag is reportedly poised to be a viable replacement for flash-based video. Naturally, Adobe (the maker’s of the Flash video plugin) are likely not happy about this. If you have been following the Apple-Adobe feud, you will also understand why HTML5 video support is so important. When Apple released the iPhone, they did NOT include Adobe Flash support in the mobile Safari browser. Even’s Apple’s latest product, the iPad, will not have Flash support. There’s a lot of speculation as to why Apple and Adobe are at-odds over Flash. But the HTML5 video tag potential solves the problem for millions of iPhone and future iPad users. And in case you’re wondering, the largest user of Flash video, Google’s own Youtube video site, offers users the option of viewing videos in a beta HTML5 environment, instead of the standard flash format. Not surprisingly, the 2 principal authors for the HTML5 spec work for Apple and Google.
Too late?
Now that Microsoft is finally stepping up their game, one still has to wonder if they are too late. Some users have become frustrated with Internet Explorer’s poor performance, numerous security holes, and lack of standards compliance. I, for one, have been using Firefox as my primary web browser for over a year now for just there reasons. I still use Internet Explorer from time to time, when I stumble across a site that simply doesn’t work right in Firefox (these are becoming increasingly rare), or when I must do so for compatibility testing on web sites we have developed. I can’t wait to see if Microsoft makes IE9 a true competitor to Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Because competition is always a good thing.
Tagged html5, ie9, internet explorer 9
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Is Certification of Iran's Compliance With the Nuclear Deal a 'Coming of Age' for the Trump Admin?
State Department also announced review of deal-related sanctions suspensions.
Ed Krayewski | 4.19.2017 8:05 PM
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified to Congress that Iran was complying with Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, before a statutory midnight deadline, while also insisting Iran remained "a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods" and indicating that the Trump administration would evaluate the JCPOA-related suspension of sanctions and whether it was "vital to the national security interests of the United States."
"President Trump… has realized that tearing up a highly complex and multinational agreement is not a wise thing to do at this time," Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar and affiliate graduate faculty member at University of Hawaii-Manoa, told Reason.
"Note that under the Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president has to provide certification every 90 days. Had the Trump administration not done so, it would have triggered legislative procedures and potential reimpositions of sanctions, which would then declare the U.S. intent to renege on its JCPOA obligations," she added.
Tillerson's certification also "indicates that the Trump administration has had a sort of… coming of age, to realize that this nuclear deal is not such a terrible deal that President Trump was declaring during the campaign," Emad Kiyaei, a policy advisor with the American-Iranian Council, a non-profit whose mission is to provide a "sustainable dialogue and a more comprehensive understanding of US-Iran relations," told Reason.
During the presidential campaign, Trump called the Iran deal a "disaster" and the "worst deal ever negotiated," although he did not challenge the premise of making the deal in the first place, and unlike many of the other Republican candidates, did not promise to rip it up on his first day in office. James Mattis, Trump's secretary of defense, expressed support for abiding by the Iran nuclear deal in his confirmation hearings.
The Trump administration imposed new missiles-related sanctions on Iran in February, and the review announced this week opens the door for the Trump administration to reject the nuclear deal down the road.
"By ordering a review process, the administration is hinting that it has not yet formulated an overall policy regarding how to deal with Iran," Farhi explained. "Given the fact that the Congress is contemplating sanctions on other grounds (reportedly now delayed until the results of Iran's May 19 presidential elections are known), clearly the desire to apply more pressure on Iran remains in Washington and may become the force that will push for a more aggressive posture towards Iran, eventually threatening the JCPOA."
"For now, however, Obama's Iran policy remains in force by fiat and the inability of Iran hawks in Washington and the administration to decide exactly what to do," she added.
Kiyaei warns that a shift away from the JCPOA would not be in the best interests of the United States, "nor will it help empower those within the Iranian administration that seek to bring the level of tensions between the two countries down." Instead, "it will empower those conservatives in Iran that seek to destabilize even a semblance of a better relationship with the U.S."
"Sanctions equal more friction, and friction brings in power those who are going to be much more able to destabilize the Middle East in the image that they wish," Kiyaei explained, "which goes counter to the interests of the United States and its allies in the region, especially at a time when the Iranian elections are just a few weeks away."
Kiyaei noted that harsher rhetoric from the Trump administration, actions like the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries including Iran, and a disengagement from limited direct communications has already deteriorated U.S.-Iranian relations that had begun to improve under the Obama administration.
"The lack of communication, the return to this sort of decades of policies of coercion and further sanctions and so forth, unfortunately, will not bode well in reducing the friction and animosity between the two countries," Kiyaei said, pointing out that all of this made cooperation more difficult at a time when there are many opportunities for it.
"The United States and Iran have multiple areas where they could actually work together to mitigate violence and to bring about stability in the various military theaters in the Middle East, may that be in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, and more recently… in Afghanistan," Kiyaei explained.
"So there are many major areas where the two countries should be working together, unfortunately because of the animosity and because of the language of the Trump administration, we have fallen back to an era of major friction between the two countries," he added.
Currently, however, as Fahri explains, the Obama-era Iran policy continues.
"Obama's Iran policy remains in force by fiat and the inability of Iran hawks in Washington and the administration to decide exactly what to do," she said.
The Obama Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
NEXT: Trump, the Media, and the First 100 Days: Matt Welch on Kennedy
Ed Krayewski is a former associate editor at Reason.
Iran Donald Trump Rex Tillerson Foreign Policy Nuclear Weapons
April.19.2017 at 8:32 pm
Yippie Kiyaei, motherfucker!
The Last American Hero
April.19.2017 at 10:26 pm
I could have a bull take a shit in a box and certify it if it makes you feel better.
Update, the Obama foundation comments:
“We, uh, in this, uh, time of, uh, increasing cooperation between, um, the United States and the, uh, wise scholars of Mohammed, uh… What was the question?”
GreenTonl89
April.20.2017 at 5:15 am
Here’s how you can fill up your bank account with additional cash each week? Read more by visiting this page
follow this link
??. http://BizSelf7.com
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Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America
« The Mailer Review • Volume 1 Number 1 • 2007 • Inaugural Issue »
Alan Petigny
Abstract: Mailer’s concern about the lack of individuality in American society was not a substantiation of his claims but of the reverse. In an ironic way, the resonance of “The White Negro” during the late 1950s was further evidence of an ascendant spirit during the postwar era — one which was more secular, more expressive, and, in the aggregate, less conformist than anything that had come before.
Permalink: https://prmlr.us/mr07peti
David Kirtzer, the current provost at Brown University, tells an interesting story about Norman Mailer. In 1967, while an undergraduate at Brown, Kirtzer was enrolled in an English literature class focusing on Mailer’s writings. Kirtzer was also the chapter president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and a day before a scheduled examination he left for Washington to take part in the March on the Pentagon. Unfortunately, Kirtzer was arrested in the march and, on the following day, he was despairing because instead of being in the classroom, he was in jail — completely missing his exam on Norman Mailer. However, as fate would have it, locked up in jail with him was none other than Norman Mailer.
So Kirtzer went up to Mailer and said, “You know, I’m missing an exam today — on YOU!”
To which Mailer replied, “Really? Where do you go to school?” When Kirtzer told him it was Brown University, Mailer responded, “Stop worrying. I’ll take care of it.” Then, right there in Jail, Mailer wrote a little note which read: “Dear Professor, Please excuse David Kirtzer from his exam, as he is with me, protesting against the carnage in Vietnam.”
As Kirtzer relays the episode, when he finally returned to Brown University his professor got into a big fight with him . . . over who got to keep the letter.
As this little story demonstrates, by the late 1960s Norman Mailer was already a cultural icon, widely seen as an irreverent rebel with a progressive vision. Mailer’s scathing critique of social conformity, his championing of existentialism, his warm support for the Civil Rights Movement, and his opposition to the war in Vietnam made it clear to most that he was no friend of conservatism. However, when it came to issues of identity — specifically, race and gender — Mailer’s progressive credentials during the late 1960s and early 1970s came under heavy attack. Feminists like Kate Millett and Susan Brownmiller denounced him bitterly, while his standing amongst many of the Black intelligentsia continued to plummet due to his authorship of the infamous 1957 essay, “The White Negro.” In explaining why the Black Americans should serve as the inspiration and model for enlightened white Americans, Mailer had written:
The cameos of security for the average white: mother and home, job and the family, are not even a mockery to millions of Negroes; they are impossible. The Negro has the simplest of alternatives: live a life of constant humility or ever-threatening danger. In such a pass where paranoia is as vital to survival as blood, the Negro has stayed alive and continued to grow by following the needs of his body when he could. Knowing in the cells of his existence, that life was war, nothing but war, the Negro (all exceptions admitted) could rarely afford the sophisticated inhibitions of civilization, and so he kept for his survival the art of the primitive, he lived in the enormous present, he subsisted for his Saturday night kicks, relinquishing the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body, and in his music he gave voice to the character and quality of his existence, to his rage and the infinite variations of joy, lust, languor, growl, cramp, pinch, scream and despair of his orgasm.[1]
Needless to say, most Americans today — particularly those in the academy — would be disturbed by Mailer’s characterization of the African-American experience. However, in the late 1960s when black pride was in the ascendancy — a development reflected in the growing popularity of afros, dashikis, cornrows, the proliferation of Black Studies programs, and in the very term “Black Is Beautiful” — many African Americans found Mailer’s words particularly offensive. Writing only a few months after the March on the Pentagon, Gary Marx observed that cultural rebels like Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac had an image of African Americans that was strikingly similar to the stereotypes embraced by the likes of John E. Rankin, Theodore Bilbo, and James Eastland. “Mailer and Kerouac,” he wrote, “differ from them only on the emotive dimension of prejudice; they like supersexed, narcotics-using, primitive, easy-going, spontaneous, irresponsible, violent Negroes while racists dislike them.”[2] However, there is another way we can read “The White Negro.” Putting aside, for the moment, the negative racial stereotyping, “The White Negro” succeeded in articulating an alternative vision of the self — a vision reflecting a new mood which was culturally resonant and in the ascendancy during the Age of Eisenhower.
This analysis is at odds with the standard narrative, not to mention Mailer’s own account, of the decade of the fifties — a period seen by most journalists and academics as a time of complacency, conformity, and conservatism. In arguing that “The White Negro” did not simply tap into an oppositional undercurrent but, in an exaggerated form, actually reflected the dominant mood of the culture is to break with nearly everything we thought we knew about the early cold war years. Upon closer inspection, it would seem our distorted image of the 1950s has been caused by a failure to distinguish between social conventions and private behavior — or, to state the matter a little differently, by a failure to differentiate between what people professed publicly to believe, and what they actually practiced privately.
If one focuses not on social conventions but, instead, on private behavior, what one sees during the early cold war years is a picture of dramatic change — a time when a religiously oriented vision was fast losing its hold over the American Mind and the American Soul. How else are we to explain the emergence of the Sexual Revolution during the forties and fifties — a development attested to by soaring rates of single-motherhood and premarital pregnancies occurring during the supposedly staid Eisenhower years?
In “The White Negro,” Mailer seemed to regard white middle-class America as uptight and sexually repressed. While partially correct, Mailer failed to see what the majority of Americans at the time, and till this day, fail to see: a great and broad liberalization that was unfolding almost unnoticed during the fifties. In 1949, for example, when the public discovered Ingrid Bergman was planning to leave her husband and daughter for Italian director Roberto Rossellini, she was essentially banished from Hollywood. For more than seven years, Bergman resided in Europe — neither appearing in an American film, nor setting foot on American soil. By contrast, when Eddie Fisher left his wife and two children to be with the recently widowed Elizabeth Taylor nearly a decade later, the repercussions were relatively light. Although the behavior of Taylor and Fisher infuriated some fans — according to Eddie Fisher’s memoirs, at the height of the scandal he and Taylor were receiving about 7,000 nasty letters per week — both Taylor and Fisher immediately resumed their successful careers.[3] Indeed, it was only a year after the scandal erupted, in 1959, that Taylor received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Suddenly Last Summer, and only two years after the scandal when Taylor became the first actor to sign a million dollar contract to appear in a motion picture.[4]
The different responses to the Bergman and Taylor scandals suggests attitudes were evolving during the 1950s, but even more significant than shifting attitudes were notable changes in behavior that were occurring. Despite the greater availability of effective birth control, the rate of single motherhood soared during the middle decades of the twentieth century, rising by more than threefold in the years between 1940 and 1960.[5] What these figures indicate is that at the time of “The White Negro,” when Mailer was bemoaning the reticence and conformity of the culture, a sexual revolution was already well under way.
The medicalization of alcohol dependency provides us with another way to gauge changes in popular attitudes. In 1944, less than 10 percent of Americans considered alcoholism to be an illness rather than a personal failing. However, by 1949, public opinion had so shifted that a full third of Americans considered alcoholism to be an illness, and by the mid-1950s a clear majority of Americans held this opinion.[6]
The success of The Lost Weekend is an early indication of the public’s openness to a more sympathetic portrayal of the alcoholic in the immediate postwar period. The story of a troubled man who goes on a five-day drinking binge, The Lost Weekend was one of the most acclaimed movies of 1945. Initially, however, the success of The Lost Weekend seemed anything but certain. As actor Ray Milland recalled, when he first accepted the leading role in the film “some of my friends told me that I was committing professional suicide.” Yet, in the end, critics and audiences alike responded favorably and sympathetically to the character of Don Birnam. As the movie made plain, although Birnam lied, stole, and appeared weak and irresponsible, these vices were more indicative of a terrible medical illness than of a deficiency in moral character. Thus viewers cheered at the movie’s conclusion, when Birnam’s girlfriend foils his suicide attempt and convinces him to seek help for his drinking problem. Far from sabotaging his film career, Milland’s portrayal of an alcoholic received critical acclaim and an Oscar for Best Actor,[7]
By the close of the 1950s, public attitudes toward alcoholism had undergone a complete revolution in less than a generation. What is more, some of the country’s leading corporations — including General Motors, IBM, Shell Oil, General Foods, and Revlon — were contributing money to the National Council on Alcoholism (NCA), the chief advocate of the disease model; and, in 1959, President Eisenhower designated the first week of December as “Alcohol Information Week.”[8]
Even in the family, the area one would least expect it to occur, a great liberalization was under way during the fifties. As a wealth of sociological studies make clear, parenting in America was moving in a more permissive direction in the fifteen years following the Second World War. The publication of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) did much to persuade parents to adopt a milder, less regimented approach in the rearing of their children. In his manual, Spock encouraged parents to abandon the behaviorism that had dominated child-rearing strategies since the 1920s and, in its place, accept a style of parenting that was more relaxed. In Spock’s understanding, the strict discipline of the child was entirely unwarranted. “The things that keep us from doing ‘bad’ things to each other,” wrote Spock “is the feelings we have of liking people and wanting them to like us.” Consequently, if parents are “sure in their own minds how they expect him [the child] to behave, and tell him reasonably, not too irritably, they will have all the control over him that they need.”[9] One sign of the popularity of Spock’s message was the success of his book. With the exception of the Bible, The Common Sense Book has sold more copies than any book in the history of the English language.
Part of the reason a more permissive approach to parenting resonated so strongly after World War II is because of mounting concerns about the dangers of authoritarianism. As Americans emerged victorious from the Second World War, they sought to understand how a country as advanced as Germany could have allowed a man like Hitler to assume power — and they wondered if the same thing could happen in America someday. Could the combination of forces which turned an educated German citizenry into a herd of obedient foot-soldiers have a similar effect on the American population? Among leading thinkers and opinion makers, the answer was a resounding “yes.” As they saw it, the problem with the German population, and potentially with any population, was an excessive submissiveness toward authority.
In the decade following the Second World War, a golden age for psychology, this explanation acquired a great deal of currency. Accordingly, a number of social scientific classics written during this time, such as Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality, Erich Fromm’s Man for Himself, David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd, Gordon Allport’s The Nature of Prejudice, and William Whyte’s The Organization Man, attempted to grapple with the issue of personal submissiveness.
While not as well known today as in the fifties, the image of the subservient German remains strong today. An episode in the Fox-Television cartoon series The Simpsons speaks to this point.[10] In the episode, a self-help guru lecturing in Springfield advises the audience to let go of its hang-ups, and try to be more like the mischievous boy Bart Simpson who is in touch with his “inner child.” As a result, many of the adults in Springfield begin imitating Bart, acting in a spontaneous, carefree way and generally shirking their responsibilities. At the height of the frenzy, local anchorman Kent Brockman makes the on-air announcement: “Springfield will have its first annual ‘Do What You Feel’ Festival this Saturday. Whenever you feel like showing up, it will be a welcome change from our annual ‘Do What We Say’ Festival, started by German settlers in 1946.”
In the effort to define themselves in opposition to the stereotypical obedient German, the spotlight in the 1950s quickly centered on child rearing. According to the conventional wisdom of the day, the origins of the “Authoritarian Man” were to be found in his childhood. That is to say that the chief reason submissive people were willing to follow an authoritarian strong man like Hitler or Mussolini was to be found during their childhood when they were forced to submit to excessively domineering parents whose strict discipline and exacting rules facilitated an uncritical obedience to authority. As Samuel Flowerman, a leading proponent of this view, explained, “research findings indicate that so far the key to the difference between the authoritarian and democratic personalities lies in the relationship between parents and children. Learning to disagree with one’s parents may be the capstone of a democratic personality.”[11] In light of these broad cultural concerns, the less exacting approach to child rearing promoted by the likes of Spock received the enthusiastic praise of experts, and the broad backing of parents.
The medicalization of deviancy, liberalizing attitude toward sex, and a more relaxed approach to parenting represented a departure from an older and more traditional Christian morality. Yet more than any factor, the explosive growth of psychology during the forties and fifties gave rise to an increasingly secular culture. Mailer may have regarded White America as repressed, but, if true, that was a condition many Americans were attempting to escape. Between 1940 and 1960, clinical psychology came into its own, with membership in the American Psychological Association growing more than sixfold.[12]
One of the reasons clinical psychology grew so briskly was because, in the aftermath of the war, many mental health professionals decreased their focus on the problems of the severely ill or the criminally insane, and instead turned their attention to the relatively mundane problems of ordinary people. Joining the proliferating ranks of psychologists were psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, and, as we will discuss later, an explosion of pastoral counselors. Together, these mental health professionals democratized psychology, bringing it out of the prison and asylum and into the larger American community.
No less important than the growth of psychology was the changing emphasis of psychological counseling. While Freudianism reigned in the early forties, by the close of the 1950s, it was fast losing ground to the humanistic school of psychology, best exemplified by Carl Rogers. According to Rogers, at the core of every person lies the actualizing tendency — an internal mechanism that is positive, forward-looking, and attempts to push the individual toward his full potential. The job of the therapist, therefore, is not to somehow “cure” the patient, but something far more modest. Through the creation of an accepting atmosphere, the goal is to get the individual to unleash the actualizing tendency and, by so doing, assist the clients in healing themselves.[13]
One would think if forced to choose between humanistic psychology and Sigmund Freud, between the so-called client-centered approach championed by Carl Rogers and orthodox psychoanalysis, most Christian leaders would cast their lot with the Freudians. Freud may have held that most of man’s anxieties arose out of his sexual repression, but, at the same time, he believed much of man’s repression — and the anguish that accompanies it — are a part of human existence and a necessary development for the functioning of civilization. Likewise, while Freud may have thought psychoanalysis could be helpful in some limited situations, he did not believe in the perfectibility of man — insisting internal conflict and disharmony were an inevitable part of human existence. In short, traditional Christianity’s understandings of the human condition and Freud’s secularized vision of man were not altogether incompatible: in the case of the former, there was the belief in original sin; in the case of the latter, there was a clear-eyed appreciation of mankind’s limitations.
Humanistic psychology, however, had few of these restraints. Its emphasis was on man’s ability to persevere, to overcome, to triumph. Thus, throughout the writings of Carl Rogers and his close colleague Abraham Maslow, the themes of “potential” and “growth” continually reappear. Therefore, it seems counter-intuitive Protestant churches would choose Rogers over Freud, but embrace Rogers they did — and with great enthusiasm.
As Seward Hiltner, editor of Pastoral Psychology and the author of the most frequently used book in the teaching of ministerial counseling, observed, Carl Rogers was “more concretely influential” in the pastoral counseling movement “than any other individual.”[14] This mattered a great deal during the 1950s because Americans were approximately three times as likely to go to a minister to assist them dealing with a problem of psychological nature than they were to consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist.[15] In other words, there was a lot of psychological counseling going on during the fifties, but the bulk of this counseling was not occurring on the psychologist’s couch, but in a minister’s office.
The Protestant churches’ acceptance of Rogers, and their lack of enthusiasm for Freudian analysis, speaks to a larger question. During the 1930s and 1940s Freudian analysis was rarely embraced by religion because it was seen as too liberal. However, during the 1950s churches were slow to embrace psychoanalysis because they tended to see it as too conservative. Put simply, during the peace and prosperity of the Eisenhower years, when trust in the government was high and faith in the future abounded, psychoanalysis was simply seen as too dark, too depressing, too inflexible, and too inhibiting for an increasing number of Americans. To be sure, the politics of the 1950s were conservative. However, once we scratch the surface, what we find underneath are far-reaching changes unfolding on a grassroots level during the Age of Eisenhower — changes which should have heartened feminists, secularists, progressives, and even Norman Mailer himself.
Yet these developments should not surprise us altogether. In order for values to liberalize to any appreciable extent, as they did a decade later, such a shift in private sentiments had to occur first. As long as there was a dominant personality type that looked upon impulses with suspicion and hostility, that took seriously the notion of original sin, and that placed a greater value on self-mastery than self-expression, the extent to which behavioral codes could loosen would have been severely limited.
So, like other critics of the era — such as David Reisman, Gordon Allport, Erich Fromm, and William Whyte — Norman Mailer’s hand-wringing about the lack of individuality in American Society was not a substantiation of his claims but of the reverse. In an ironic way, the resonance of “The White Negro” during the late 1950s was further evidence of an ascendant spirit during the postwar era — one which was more secular, more expressive, and — in the aggregate — less conformist than anything that had come before.
↑ Mailer 1998, p. 214.
↑ Marx 1967, p. 168.
↑ Fisher 1999, pp. 149–150.
↑ Leonard 1960, p. 9.
↑ Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (PDF) (Report). Bureau of the Census. 1975. p. 52. Retrieved 2019-02-16.
↑ Rothe 1949, pp. 398–399.
↑ "Movie of the Week: The Lost Weekend". Life. October 15, 1945. pp. 133–136.
↑ For Fifty Years, The Voice of Americans Fighting Alcoholism (Report). National Center for Alcoholism and Drug Dependency. 1994. p. 3.
↑ Spock 1946, p. 271.
↑ “Bart’s Inner Child.” The Simpsons episode #88. Season 5 (first aired on November 11, 1993).
↑ Flowerman 1950, p. 28.
↑ American Psychological Association Year Book (Report). American Psychological Association. 1960.
↑ Rogers 1946, pp. 415–421.
↑ Holifield 1983, p. 265.
↑ Gruin, Veroff & Feld 1960, p. 121.
Fisher, Eddie (1999). Been There, Done That. New York: St. Martin.
Flowerman, Samuel H. (April 23, 1950). "Portrait of the Authoritarian Man". The New York Times Magazine.
Gurin, Gerald; Veroff, Joseph; Feld, Sheila (1960). Americans View Their Mental Health. New York: Basic Books.
Holifield, E. Brooks (1983). A History of Pastoral Care in America. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Leonard, William (June 12, 1960). "They Love Liz Taylor, Shocks and All". Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine.
Mailer, Norman (1998). The Time of Our Time. New York: Modern Library.
Marx, Gary T. (Summer 1967). "The White Negro and the Negro White". Phylon. 28 (2): 168–177. Retrieved 2019-02-16.
Rogers, Carl (June 1946). "Significant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy". The American Psychologist: 415–421.
Rothe, Anne, ed. (1949). "Mann, Marty". Current Biography. New York: H. W. Wilson Company.
Spock, Benjamin (1946). The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
Vol. 1 (2007)
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V.1 2007
Written by Alan Petigny
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Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)
Dave Reichert (R-Wash.)
Peter Roskam (R-Ill.)
Phil Roe (R-Tenn.)
Tom Rooney (R-Fla.)
Tom Reed (R-N.Y.)
Jim Renacci (R-Ohio)
Cedric Richmond (D-La.)
Martha Roby (R-Ala.)
Todd Rokita (R-Ind.)
Dennis Ross (R-Fla.)
Tom Rice (R-S.C.)
Keith Rothfus (R-Pa.)
Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.)
Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa)
John Ratcliffe (R-Texas)
Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.)
David Rouzer (R-N.C.)
Steve Russell (R-Okla.)
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
Francis Rooney (R-Fla.)
Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.)
John Rutherford (R-Fla.)
Mark Sanford (R-S.C.)
Robert C. Scott (D-Va.)
F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)
José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.)
Pete Sessions (R-Texas)
Brad Sherman (D-Calif.)
John Shimkus (R-Ill.)
Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.)
Adam Smith (D-Wash.)
Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.)
Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)
Mike Simpson (R-Idaho)
Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.)
Bill Shuster (R-Pa.)
Linda T. Sánchez (D-Calif.)
David Scott (D-Ga.)
Albio Sires (D-N.J.)
John Sarbanes (D-Md.)
Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.)
Adrian Smith (R-Neb.)
Jackie Speier (D-Calif.)
Steve Scalise (R-La.)
Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D-Northern Marina Islands)
Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.)
David Schweikert (R-Ariz.)
Terri Sewell (D-Ala.)
Steve Stivers (R-Ohio)
Austin Scott (R-Ga.)
Brad Schneider (D-Ill.)
Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)
Chris Stewart (R-Utah)
Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)
Jason Smith (R-Mo.)
Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)
Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.)
Darren Soto (D-Fla.)
Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.)
Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.)
Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
William M. Thornberry (R-Texas)
Mike Thompson (D-Calif.)
Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio)
Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio)
Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.)
Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.)
Dina Titus (D-Nev.)
Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.)
Scott Tipton (R-Colo.)
Mark Takano (D-Calif.)
Norma Torres (D-Calif.)
Dave Trott (R-Mich.)
Scott Taylor (R-Va.)
Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.)
Fred Upton (R-Mich.)
Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.)
Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.)
David Valadao (R-Calif.)
Juan Vargas (D-Calif.)
Marc Veasey (D-Texas)
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
Greg Walden (R-Ore.)
Joe Wilson (R-S.C.)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)
Tim Walberg (R-Mich.)
Tim Walz (D-Minn.)
Peter Welch (D-Vt.)
Robert J. Wittman (R-Va.)
Daniel Webster (R-Fla.)
Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.)
Steve Womack (R-Ark.)
Rob Woodall (R-Ga.)
Ann Wagner (R-Mo.)
Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.)
Randy Weber (R-Texas)
Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio)
Roger Williams (R-Texas)
Mark Walker (R-N.C.)
Mimi Walters (R-Calif.)
Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)
Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.)
Susan Wild (D-Pa.)
Don Young (R-Alaska)
John Yarmuth (D-Ky.)
Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.)
Ted Yoho (R-Fla.)
David Young (R-Iowa)
Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.)
Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.)
Democrat ∙ View profile
Represented Texas's 34th Congressional District. This is his 3rd term in the House.
John Ratcliffe
Republican ∙ View profile
Represented Texas's 4th Congressional District. This is his 2nd term in the House.
Filemon Vela and John Ratcliffe are from different parties and disagreed on 68 percent of votes in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
Compare in other Congresses
116th Congress (2019-20)
But they didn't always disagree. Out of 1087 votes in the 115th Congress, they agreed on 352 votes, including 79 major votes.
Here are the votes they agreed on
Major votes All votes
House Vote 377
On Passage
July 25, 2018 — Restoring Access to Medication Act
Passed by a margin of 135 votes.
July 24, 2018 — Protect Medical Innovation Act
July 12, 2018 — Matthew Young Pollard Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018 and 2019
July 12, 2018 — Reclamation Title Transfer and Non-Federal Infrastructure Incentivization Act
Passed by a margin of 49 votes.
June 28, 2018 — Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
June 27, 2018 — Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018
Failed by a margin of 180 votes.
June 26, 2018 — Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act
June 22, 2018 — Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act
June 14, 2018 — Securing the International Mail Against Opioids Act
June 8, 2018 — Making appropriations for energy and water development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
June 6, 2018 — Water Resources Development Act of 2018
May 24, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
May 22, 2018 — Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, as Amended
May 22, 2018 — FIRST STEP Act
May 16, 2018 — Veterans Cemetery Benefit Correction Act
May 16, 2018 — Protect and Serve Act of 2018
May 10, 2018 — Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act
May 8, 2018 — Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to “Indirect Auto Lending and Compliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act”
April 27, 2018 — FAA Reauthorization Act
April 18, 2018 — Taxpayer First Act
April 18, 2018 — 21st Century IRS Act
April 17, 2018 — Protecting Children from Identity Theft Act
April 13, 2018 — Volcker Rule Regulatory Harmonization Act
April 11, 2018 — Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act
On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment with an Amendment
March 22, 2018 — TARGET Act
March 20, 2018 — Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act
March 15, 2018 — Financial Institutions Examination Fairness and Reform Act
March 14, 2018 — Taking Account of Institutions with Low Operation Risk Act of 2017 or the TAILOR Act of 2017
House Vote 95
March 6, 2018 — Comprehensive Regulatory Review Act
Feb. 27, 2018 — Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
Feb. 14, 2018 — TRID Improvement Act
Feb. 8, 2018 — Mortgage Choice Act of 2017
Feb. 6, 2018 — Further Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018
Feb. 6, 2018 — Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2017
Jan. 10, 2018 — To amend the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act of 2010 to clarify the use of amounts in the WMAT Settlement Fund
Dec. 21, 2017 — Making further supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2018, for disaster assistance for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and calendar year 2017 wildfires, and for other purposes
Dec. 19, 2017 — Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act of 2017
Dec. 13, 2017 — Iranian Leadership Asset Transparency Act
Dec. 12, 2017 — Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act of 2017
Dec. 7, 2017 — Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2018, and for other purposes
Dec. 7, 2017 — Small Business Mergers, Acquisitions, Sales, and Brokerage Simplification Act of 2017
Nov. 30, 2017 — Brownfields Enhancement, Economic Redevelopment, and Reauthorization Act
Nov. 8, 2017 — Hydropower Policy Modernization Act of 2017
Nov. 2, 2017 — Protecting Seniors Access to Medicare Act
Oct. 12, 2017 — Dr. Chris Kirkpatrick Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017
Sept. 28, 2017 — Disaster Tax Relief and Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2017
On Motion to Concur in the Senate Adt to the House Adt to the Senate Adt
Sept. 8, 2017 — Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree
Sept. 6, 2017 — Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendments to H.R. 601, with an amendment.
July 28, 2017 — Department of Veterans Affairs Bonus Transparency Act
July 28, 2017 — Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass
July 25, 2017 — Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
July 20, 2017 — King Cove Road Land Exchange Act
July 19, 2017 — Promoting Interagency Coordination for Review of Natural Gas Pipelines Act
July 19, 2017 — Promoting Cross-Border Energy Infrastructure Act
June 23, 2017 — Accelerating Individuals into the Workforce Act
June 21, 2017 — Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act
June 13, 2017 — Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act
June 7, 2017 — Anti-Border Corruption Reauthorization Act
May 25, 2017 — Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse Act of 2017
May 25, 2017 — Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017
May 24, 2017 — Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act
May 19, 2017 — Probation Officer Protection Act of 2017
May 18, 2017 — Thin Blue Line Act
May 4, 2017 — To amend the Public Health Service Act to eliminate the non-application of certain State waiver provisions to Members of Congress and congressional staff
On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments Nos. 2 and 3, and in No. 1 with Amendment
May 3, 2017 — HIRE Vets Act
April 28, 2017 — Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2017, and for other purposes
April 27, 2017 — Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017
April 26, 2017 — Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act
April 6, 2017 — Supporting America’s Innovators Act
April 5, 2017 — Self-Insurance Protection Act
April 4, 2017 — Encouraging Employee Ownership Act
March 22, 2017 — Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017
March 17, 2017 — To improve the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to hire and retain physicians and other employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes
March 16, 2017 — Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act
March 1, 2017 — Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to “Clarification of Employer’s Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness”
Feb. 16, 2017 — Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to “Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska”
Feb. 14, 2017 — Red River Gradient Boundary Survey Act
Feb. 1, 2017 — Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers”
Jan. 10, 2017 — Helping Angels Lead Our Startups (HALOS) Act
Dec. 21, 2018 — Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act
Dec. 21, 2018 — Federal Personal Property Management Act
Dec. 21, 2018 — GAO-IG Act
Dec. 21, 2018 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 770 Ayrault Road in Fairport, New York, as the “Louise and Bob Slaughter Post Office”
Dec. 21, 2018 — Department of Transportation Reports Harmonization Act
Dec. 21, 2018 — To make technical corrections to provisions of law enacted by the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, and for other purposes
Dec. 21, 2018 — To amend the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 to provide flexibility with respect to the leaseback of certain Federal real property, and for other purposes
Dec. 21, 2018 — To amend the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 to ensure that the Public Buildings Reform Board has adequate time to carry out the responsibilities of the Board, and for other purposes
Dec. 21, 2018 — Designating room H-226 of the United States Capitol as the “Lincoln Room”
Dec. 20, 2018 — To reauthorize the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail Route, and for other purposes
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree, as Amended
Dec. 13, 2018 — Calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sentenced to seven years imprisonment after investigating attacks against civilians by Burma’s military and security forces, and for other purposes
Dec. 11, 2018 — Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium Land Transfer Act of 2017
Dec. 11, 2018 — PREEMIE Reauthorization Act
Dec. 11, 2018 — Improving Medicaid Programs and Opportunities for Eligible Beneficiaries Act
Dec. 10, 2018 — George W. Bush Childhood Home Study Act
Dec. 10, 2018 — Urging the Secretary of the Interior to recognize the historical significance of Roberto Clemente’s place of death near Pinones in Loiza, Puerto Rico, by adding it to the National Register of Historic Places
On Agreeing to the Resolution
Nov. 14, 2018 — Providing for consideration of H.R. 6784, the Manage our Wolves Act; and providing for proceedings during the period from November 19, 2018, through November 26, 2018
Sept. 28, 2018 — Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to H.R. 6, with an amendment
Sept. 26, 2018 — FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018
Sept. 26, 2018 — Recognizing that allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of the United States citizens
Sept. 26, 2018 — FDR Historic Preservation Act
On Agreeing to the Conference Report
Sept. 13, 2018 — Making appropriations for energy and water development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
Sept. 13, 2018 — Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act
Sept. 12, 2018 — To authorize early repayment of obligations to the Bureau of Reclamation within the Northport Irrigation District in the State of Nebraska
Sept. 12, 2018 — Every Kid Outdoors Act
Sept. 12, 2018 — Walnut Grove Land Exchange Act
July 26, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
On Ordering the Previous Question
July 26, 2018 — Providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 5515, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2019 for military activities of the Department of Defense, military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for the fiscal year
July 25, 2018 — VA Hospitals Establishing Leadership Performance Act
On Agreeing to the Amendment
July 18, 2018 — Grothman of Wisconsin Amendment No. 39, as Modified
July 18, 2018 — To authorize the National Emergency Medical Services Memorial Foundation to establish a commemorative work in the District of Columbia and its environs, and for other purposes
On Motion to Instruct Conferees
July 18, 2018 — Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018
July 17, 2018 — Protecting Diplomats from Surveillance Through Consumer Devices Act
July 17, 2018 — Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018
July 17, 2018 — JOBS and Investor Confidence Act of 2018
July 16, 2018 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 511 East Walnut Street in Columbia, Missouri, as the “Spc. Sterling William Wyatt Post Office Building”.
July 16, 2018 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1075 North Tustin Street in Orange, California, as the “Specialist Trevor A. Win’E Post Office
July 10, 2018 — Options Markets Stability Act
July 10, 2018 — Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act
June 28, 2018 — Courtney of Connecticut Amendment No. 29
June 28, 2018 — Clark of Massachusetts Amendment No. 15
Agreed to by a margin of 95 votes.
June 28, 2018 — Gallagher of Wisconsin Amendment No. 8
On Closing Portions of the Conference
June 27, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
June 26, 2018 — Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act
June 26, 2018 — Prevention of Private Information Dissemination Act of 2017
June 26, 2018 — Providing for consideration of the bill H.R. 6157, making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes; and the bill H.R. 2083, the Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act.
June 25, 2018 — Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act of 2018
June 25, 2018 — Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act
June 21, 2018 — Providing for consideration of H.R. 4760, the Securing America’s Future Act of 2018
June 13, 2018 — Improving the Federal Response to Families Impacted by Substance Use Disorder Act
June 13, 2018 — Assisting States’ Implementation of Plans of Safe Care Act
June 12, 2018 — Safe Disposal of Unused Medication Act
June 12, 2018 — Comprehensive Opioid Recovery Centers Act
On Approving the Journal
On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment
June 6, 2018 — Project Safe Neighborhoods Grant Program Authorization Act of 2018
May 23, 2018 — Engel of New York Amendment No. 43
Agreed to by a margin of 352 votes.
May 23, 2018 — Tenney of New York Amendment No. 19
Failed by a margin of 65 votes.
May 23, 2018 — McKinley of West Virginia Amendment No. 13
May 23, 2018 — McGovern of Massachusetts Amendment No. 10
May 23, 2018 — Gabbard of Hawaii Amendment No. 3
May 23, 2018 — Nolan of Minnesota Amendment No. 2
May 21, 2018 — Servicemembers Improved Transition through Reforms for Ensuring Progress Act
May 18, 2018 — Banks of Indiana Amendment No. 31
May 18, 2018 — Roskam of Illinois Amendment No. 28
May 18, 2018 — Massie of Kentucky Amendment No. 25
May 18, 2018 — Russell of Oklahoma Amendment No. 17
May 17, 2018 — Westerman of Arkansas Part C Amendment No. 13
May 17, 2018 — McClintock of California Amendment No. 3
May 15, 2018 — Expressing the sense of the United States House of Representatives that Congress and the President should empower the creation of police and community alliances designed to enhance and improve communication and collaboration between members of the law enforcment community and the public they serve
May 15, 2018 — To amend the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 to provide additional resources to State and local prosecutors, and for other purposes
May 15, 2018 — Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act
May 10, 2018 — Titus of Nevada Amendment No. 3
May 7, 2018 — Servicemember Family Burial Act
May 7, 2018 — Veterans Cemetery Benefit Correction Act
April 26, 2018 — Iran Human Rights and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act
April 26, 2018 — Rohrabacher of California Part A Amendment No. 60
April 25, 2018 — Music Modernization Act
April 18, 2018 — Justice for Victims of IRS Scams and Identity Theft Act of 2018
April 16, 2018 — To designate a National Memorial to Fallen Educators at the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas
April 16, 2018 — Eastern Band of Cherokee Historic Lands Reacquisition Act
April 10, 2018 — Combat Online Predators Act
April 10, 2018 — End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018
March 22, 2018 — Strengthening Aviation Security Act of 2018
March 22, 2018 — Surface Transportation Security Improvement Act 2018
March 22, 2018 — Vehicular Terrorism Prevention Act of 2018
March 19, 2018 — Kennedy--King National Commemorative Site Act
March 19, 2018 — To update the map of, and modify the maximum acreage available for inclusion in, the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
March 14, 2018 — Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing School Violence Act of 2018
March 13, 2018 — Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Extension Act of 2017
Feb. 26, 2018 — Action for Dental Health Act of 2017
Feb. 26, 2018 — Congenital Heart Futures Reauthorization Act of 2017
Feb. 14, 2018 — Calling on the Department of Defense, other elements of the Federal Government, and foreign governments to intensify efforts to investigate, recover, and identify all missing and unaccounted-for personnel of the United States
Feb. 14, 2018 — Hamas Human Shields Prevention Act
Feb. 13, 2018 — To extend the Generalized System of Preferences and to make technical changes to the competitive need limitations provision of the program
Feb. 13, 2018 — Lexington VA Health Care System
Feb. 7, 2018 — Ukraine Cybersecurity Cooperation Act of 2017
Feb. 7, 2018 — War Crimes Rewards Expansion Act
Feb. 5, 2018 — Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018
Jan. 30, 2018 — Financial Institution Living Will Improvement Act
Jan. 29, 2018 — To establish requirements for use of a driver’s license or personal identification card by certain financial institutions for opening an account or obtaining a financial product or service, and for other purposes
Jan. 29, 2018 — Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act
On Motion to Fix the Convening Time
On Motion to Adjourn
Jan. 18, 2018 — Global Health Innovation Act of 2017
Jan. 11, 2018 — Counter Terrorist Network Act
Jan. 10, 2018 — DHS Overseas Personnel Enhancement Act of 2017
House Vote 7
Jan. 9, 2018 — Screening and Vetting Passenger Exchange Act
Jan. 9, 2018 — Post-Caliphate Threat Assessment Act of 2017
Jan. 9, 2018 — Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes
Dec. 21, 2017 — No Human Trafficking on Our Roads Act
Dec. 21, 2017 — Jobs for Our Heroes Act
Dec. 20, 2017 — United States and Israel Space Cooperation Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Women in Aerospace Education Act
Dec. 18, 2017 — Keep America’s Refuges Operational Act
Dec. 18, 2017 — STEM Research and Education Effectiveness and Transparency Act
Dec. 11, 2017 — Protecting Religiously Affiliated Institutions Act of 2017
Dec. 11, 2017 — Financial Institution Customer Protection Act of 2017
Dec. 7, 2017 — Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act
Dec. 7, 2017 — Expressing concern and condemnation over the political, economic, social, and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela
Dec. 6, 2017 — Condemning ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and calling for an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma
Dec. 6, 2017 — Enhancing Veteran Care Act
Dec. 5, 2017 — Stopping Abusive Female Exploitation Act of 2017
Nov. 28, 2017 — Superior National Forest Land Exchange Act
Nov. 28, 2017 — Fowler and Boskoff Peaks Designation Act
Nov. 15, 2017 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 520 Carter Street in Fairview, Illinois, as the “Sgt. Douglas J. Riney Post Office”
Nov. 15, 2017 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 430 Main Street in Clermont, Georgia, as the “Zachary Addington Post Office”
Nov. 15, 2017 — Connected Government Act
Nov. 14, 2017 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018
Nov. 13, 2017 — Federal Acquisition Savings Act of 2017
Nov. 13, 2017 — Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to United States policy towards Yemen, and for other purposes
Nov. 8, 2017 — Veterans Fair Debt Notice Act of 2017
Nov. 8, 2017 — Veterans Crisis Line Study Act of 2017
Nov. 7, 2017 — Risk-Based Credit Examination Act
Nov. 6, 2017 — VA Management Alignment Act
Nov. 6, 2017 — To amend title 38, United States Code, to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to furnish assistance for adaptations of residences of veterans in rehabilitation programs under chapter 31 of such title, and for other purposes
Nov. 1, 2017 — Encouraging Public Offerings Act
Oct. 31, 2017 — South Carolina Peanut Parity Act of 2017
Oct. 26, 2017 — Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement Act
Oct. 24, 2017 — Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions Act
Oct. 24, 2017 — International Narcotics Trafficking Emergency Response by Detecting Incoming Contraband with Technology Act
Oct. 23, 2017 — Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Travel Cards Act
Oct. 23, 2017 — C-TPAT Reauthorization Act
Oct. 12, 2017 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018
Oct. 11, 2017 — FITARA Enhancement Act of 2017
Oct. 11, 2017 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 324 West Saint Louis Street in Pacific, Missouri, as the “Specialist Jeffrey L. White, Jr. Post Office”
Oct. 10, 2017 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 25 New Chardon Street Lobby in Boston, Massachusetts, as the “John Fitzgerald Kennedy Post Office”
Oct. 10, 2017 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 4514 Williamson Trail in Liberty, Pennsylvania, as the “Staff Sergeant Ryan Scott Ostrom Post Office”
Oct. 3, 2017 — To reauthorize the National Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, and for other purposes
Oct. 2, 2017 — Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park Redesignation Act
Oct. 2, 2017 — Udall Park Land Exchange Completion Act
Sept. 27, 2017 — Recognizing that for 50 years the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has worked toward stability, prosperity, and peace in Southeast Asia
Sept. 25, 2017 — North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act
Sept. 13, 2017 — Grothman of Wisconsin Amendment No. 105
Sept. 12, 2017 — Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Boundary Modification Act
Sept. 8, 2017 — Carbajal of California Amendment No. 57
Sept. 8, 2017 — Palmer of Alabama Amendment No. 56
Sept. 8, 2017 — Blackburn of Tennessee Amendment No. 55
Sept. 7, 2017 — Austin Scott of Georgia Part B Amendment No. 92
Sept. 7, 2017 — Correa of California Part B Amendment No. 76
Sept. 6, 2017 — Babin of Texas Part B Amendment No. 58
Sept. 5, 2017 — Financial Stability Oversight Council Insurance Member Continuity Act
July 27, 2017 — Cartwright of Pennsylvania Part B Amendment No. 43
July 24, 2017 — Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act
July 20, 2017 — DHS Authorization Act
July 19, 2017 — Tsongas of Massachusetts Part A Amendment No. 1
July 19, 2017 — Tsongas of Massachusetts Part B Amendment No. 2
July 19, 2017 — Engel of New York Part B Amendment No. 1
July 18, 2017 — To amend the Federal Power Act with respect to the criteria and process to qualify as a qualifying conduit hydropower facility
July 17, 2017 — Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to a enter into a compact relating to the establishment of the Washington Metrorail Satefy Commission
July 17, 2017 — Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to amend the Washington Area Transit Regulation Compact
July 17, 2017 — Sergeant Joseph George Kusick VA Community Living Center
July 14, 2017 — McGovern of Massachusetts Amendment No. 43
July 14, 2017 — Byrne of Alabama Amendment No. 17
July 13, 2017 — Tom Rooney of Florida Amendent No. 6
July 13, 2017 — Buck of Colorado Amendment No. 3
July 13, 2017 — Blumenauer of Oregon Part B Amendment No. 8
July 13, 2017 — Nadler of New York Part B Amendment No. 6
July 13, 2017 — Polis of Colorado Part B Amendment No. 4
July 13, 2017 — Conaway of Texas Part B Amendment No. 2
July 12, 2017 — Medical Controlled Substances Transportation Act
July 11, 2017 — To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to acquire approximately 44 acres of land in Martinez, California, and for other purposes
July 11, 2017 — To authorize, direct, facilitate, and expedite the transfer of administrative jurisdiction of certain Federal land, and for other purposes
June 28, 2017 — Robert Emmet Park Act
June 28, 2017 — Barr of Kentucky Amendment No. 5
June 27, 2017 — To authorize the expansion of an existing hydroelectric project, and for other purposes
June 27, 2017 — Santa Ana River Wash Plan Land Exchange Act
June 27, 2017 — Solemnly reaffirming the commitment of the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s principle of collective defense as enumerated in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty
June 26, 2017 — Active Duty Voluntary Acquisition of Necessary Credentials for Employment (ADVANCE) Act
June 26, 2017 — Veterans Expanded Trucking Opportunities Act of 2017
June 23, 2017 — Davidson of Ohio Amendment No. 5
June 23, 2017 — Krishnamoorthi of Illinois Amendment No. 4
June 20, 2017 — Improving Services for Older Youth in Foster Care Act
June 12, 2017 — J. Bennett Johnston Waterway Hydropower Extension Act
June 12, 2017 — To extend a project of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission involving the Cannonsville Dam
June 7, 2017 — Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico Amendment No. 1
May 24, 2017 — VA Scheduling Accountability Act
May 24, 2017 — PRIVATE Act
May 23, 2017 — Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017
May 22, 2017 — Strengthening Children’s Safety Act of 2017
May 22, 2017 — Global Child Protection Act of 2017
May 19, 2017 — Jackson Lee of Texas Amendment
May 18, 2017 — Honoring Hometown Heroes Act
May 17, 2017 — Removing Outdated Restrictions to Allow for Job Growth Act
May 16, 2017 — Strengthening State and Local Cyber Crime Fighting Act of 2017
May 4, 2017 — Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act
May 3, 2017 — To amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act concerning the statute of limitations for actions to recover disaster or emergency assistance payments, and for other purposes
May 3, 2017 — Disaster Declaration Improvement Act
May 2, 2017 — FEMA Accountability, Modernization and Transparency Act of 2017
May 1, 2017 — Follow the Rules Act
May 1, 2017 — Small Business Capital Formation Enhancement Act
May 1, 2017 — Fair Access to Investment Research Act of 2017
April 27, 2017 — Johnson of Georgia Part B Amendment No. 2
April 27, 2017 — To repeal the rule issued by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration entitled “Metropolitan Planning Organization Coordination and Planning Area Reform”
April 26, 2017 — Deutch of Florida Amendment No. 1
April 25, 2017 — Aviation Employee Screening and Security Enhancement Act of 2017
April 25, 2017 — Relating to efforts to respond to the famine in South Sudan
April 3, 2017 — North Korea State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act of 2017
April 3, 2017 — Condemning North Korea’s development of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles, and for other purposes
March 27, 2017 — Pacific Northwest Earthquake Preparedness Act
March 27, 2017 — To require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to submit a report regarding certain plans regarding assistance to applicants and grantees during the response to an emergency or disaster
March 24, 2017 — Department of Homeland Security Acquisition Innovation Act
Passed by a margin of 5 votes.
March 22, 2017 — Securing our Agriculture and Food Act
March 21, 2017 — Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Technical Corrections Act of 2017
March 21, 2017 — Transparency in Technological Acquisitions Act of 2017
March 20, 2017 — DHS Acquisition Authorities Act of 2017
March 20, 2017 — DHS Multiyear Acquisition Strategy Act of 2017
March 20, 2017 — Reducing DHS Acquisition Cost Growth Act
March 17, 2017 — Hanabusa of Hawaii Part B Amendment No. 11
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Charity Hospital News Orleans
Documentary Spotlight: No Place for “Big Charity” in the age of none
Big Charity
Directed by Alex Glustrom–2015–63 minutes
The French Quarter may have survived the 2005 devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina, but some of New Orleans’ poorer neighborhoods, like the Lower Ninth Ward, were not so lucky and never fully recovered. The greatest institutional loss for the city, especially for those sections of town, had to be the historic Mercy Hospital. Its last iteration was the handsome and hulking Art Deco behemoth that was located downtown just two blocks from the Superdome. The hospital’s forced closing after sustaining relatively minor damage during Katrina, and the larger social implications of the shutdown, is the story of this thoughtful and quietly indignant film.
A lot can be known about Charity Hospital simply by looking at its name. The 1940 building that now stands abandoned was preceded by several others, dating back to 1736. It was founded by a French shipbuilder who stipulated a beneficent institution for the poor in his will. It kept up that model straight into the early 21st century in the giant 1939 building raised by taxpayer money and operated by the Daughters of Charity in their distinctive cornettes. With its crazy-quilt egalitarian alliances and 2700 beds, Big Charity (as it was commonly known) was not only an invaluable local resource, but the safety net hospital for the whole state of Louisiana. The building featured inspirational phrases inscribed in the lobby (“Where the Unusual Occurs, Miracles Happen”) and idealistic New Deal friezes; even it’s layout, with two extensive projecting wings resembling arms in an embrace, seemed to suggest its ages-old benevolence.
But the ad hoc coalition of community goodwill, government largesse and the nunnery was bound to be strained over a long period of shifting economics and the gradual gentrification of health care. Big Charity was eventually subsumed by the nearby Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. The hospital that stayed afloat through the Antebellum era, the Reconstruction and the advent of modern inner-city poverty, would get sunk by the notion that such places now need to be “destination facilities.” The catalyst for Charity’s demise was Katrina. Director Alex Glustrom excels in mapping out the discouraging chain of events at the hospital during the late August ’05 hurricane and the suspicious aftermath. Katrina was strong enough to shake the gargantuan building but aside from a severely flooded basement it seemingly escaped the worst.
But while Charity may have survived a Category 5 cyclone, it was no match for the institutional power play that came next. While caregivers scrambled to provide critical services without power, evacuation helicopters bypassed Charity, in more ways than one. By alternating the recollections of doctors, nurses and support staff with news footage and home video shot on the scene, Glustrom re-constructs a distressing portrait of the hospital’s sudden and shocking marginalization. Even more saddening, in the bigger picture, is the on-camera testimony of military officers whose men and women then came in and helped with evacuation, pumped out the basement and did a fix-up job on the facilities post-haste. But when they reported to LSU that the building was all ready to be re-booted they were flatly told there were no plans to reopen it.
Charity was shut up tight and its critical services unceremoniously moved to a tent city inside a closed shopping mall (the archival footage making it seem, depressingly, like a Third World scenario). Meanwhile, the old building was mysteriously infiltrated by a group of people who methodically “scuttled” the facilities. When the federal disaster relief payoff came it was a half-billion bucks for a new mega-health center, even though a modern rehab of Mercy Hospital would have cost a fraction of that. And so it goes.
Of course, reasonable people could disagree on whether or not a state-of-the-art new facility would be a better value in the long run. The more crucial issue is the overbearing influence of mega-institutions of the 21st century getting their way in every situation. The contrast between the quiet compassion of the Charity caregivers vs. the bloodless bottom-line certainties of the LSU administration is chilling. At the top of this too-big-too-fail pyramid is the Health Sciences Center chancellor, Dr. Larry Hollier. In a USA drifting towards a you’re-on-your-own default mindset, with a president well-known for his personal perversions and general heartlessness, this is the “nice” face of a screw-you philosophy.
Hollier politely tells us the LSU center is “moving away from indigent care.” as if that will solve the problem of indigence. The bulldozing of several blocks of the adjacent Mid-City neighborhood, to make way for the new complex, is termed an “inconvenience.” (This includes the demolition of many homes rebuilt post-Katrina). While Mercy Hospital remains a giant ghost shell of a building with many tales to tell, its walled-off impersonal replacement is now in place and there was no way it was going to carry over the old name. The word charity nowadays is seen by people as a “stigma” declares Dr. Hollier. Based on what I’ve seen in this moving documentary, I think a clear majority of New Orleans residents would disagree. If the doctor wants to find a person who believes that statement, he can start with a look in the mirror.
Posted in Documentary Spotlight and tagged Alex Glustrom, Big Charity, Charity Hospital News Orleans, Dr. Larry Hollier, Hurricane Katrina aftermath on March 31, 2018 by Rick Ouellette. 4 Comments
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Best James Brown Songs
Okay, time for a new project. This time it's JAMES BROWN!
Submit to me at least 10 and up to 50 of your favorite James Brown songs ranked in order. I'll tally up the numbers and present a countdown of the results. Ballots will be scored like this:
1. 75 points
Ballots must contain at least 10 songs and must be ranked, or they will not be counted. Please post your ballot in this thread.
1. Doing It To Death
2. Out of Sight
3. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
4. Baby, You're Right
5. Please, Please, Please
6. Ain't That A Groove
7. Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine
8. Chonnie-On-Chon
9. No, No., No., No, No
10. I'll Go Crazy
11. I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On
12. Night Train
13. Tell Me What I Did Wrong
14. Cold Sweat
15. Come Over Here
16. Bring It Up
17. I Got You (I Feel Good)
18. That Dood It
19. Caldonia
20. Good Good Lovin'
21. Maybe The Last Time
22. Bewildered
23. Call Me Super Bad
24. Let's Make It
25. I Know It's True
26. Get On The Good Foot
27. I Got The Feelin'
28. Oh Baby Don't You Weep
29. Baby Cries Over The Ocean
30. I've Got To Change
31. Mashed Potatoes U.S.A.
32. This Old Heart
33. I Won't Plead No More
34. Just Won't Do Right
35. You Don't Have To Go
36. I Don't Mind
37. Talking Loud And Saying Nothing
38. Lost Someone
39. Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants)
40. You've Got The Power
41. I'll Never, Never Let You Go
42. America Is My Home
43. Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto
44. There Was A Time
45. There Must Be A Reason
46. Why Do You Do Me
47. Hold My Baby's Hand
48. Try Me
49. Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn
50. I'm A Greedy Man
Dean F.
You're speaking my language, daddy-o!
1. BRING IT UP (1967)
2. PAPA’S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG (1965)
3. GET UP I FEEL LIKE BEING A SEX MACHINE (1970)
4. COLD SWEAT (1967)
5. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (1956)
6. I GOT YOU (I Feel Good) (1965)
7. MOTHER POPCORN (1969)
8. DOING IT TO DEATH, Fred Wesley & The J.B.’s (1973)
9. AIN’T THAT A GROOVE, Part 1 (1966)
10. BEWILDERED (1961)
11. NIGHT TRAIN (1962)
12. THE PAYBACK (1974)
13. I GOT THE FEELIN’ (1968)
14. HOT PANTS, Part 1 (1971)
15. SUPER BAD, Parts 1 & 2 (1970)
16. IT’S A MAN’S MAN’S MAN’S WORLD (1966)
17. I CAN’T STAND MYSELF (When You Touch Me) (1967-68)
18. OUT OF SIGHT (1964)
19. TRY ME (I Need You) (1958-59)
20. GET ON THE GOOD FOOT (1972)
21. I’LL GO CRAZY (Live at the Apollo, 1966)
22. BABY, YOU’RE RIGHT (1961)
23. THERE WAS A TIME (1968)
24. I DON’T WANT NOBODY TO GIVE ME NOTHIN’ (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself) (1969)
25. GIVE IT UP OR TURNIT A LOOSE (1969)
26. LICKING STICK—LICKING STICK, Part 1 (1968)
27. SAY IT LOUD—I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD, Part 1 (1968)
28. BROTHER RAPP, Part 1 (1970)
29. GET UP, GET INTO IT & GET INVOLVED (1971)
30. SOUL POWER (1971)
31. THINK (1973)
32. LOST SOMEONE (1961-62)
33. TALKING LOUD AND SAYING NOTHING, Part 1 (1972)
34. MY THANG (1974)
35. I GOT A BAG OF MY OWN (1973)
36. MAYBE THE LAST TIME (1964)
37. PAPA DON’T TAKE NO MESS, Part 1 (1974)
38. I GOT ANTS IN MY PANTS (And I Need to Dance) (1971)
39. THINK (About It), Lyn Collins (1972)
40. GET IT TOGETHER, Parts 1 & 2 (1967)
41. MONEY WON’T CHANGE YOU, Parts 1 & 2 (1966)
42. I’LL GO CRAZY (1960)
43. (Do The) MASHED POTATOES, Nat Kendrick & The Swans (1960)
44. UNITY, with Afrika Bambaataa (1984)
45. THIS OLD HEART (1960)
46. GOOD GOOD LOVIN’ (1959)
47. PRISONER OF LOVE (1963)
48. MAKE IT FUNKY (1971)
49. CHONNIE-ON-CHON (1957)
50. LIVING IN AMERICA (1985-86)
James Brown doesn't take up too much space in my library.
1 Try Me
2 Please, Please, Please
3 I Got You
4 Good Good Lovin'
5 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
6 Out of Sight
7 Night Train
8 It's A Man's Man's Man's World
9 Oh Baby Don't You Weep
10 Think
11 Prisoner Of Love
12 I'll Go Crazy
13 Chonnie-on-Chon
14 Caledonia
15 Cold Sweat
Submit to me at least 10 and up to 50 of your favorite James Brown songs ranked in order.
1.Please Please Please
5. Get On The Good Foot
6. Cold Sweat
9. Baby You're Right
12. Say It Loud (I'm Black And I'm Proud)
14. I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door I'll Get
It Myself)
15. Super Bad
16. Think
17. Living In America
20. I Want You So Bad
24. Ain't That A Groove
25. Soul Power
26. There It Is
27. Shout And Shimmy
29. Let Yourself Go
30. No No No No
34. And I Do Just What I Want
35. Tell Me What You're Gonna Do
39. You've Got The Power (w. Bea Ford)
41. I Don't Know
46. These Foolish Things
47. Love Don't Love Nobody
48. It's A Man's Man's Man's World
49. Get It Together
50. Money Won't Change You
2. Please Please Please
5. I Got You (I Feel Good)
8. Night Train
9. It's a Man's Man's Man's World
15. I Got the Feeling
17. Ain't It Funky Now
18. Licking Stick
19. Prisoner of Love
20. Say It Loud
Roger, Bob, Steve, your lists have been tabulated.
Dean also.
I suspect this would be the main difference between a poll take here and a poll taken anywhere else.
The poll is on in other places too. I think the younger voters will mainly list the funk stuff.
I suspect this would be the main difference between a poll take here and
a poll taken anywhere else.
The poll is on in other places too. I think the younger voters will mainly
list the funk stuff.
Then you have a perfect test for my prediction.
The other James Brown that got his start in the '50s.
1. Cleveland Browns, 1964
3. The Dirty Dozen
5. Syracuse football, 1956
7. The Split
10. Ice Station Zebra
11. Cleveland Browns, 1959
12. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
14. 100 Rifles
17. Syracuse football, 1954
18. Slaughter
20. Mars Attacks
Come now, his all american lacrosse seasons at Syracuse are better than most of those shit movies.
Come now, his all american lacrosse seasons at Syracuse are better than most
of those shit movies.
Yes, I stand corrected
I don't know about the lacrosse, but I did like The Dirty Dozen when it
came out. And then there's Richard Pryor's "Give me the ball !".
1 Captain Rip Masters "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin"
That's all I got, baby!
Wasn't Rip Masters a Lieutenant?
"Get up! Get on up!!"
1.Chonnie-On-Chon
2.Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
3.And I Do Just What I Want
4.This Old Heart
5.Messing With The Blues
6.Try Me
8.Lost Someone
9.Bewildered
10.Waiting In Vain
11.That's When I Lost My Heart
12.Again
13.I Don't Know
14.I Feel That Old Feelin Comin On
15.That Dood It
16.I Can't Help It (I Just Do Do Do)
17.Maybe The Last Time
18.No No No No
19.Prisoner Of Love
20.There Must Be A Reason
21.I Don't Mind
22.Three Hearts In A Tangle
23.Oh Baby Don't You Weep
24.Hold My Baby's Hand
25.You're Mine You're Mine
26.Signed Sealed And Delivered
27.Just Won't Do Right
28.Why Does Everything Happen To Me
29.I Got You (I Feel Good)
30.Baby You're Right
31.Out Of Sight
32.Begging Begging
33.It Hurts To Tell You
Post by Carl
Forgot I'll Go Crazy. Insert at 21
Carl is in and with a few things that get their first mention.
DEADLINE for ballots is June 1 at midnight ET.
Here's my ballot for James Brown songs in my library.
1. The Old Landmark
4. BEWILDERED
11. I CAN'T STAND MYSELF
13. MOTHER POPCORN
15. Please, Please, Please
18. BABY, YOU'RE RIGHT
20. Stagger Lee
21. Rapp Payback (Where iz Moses)
Here's my list. It felt like I was combining two different artists,
like the two different Drifters groups for example. In all cases the
title I list is the studio version, not the live version, and in all
cases I prefer the longest possible version, not the chopped up single
edits.
01 Sex Machine
02 Hot Pants
03 Cold Sweat
04 Ain't It Funky Now
05 Get On The Good Foot
06 Papa Don't Take No Mess
07 Money Won't Change You
08 I Got The Feeling
09 Doing It To Death (JB's)
10 Chonnie On Chon
11 Night Train
12 I'll Never Never Let You Go
13 Good Good Lovin'
14 Try Me
15 I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On
16 Blues And Pants
17 I Can't Stand Myself
18 Prisoner Of Love
19 Why Do You Do Me Like You Do
20 Bewildered
21 Think
22 Licking Stick Licking Stick
23 I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing
24 I Want You So Bad
25 Funky President
26 Same Beat (JB's)
27 I'll Go Crazy
28 Please Please Please
29 There Was A Time
30 Let's Make It
31 Say It Loud
32 Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
33 Man's Man's Man's (whatever) World
34 Pass The Peas (JB's)
35 The Payback
36 Funky Drummer
37 Talking Loud And Saying Nothing
38 Mother Popcorn
39 I Know It's True
40 Escape-Ism
41 Super Bad
42 Out Of Sight
43 Honky Tonk Pt. 1
44 Don't Be A Dropout
45 Baby Cries Over The Ocean
46 Lost Someone
47 Get Up Offa That Thing
48 Soul Power
49 Give It Up Or Turn It A Loose
50 Make It Funky
Not that anyone asked, but here's the bottom half of my James Brown list:
51. I KNOW YOU GOT SOUL, Bobby Byrd (1971)
53. SHOUT AND SHIMMY (1962)
54. THE POPCORN (1969)
55. I’VE GOT MONEY (1962)
56. MAMA FEELGOOD, Lyn Collins (1973)
57. OH BABY, DON’T YOU WEEP, Parts 1 & 2 (1964)
58. I FEEL THAT OLD FEELING COMING ON (1956)
59. KANSAS CITY (1967)
60. LET YOURSELF GO (1967)
61. YOU’VE GOT THE POWER, with Bea Ford (1960)
62. THAT DOOD IT (1957)
63. LET A MAN COME IN & DO THE POPCORN, Parts 1 & 2 (1969)
64. COME OVER HERE (1960)
65. WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN TO ME (1962)
66. JUST WON’T DO RIGHT (1957)
67. SOULFUL CHRISTMAS (1966)
68. LOVE DON’T LOVE NOBODY (1960)
69. AND I DO JUST WHAT I WANT (1960)
70. AIN’T IT FUNKY NOW, Parts 1 & 2 (1969)
71. I’M A GREEDY MAN (1971)
72. I HOLD MY BABY’S HAND (1956)
73. GOODBYE MY LOVE (1968)
74. LET’S MAKE IT (1956)
75. IT’S A NEW DAY (1971)
76. BEGGING, BEGGING (1958)
77. THREE HEARTS IN A TANGLE (1963)
78. SO LONG (1964)
79. ESCAPE-ISM, Part 1 (1971)
80. FINGER POPPIN TIME, Hank Ballard & The Midnight Lighters (1972)
81. THERE IT IS (1972)
82. SANTA CLAUS, SANTA CLAUS (1968)
83. TELL ME WHAT I DID WRONG (1958)
84. WORLD, Part 1 (1969)
85. STONE FOX (1967)
86. I DON’T MIND (1961)
87. HOW YOU GONNA GET RESPECT (When You Haven’t Cut Your Process Yet), Hank Ballard (1968)
88. JUST YOU AND ME, DARLING (1961)
89. SOUL PRIDE (1969)
90. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO (1962)
91. DANCIN’ LITTLE THING (1964)
92. SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIVERED (1963)
93. I DON’T CARE (1962)
94. SANTA CLAUS, GO STRAIGHT TO THE GHETTO (1968)
95. GET UP OFFA THAT THING (1976)
96. GIMME SOME MORE, The J.B.s (1972)
97. DON’T BE A DROPOUT (1966)
99. I GUESS I’LL HAVE TO CRY, CRY, CRY (1968)
100. KING HEROIN (1972)
Post by Dean F.
So, you can't handle the whole 19 minutes?
"I'm from L.A.--Lower Alabama."
Of course I can handle it! Remember, I'm the one who introduced you to that version.
Really? You did? I confess I don't remember. Must have been a long
time ago.
Just a reminder, the deadline is Saturday night at midnight ET.
An update, a full 50 this time. Rushed the first submittal, didn't know I had til June 1 at the time.
1 Chonnie-On-Chon
3 And I Do Just What I Want
4 This Old Heart
5 So Long
6 Don't Let It Happen To You
7 Messing With The Blues
9 Please Please Please
10 Lost Someone
11 Bewildered
12 Waiting In Vain
13 That's When I Lost My Heart
14 Again
15 If You Want Me
16 I Don't Know
17 I Feel That Old Feelin Comin On
18 In The Wee Wee Hours (Of The Nite)
19 Come Over Here
20 Baby Cries Over The Ocean
21 That Dood It
22 I Can't Help It (I Just Do Do Do)
23 Maybe The Last Time
24 No No No No
26 There Must Be A Reason
28 I Don't Mind
29 These Foolish Things
30 It Was You
31 Like A Baby
32 I Know It's True
33 Three Hearts In A Tangle
34 Oh Baby Don't You Weep
35 Hold My Baby's Hand
36 Wonder When You're Coming Home
37 You're Mine You're Mine
38 Signed Sealed And Delivered
39 Just Won't Do Right
40 Why Does Everything Happen To Me
41 I Got You (I Feel Good)
42 Baby You're Right
43 Out Of Sight
44 Dancin' Little Thing
45 I Love You Yes I Do
46 Begging Begging
47 It Hurts To Tell You
48 I Walked Alone
49 Got To Cry
50 Mashed Potatoes USA
Too many changes for me to fix in the totals, I'm sticking with your original list. If you want to give me #34 - #50 to add to your original top 33 I can do that.
Sounds good. I was afraid you were too far along to make my changes. Thanks
I think you already have 34. I added I'll Go Crazy a few minutes after my original post of 33. If not I'll Go Crazy is 34. Here's 35 to 50. Sorry about trying to change this so late. I'll get it right the first time next time around.
35 So Long
36 Don't Let It Happen To You
Okay, the votes are in and the results have been tabulated. There were 124 James Brown songs that got at least 2 mentions on the 32 ballots that were submitted. I was hoping to get at least 40 ballots, but we still have a fine list of songs to present. We're gonna start with the song that came it at # 101:
Song #101 is "Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn" from 1969. The song was split into two parts which were released consecutively as singles. Both of the singles charted, with Part One rising to #2 R&B and #21 Pop and Part Two reaching #6 R&B and #40 Pop. The full recording of the song was included on the 1970 album It's a New Day - Let a Man Come In. This one was listed on 3 ballots and had 79 points in the voting:
[img]Loading Image... [/img]
Next up we break into the top 100 with song #100. This one is from 1962:
Song #100 is "I Don't Care" from 1962. Some of you that care about lyrics may recognize that the opening line (I Don't Care About Your Past) is also used in "Cold Sweat." It was issued as a single and on the album below, also in 1962. It was named on 3 ballots and accumulated a total of 79 points.
Up next is song #99 on the countdown. From 1974:
Song #100 is "I Don't Care" from 1962. Some of you that care about lyrics m=
ay recognize that the opening line (I Don't Care About Your Past) is also u=
sed in "Cold Sweat."
You obviously care enough about them to notice :)
No, I only knew it because I read it somewhere.
Song #99 is "Coldblooded." "Coldblooded" is a song written and recorded by James Brown. It was released in 1974 as the B-side of "Funky President (People It's Bad)" and charted #99 Pop. It also appeared on the album Hell. Writing in Rolling Stone, Robert Palmer praised the song as a "sure-fire disco [smash], the kind of no-nonsense party music one expects from Soul Brother Number One."
James Brown - vocals
Isaiah "Ike" Oakley - trumpet
Fred Wesley - trombone
Maceo Parker - alto sax
Jimmy Parker - alto sax
St. Clair Pinckney - tenor sax
Jimmy Nolen - guitar
Hearlon "Cheese" Martin - guitar
Fred Thomas - bass
John "Jabo" Starks - drums
Johnny Griggs - congas
Bob Both - percussion
Up next at #98 is the first song from the 1950s to appear on the countdown:
Song #98 is "Got To Cry" from 1959. The single was JB's last release of the 1950s. The song was included on the "Try Me" album that same year.
Song #97 is also from 1959 and also from the "Try Me" album:
Song #97 is "It Hurts To Tell You" from 1959. It was the flip side of "I've Got To Change" on the 45. It was listed on 5 ballots and totaled 82 points in the voting.
Song # 96 is next. The song's title was later used by Stevie Wonder on one of his biggest hits.
Song #96 is "Signed Sealed and Delivered" from 1963. It was a single and was also included on the "Prisoner of Love" album. Believe it or not this was originally a country song written and done by Cowboy Copas in 1947, reaching #2 on the country charts in 1948. King Records often had R&B artists do versions of songs from their country artists, and vice versa.
Up next at song #95 is some hard core funk from 1973:
Song #95 is "Stoned To The Bone" from 1973. It was also shown as "Stone To The Bone" on some pressings of the single. It was named on 4 ballots and had 85 total points. The song peaked at #4 on the Billboard R&B chart. It was included on "The Payback" album.
Next up at song #94 is one from 1972:
Song #94 is "There It Is" from 1972. It is included on the album of the same name. The single reached #4 on the Billboard ER&B charts.
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/85c0900156ba0db3e9048a240fab086b/2749792
Song #93 is next, and we go way back to 1957 for this one:
Song #93 is "Baby Cries Over The Ocean" from 1957, the flip side of "That Dood It." It was later included on the "Please, Please, Please" album in 1958. So far it is the oldest record on the countdown, but don't fret, there are several to come from 1956.
Low and behold, up next at #92 is one of those items from 1956:
Song #91 is "I Don't Know" from 1956. It was JB's second release, the follow up to "Please, Please, Please" and the flip side of "I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On." It was included on the "Please, Please, Please" album which was issued late in 1958. The song was listed on 3 ballots and accumulated 92 points in the voting.
Next up at #91 is another 1973 funk jam from "The Payback" album:
Song #91 is "Shoot Your Shot" from 1973. It was on "The Payback" album that year.
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/c12afe37546b39ecf83789defeb3b359/1966374
[b][u]RANK-BALLOTS-TOTAL POINTS-TITLE[/u][/b]
091 - 02-95 - Shoot Your Shot
092 - 03-92 - I Don't Know
093 - 04-87 - Baby Cries Over The Ocean
094 - 03-87 - There It Is
095 - 04-85 - Stoned To The Bone
096 - 02-83 - Signed Sealed and Delivered
097 - 05-82 - It Hurts To Tell You
098 - 03-81 - Got To Cry
099 - 03-79 - Coldblooded
100 - 03-79 - I Don't Care
101 - 03-79 - Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn
Next up is song #90. We go back to 1960 for this one:
Song #90 is "And I Do Just What I Want" from 1960. It was issued as his first single on King when they switched him over from Federal. The flip side is "The Bells." The first album that the song was on was "The Amazing James Brown and the Famous Flames" in 1961.
Moving along in the countdown now we go to 1971 for song #89. The full version of this one is over 19 minutes long:
Song #89 is "Escape-ism" from 1971. It was Brown's first release on his own label, People Records. The single reached #6 on the Billboard Soul chart and clearly was influential in the start of rap and hip hop soon after. The long version of the track is on the "Hot Pants" album. The previously unreleased nineteen-minute unedited take of the track appearing on the album's 1992 CD re-release. According to Robert Christgau the song was "supposedly cut to kill time until Bobby Byrd arrived" at the studio.
Next up at #88 is an early funk track from 1967:
Song #88 is "Get It Together" from 1967. It reached #11 on the Billboard Soul Chart and got to #40 on the Hot 100. It was also included on the 1968 album "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)." James wrote this one along with Bud Hodgood and Pee Wee Ellis. Donald A. Guarisco of Allmusic described the song as "a taut, minimalist tune that combines soulful but frantically paced verse melodies with a bubbling, two-note staccato chorus."
James Brown - lead vocal
Waymond Reed - trumpet
Joe Dupars - trumpet
Levi Rasbury - trombone
Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis - alto saxophone
Maceo Parker - tenor saxophone
Eldee Williams - tenor saxophone
St. Clair Pinckney - baritone saxophone
Alphonso "Country" Kellum - guitar
Bernard Odum - bass
Next up is song #87, from 1984:
Song #87 is "Unity" from 1984. It was named on 3 ballots and accumulated exactly 100 points. This one is by Afrika Bambaataa & James Brown together. It was the first recording in which Brown collaborated with a performer associated with hip hop, a then-new idiom heavily influenced by Brown's own funk music. The record's title and its cover showing the two performers clasping hands express solidarity between the two styles. The song's music is similar in its structure to Brown's own funk songs of the late 1960s and 1970s, but uses the drum machine and keyboard-generated timbres of electro. The song's rapped lyrics are on the themes of "Peace, unity, love, and having fun". The single charted #87 R&B.
"Unity" contains several references to Brown's earlier recordings. The song's a cappella opening paraphrases the beginning of his 1970 songs "Get Up, Get Into It and Get Involved","Soul Power" and an instrumental passage in the middle of part 1 is borrowed from his 1969 hit "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose".
Song # 86 is next. More funk, this time from 1974:
Song #86 is "Hell" from 1974. It's one of very few songs on the list that was not issued as a single. It was the title track of a double album that reached #35 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/46aa4ee02e3116608ca3602eca89163f/3211779
Moving up now to song #85, it comes from 1973.
Song #85 is "The Boss" from 1973. It was issued as the A side of a single but failed to make the Billboard Soul chart. It was on the "Black Caeser" soundtrack album by JB. The album reached #31 on the Billboard LP chart in a 21 week run. The song was sampled in the Nas record "Get Down."
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/3ac15494a0ec040846e8a506b42c1970/1458756
Okay, after a run of 5 funk things we are heading back to the 50s for song #84.
Song #84 is "Hold My Baby's Hand" from 1956. The song was mentioned on 5 ballots and totaled 107 points in the voting. It was JB's third single, flip side of "No, No, No, No, No."It was later included on the "Please, Please, Please" album, in 1958.
Up next is song #83, and we are staying in the 1950s for this one:
Song #83 is "Messing With The Blues" from 1957. It was on the flip side of "Love Or A Game" and later was included on the "Try Me!" album (in 1959).
Next up is song #82, and we go to 1970 for this one:
Song #82 is "Brother Rapp" from 1970. The single reaches #2 on the Billboard Soul Chart and #32 on the Hot 100 Pop Chart. It is included on the "Sex Machine" album, which is a studio album with a phony audience dubbed in.
In his 1986 autobiography, Brown related the lyrical message of "Brother Rapp" to his support of hip hop music:
I admire the rap and the break dancing and all the stuff coming out of hip hop. A lot of the records are messages that express community problems. Used right, those records could help prevent the riots of the sixties from happening again. If you know how a community feels about things, then you can do something about it... That's what my song "Brother Rapp" is all about. A fella is calling on his lady and protesting at the same time: "Don't put me in jail before I get a chance to rap. Here what I'm saying. When you see me on a soapbox out there complaining, don't lock me up. Sit down and join me." And that's what I'm saying about these records. Let 'em testify. Let the brothers rap.
Coming up now is song #81. This one was JB's last hit single of 1968:
Diane pointed out:
Writer's credit says James Brown but the song was written by Memphis Slim, recorded by him as "Messing Around (With The Blues)."
Thank you Diane. Here's Slim's version. It was a number one R&B hit in 1948.
Song #81 is "Goodbye My Love" from 1968. This one reached #9 on the Billboard Soul chart. It was included on the "Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud" album in the spring of 1969. Occasionally some of JB's King singles were issued on label colors other then the usual blue.
RANK-BALLOTS-POINTS-TITLE
081 - 03-114 - Goodbye My Love
082 - 03-112 - Brother Rapp
083 - 02-112 - Messing With The Blues
084 - 05-107 - Hold My Baby's Hand
085 - 03-107 - The Boss
086 - 03-102 - Hell
087 - 03-100 - Unity
088 - 04-97 - Get It Together
089 - 03-95 - Escape-ism
090 - 02-95 - And I Do Just What I Want
Song #80 is up now. This one is from 1962:
Song #80 is "Shout And Shimmy" from 1962. It reached #16 on the Billboard R&B chart and got to #61 on the Hot 100 Pop Chart. The critic Douglas Wolk described the song as "a truly shameless ripoff of The Isley Brothers' 1959 hit "Shout"... basically the fast parts of "Shout" with the gospel inflections removed and the word 'shimmy' added." Wolk argues that Brown and The Famous Flames probably performed "Shout and Shimmy" in the October 24, 1962 concerts at which Live at the Apollo was recorded, but that it was left off of the album to prevent sales competition with the studio version of the song. Evidence to support this contention includes the fact that Brown customarily began his concerts with his latest hit (which "Shout and Shimmy" was at the time), and the presence of "Shout and Shimmy"'s a cappella opening ("You know I feel all right...") immediately before the first song on the album, "I'll Go Crazy". James and The Famous Flames sang and performed this song on Dick Clark's American Bandstand,on a telecast dated June 11th, 1962. A performance of "Shout and Shimmy" was the first track on Brown & The Flames' next live album, 1964's Pure Dynamite! Live at the Royal,featuring a comedy skit between Brown and Famous Flame Bobby Bennett.
The song was the title track of the album shown below, with of course, two white people on the cover!
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/aa829c245d8c1bd08341933837beca27/5689716
We now head back to 1959 for song #79.
Song #79 is "There Must Be A Reason" from 1959. It was on the flip side of "I Want You So Bad" on a single. It was also included on the "Try Me!" album.
Song #78 is next, and we jump ahead 20 years to 1979 for this one.
Song #78 is "It's Too Funky In Here" from 1979. It got to #15 on the Billboard Black chart. It also appeared on the album The Original Disco Man.
Song #77 is next.
Song #77 is "Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto," from 1968. The song was written by Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, Charles Bobbit and Hank Ballard and was the lead track on the "A Soulful Christmas" album, also from 1968.
We now go to song #76. This one is from 1972:
Song #76 is "Public Enemy #1" from 1972. It expanded upon the idea of "King Heroin" which may or may not be coming up later in the countdown. Both songs were on the "There It Is" album.
Next up is #75. We go back to 1960 for JB's version of a classic hit from Clyde McPhatter and the Dominoes.
Song #75 is "The Bells" from 1960. It was his first single on the King label after they moved him over from Federal, the flip side of song #90 "And I Do Just What I Want." "The Bells" reached #68 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was included on the album "The Amazing James Brown" in 1961.
"The Bells" played an important part in the early careers of James Brown and The Famous Flames. In their performances on the chitlin' circuit the group would act out the story of bereavement told in the lyrics, pushing a doll representing the dead woman across the stage in a baby carriage. As they passed Brown, he would fall to his knees crying and sobbing, eventually segueing into "Please, Please, Please." The routine was so popular that audiences sometimes became violent if they tried to perform the song without it.
Here is the Dominoes version:
Up next at #74 is JB's first ever release, from January of 1956:
Song #74 is "Why Do You Do Me" from 1956. It was JB's first release, the flip side of "Please, Please, Please." It was included on the "Try Me!" album in 1959.
Next up is song #73, from 1960.
Before we move on, Diane has reminded me that "Why Do You Do Me" was a remake of the original version of the song from the Big Three Trio in 1949.
Song #73 is "I'll Never, Never Let You Go" from 1960. It was first released on the "Think!" album in 1960, and then on a single in 1961, flip side of "Baby, You're Right." It was named on 5 ballots and totaled 135 points in the voting.
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/573db9b6552c97f54ef14ed613a2b747/2750067
Song #72 now is an overlooked gem from 1958.
Song #72 is "Begging, Begging" from 1958. Could be the closest thing that JB ever did to a true doo wop. This was JB's first single release of 1958. It was included on his first album, "Please, Please, Please," later in 1958.
Song #71 is next, and James, as he did several times, records a version of a song that was a huge hit in the 1940s.
Song #71 is "Caldonia" from 1964. An audience was dubbed in to the recording to make it seem like a live performance, but nowadays you can get the recording without the phony audience. This record was on the Smash label. James had left King for a short while in 1964. A lawsuit ensued and for a while he was only permitted to make instrumentals for Smash until the lawsuit was settled and he was back on King. Billboard did not have an R&B chart in 1964, but "Caldonia" did make the Cash Box R&B chart that year, peaking at #39. It also made the Billboard Pop chart, getting to #95. The song of course was a monster hit by Louis Jordan in 1945, when JB turned 17.
RANK-BALLOTS-POINTS-SONG TITLE
071 - 03-145 - Caldonia
072 - 03-138 - Begging, Begging
073 - 05-135 - I'll Never, Never Let You Go
074 - 05-133 - Why Do You Do Me Like You Do
075 - 03-133 - The Bells
076 - 03-127 - Public Enemy #1
077 - 03-125 - Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto
078 - 03-124 - It's Too Funky In Here
079 - 04-119 - There Must Be A Reason
080 - 03-119 - Shout And Shimmy
Song #70 is up now, and we head to 1962 for this one.
Song #70 is "Why Does Everything Happen To Me" from 1959. It was first released on the "Try Me!" album in 1959, and later was the flip side of "Night Train" on a single in 1962.
Next up at #69 is a track from 1980.
Song #69 is "Rapp Payback (Where Iz Moses) from 1980. The single reached #46 in a 13 week run on the Billboard Black chart. It also appeared on the album "Soul Syndrome." The song was essentially a disco reworking of "The Payback."
Next up is song #68. It's the flip side of a big hit.
Song #68 is "Tell Me What I Did Wrong" from 1958. It's on the flip side of "Try Me." It was included on the "Please, Please, Please" album in 1968. It's one of my favorites, #13 on my ballot. Me and 3 other voters with excellent taste had in on our ballots!
Moving down to song #67, this one is from 1957.
Song #67 is "That Dood It" from 1957. It's the flip side of song #93 "Baby Cries Over The Ocean." The song was written by Rose Marie McCoy and Rudolph Toombs, two veteran R&B songwriters of the 50s who each wrote several hits during the decade. The song was included on the "Please, Please, Please" album in 1958.
If you're not familiar with the promo copies of King, Federal and DeLuxe 45's from the 50s you'll get the idea with the image below. They contained a few lines about the artist.
Okay, after a couple of 1950s tracks we head back to the funk era for song #66:
Song #66 is "I Got Ants In My Pants" from 1973. It reached #4 on the Billboard Soul chart and got to #27 on the Pop chart. It was not on any album until later collections of hits.
Song #65 is next, from 1974:
Song #65 is "Funky President (People It's Bad)" from 1974. The single reached #44 on the Billboard Pop chart and got to #4 on the Black Chart. The flip side was song #99 on this list, "Coldblooded." The song was included on the "Reality" album. According to Brown the "funky president" of the song's title was meant to refer to U.S. President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded Richard Nixon in the White House shortly before it was recorded. David Sanborn plays alto sax on the track.
"Funky President" is one of James Brown's most frequently sampled recordings. The most rhythmic portions of the song, namely the intro drum fill and wah-wah guitar have been used on dozens of hip hop tracks, shown below:
Eric B. & Rakim - "Eric B. Is President"/"Make 'Em Clap to This"
MC Shan - Kill That Noise
N.W.A. - "Fuck Tha Police"
Guy - "Groove Me"
Salt-N-Pepa - "Shake Your Thing"
Public Enemy - "Fight the Power"
Heavy D & the Boyz - "We Got Our Own Thang"
Brand Nubian - "All for One"
Ice Cube - "Jackin' for Beats"
LL Cool J - "6 Minutes of Pleasure"
Johnny Gill - "Rub You the Right Way"
King Tee - "At Your Own Risk"
Ronny Jordan - Come With Me (1993)
Ronny Jordan - Bad Brother (1993)
Wreckx-N-Effect - "New Jack Swing"
UMC's - "One to Grow On"
Kid 'N Play - "Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody"
Digital Underground - "Kiss You Back"
Paperboy - "Ditty"
Run-DMC - "Faces"
Bebe's Kids - Freedom
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth feat. Grand Puba - "Skinz"
Kris Kross - "I Missed the Bus"
Guru - "Trust Me"
DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince - "Summertime"
Beastie Boys - "Hey Ladies"
KRS-One - "Outta Here"
Arts n Crafts - Surley (1990)
Naughty by Nature - "Hip Hop Hooray"
MC Breed - "Gotta Get Mine"
A Tribe Called Quest - "Oh My God"
Kid 'N Play - "Last Night"
DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince - "I'm Looking for the One (To Be with Me)"
Digital Underground - "Wussup Wit the Luv"
Usher - "Call Me a Mack"
Black Eyed Peas and Q-Tip feat. Talib Kweli, Cee-Lo Green and John Legend - "Like That"
Tony! Toni! Toné! - "Feels Good"
The D.O.C. - "It's Funky Enough"
Heavy D & the Boyz - "Blue Funk"
Poor Righteous Teachers - "Rock Dis Funky Joint"
Del the Funky Homosapien - "If You Must"
Kanye West, Jay-Z & Big Sean - "Clique"
Rick Ross feat. Kanye West - "Live Fast, Die Young"
Pusha T and Kanye West - "New God Flow"
Kanye West feat. Pusha T - "Runaway (Video Version)"
Michel'le feat. Dr. Dre - "Nicety"
Ghostface Killah - "Mighty Healthy"
Nice & Smooth - "Sex, Sex, Sex"
Mic Geronimo feat. Ja Rule, Jay-Z, and DMX - "Time to Build"
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Outro
Childish Gambino - "3005"
DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist - "Funky"
Sugar Ray - "Falls Apart"
Yolanda Adams - "Fly Like An Eagle (Medley)"
De La Soul - "Freedom of Speak (We Got Eight Minutes)"
De La Soul - "Ghetto Thang"
LL Cool J - "Fast Peg"
LL Cool J - "Ain't No Stoppin' This"
Heavy D and the Boyz - "Gyrlz, They Love Me"
Logic - "We Get High"
Cella Dwellas - "Perfect Match"
Run the Jewels - "Get It"
Big Sean - "Ashley"
Spoonie Gee - "Spoonie Is Back"
The X-Ecutioners feat. DJ Premier - "Premier's X-Ecution"
Large Professor - "I Juswanna Chill"
Pete Rock feat. Black Thought and Rob-O - "It's About That Time"
2Pac feat. Richie Rich - "Lie to Kick It"
Lord Finesse - "True and Livin'"
Logic - "The Spotlight"
Pete Rock feat. C.L. Smooth - "Da Two"
Gang Starr - "Gotta Get Over (Taking Loot)"
A Tribe Called Quest - "Show Business"
The Offspring - "Original Prankster"
DJ Kay Slay feat. Fat Joe and 50 Cent - "Free Again"
Gang Starr - "Knowledge"
Violadores del Verso - "Mierda"
Shanice - "I Love Your Smile (Driza Bone Club Mix)"
Citizen King - "Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out)"
Calvin Harris - "C.U.B.A"
Next up at song #64 is one of the few tracks on this list that was not issued as a single.
Song #64 is "Blues And Pants" from the "Hot Pants" album in 1971. It's the highest ranking song on the countdown that was only listed on 3 ballots. This track was sampled in over 100 songs, including..
Just Playing (Dreams) by The Notorious B.I.G. (1994)
Put It On by Big L feat. Kid Capri (1994)
Scarface by Geto Boys (1989)
What About Your Friends by TLC (1992)
New Jack Hustler by Ice-T (1991)
And after 3 funk records we go back to the 50s for song #63:
Song #63 is "Don't Let It Happen To Me" from 1959. It was the flip side of "Good, Good Lovin'" on a single and was also included on the "Try Me!" album that same year. It was listed on 5 ballots and accumulated 161 points in the voting.
Up next at #62 is more funk. This time from 1974:
Song #62 is "My Thang" from 1974. It was a #1 song on the Billboard Black chart. It was on the double album "Hell." "My Thang" was also sampled on various Hip-Hop songs, including "Brand New Funk" by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and "Funky Child" by Lords Of The Underground among others. The song was featured in the 1990 psychological horror film Jacob's Ladder.
Again we head back to the 1950s, this time for song #61:
We heard song #61, "I Want You So Bad" from 1959. It reached #20 on the Billboard R&B chart, and was JB's first hit that did not feature the Famous Flames singing along with him although they did get label credit on the record. It was included on the "Try Me!" album.
061 - 05-174 - I Want You So Bad
062 - 05-162 - My Thang
063 - 05-161 - Don't Let It Happen To Me
064 - 03-157 - Blues And Pants
065 - 04-155 - Funky President
066 - 05-154 - I Got Ants In My Pants
067 - 04-151 - That Dood It
068 - 04-148 - Tell Me What I Did Wrong
069 - 04-148 - Rapp Payback (Where iz Moses)
070 - 04-147 - Why Does Everything Happen To Me
074 - 05-133 - Why Do You Do Me
Next up at #60 we have one of JB's killer ballads from the early 60s. He had several of these that were huge staples of his live show and were captured on his classic 1963 album "Live At The Apollo." Here is #60.
Song #60 is "You've Got The Power" from 1960. The female voice on the record is Bea Ford. Released as the B-side of Brown and the Famous Flames' hit recording of "Think," it also charted, reaching #14 R&B and #86 Pop. It was Brown's first recorded duet and his first hit B-side. It was included on the "Think!" album in 1960.
Coming up now at #59 is a big favorite of mine, from 1961:
The #59 song on the countdown is "Come Over Here" from 1961. It was listed on 6 ballots and had a total of 178 points in the voting. It was first issued on the album "The Amazing James Brown" in 1961, and then as the flip side of "Shout And Shimmy" on a single in 1962. The song has a very gospel feel with call and response, and is a good illustration of the influence of the "5 Royales" on James Brown.
https://e.snmc.io/i/fullres/s/7620e430b56c456481cf18027670f76a/2832101
Next up at #58 is a funk track that is essentially an instrumental although James does make some comments during the track.
Song #58 is "Ain't It Funky Now" from 1969. It reached #3 on the soul chart and got to #24 on the pop chart. It is the lead track on the "Ain't It Funky" album.
Up next at #57 is a track from 1956:
Song #57 is "Let's Make It" from 1956. It features an opening that comes from "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, which at that time was the biggest selling single ever for Sid Nathan's King Records. It was on the flip side of "Just Won't Do Right," Brown 4th release on Federal. It was included on JB's first album, "Please, Please, Please," in 1958.
Next up on the countdown is song #56. Some early funk, from 1967.
Song #56 is "Let Yourself Go" from 1967. Brown recorded "Let Yourself Go" after hours in the Latin Casino nightclub during a ten-day performing engagement there. An edited version of this recording was released as a single, which charted #5 R&B and #46 Pop, and appeared on the album Sings Raw Soul. A 3:47-long unedited version of the recording with overdubbed applause was included on Brown's album Live at the Garden, which was itself recorded during the same Latin Casino engagement. The song first appeared in unedited form without overdubs on the 1991 box set Star Time. Brown and his musicians continued to experiment with the arrangement of "Let Yourself Go" during rehearsals on the road. Eventually a new song, "There Was a Time", developed from the accumulated changes.
Song #55 is next and it's a killer ballad from 1960.
Song #55 is "I Know It's True" from 1960. It was the flip side of "I'll Go Crazy" on a single and was included on the "Think!" album, also in 1960. It is the first song on the countdown that was listed on 8 (or more) ballots in the voting.
Next up is song #54. This one is the flip side of song #57, from 1956:
Song #54 is "Just Won't Do Right" from 1956. It was JB's 4th release. The song was included on the "Please, Please, Please" album in 1958.
Song #53 is next. This one is from 1958:
Song #53 is "That's When I Lost My Heart" from 1958. On a single is was the flip side of song #72, "Begging, Begging." It later included on the "Please, Please, Please" album, in 1958.
Next up is song #52, and we are staying in the 1950s with this one:
Song #52 is "It Was You" from 1959. This was his last single of the 1950s. It was also included on the "Try Me" album in 1959. "It Was You" was named on 6 ballots and had 207 points in the voting.
Song #51 is next as we are now halfway through the countdown. This one is from 1956 and is sort of a sequel to "Please, Please, Please."
Song #51 is "I Won't Plead No More" from late 1956. It was on the flip side of "Chonnie-On-Chon" as a single and later was included on the "Try Me!" album.
051 - 06-208 - I Won't Plead No More
052 - 06-207 - It Was You
053 - 05-203 - That's When I Lost My Heart
054 - 07-200 - Just Won't Do Right
055 - 08-198 - I Know It's True
056 - 06-195 - Let Yourself Go
057 - 05-182 - Let's Make It
058 - 04-179 - Ain't It Funky Now
059 - 06-176 - Come Over Here
060 - 06-175 - You've Got The Power
As we break into the top 50, song #50 comes from 1959:
Song #50 is "I've Got To Change" from 1959. It was on a single and also was on the "Try Me!" album that same year.
Song #49 is up now, it's from 1971:
Song #49 is "Make It Funky" from 1971. This one reached #1 on the Billboard Soul Chart and got to #22 on their Pop Chart. I like near the end of the long version where he wants the guitarist to play like BB King. In 2005, the bassline to all four parts was ranked at number 2 in Stylus Magazine's list of the "Top 50 Basslines of All Time."
Here's a few songs that sampled "Make It Funky."
Ice-T - Make It Funky
Marley Marl - Droppin' Science
Slum Village - I Don't Know
Kingdom - Every Beat Of My Heart
Next up we go back to 1960 for song #48.
Song #48 is "This Old Heart" from 1960. It was his last single that was issued on Federal before moved over to King. It was included on the "Think!" album, also in 1960.
Song #47 is next, and it's quite different from what we just heard.
Song #47 is "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" from 1970. It reached #4 on the Billboard Soul Chart and #34 on the Hot 100 Pop Chart. It features backing vocals by Bobby Byrd, who shared writing credit for the song with Brown and Ron Lenhoff. This was one of several songs by Brown with an upfront social message. The song first received an album release on "In the Jungle Groove" in 1986.
Here are a few Hip Hop records that sampled "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved."
Public Enemy – "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" and "Can't Truss It"
BDP – "South Bronx"
MC Shan – "Juice Crew Law"
Full Force – "Ain't My Type of Hype"
Song #46 is next, some early funk from 1966:
Song #46 is "Money Won't Change You" from 1966. It was recorded at Talent Masters Studio in New York City. The single reached #11 on the Billboard Soul Chart. It was included on the "James Brown Sings Raw Soul" album in 1967.
Song #45 is next. Another great early one:
Song #45 is "No, No, No, No, No" from 1956. This was JB's third single, flip side of "Hold My Baby's Hand," which was #84 on this list. It was included on the "Please, Please, Please" album in 1958.
Song #44 is next, it's from 1970.
Song #44 is "It's A New Day" from 1970. The single reached #3 on the Billboard Soul Chart and #32 on their Pop Chart. It was also the lead track on the " It's A New Day So Let A Man Come In" album in that same year.
Song #43 is next, and we again jump way back to 1956 for this one:
Song #43 is "I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On" from 1956. It was JB's second single, the follow up to "Please, Please, Please" in 1956. It was also included on the "Please, Please, Please" album, in 1958.
Song #42 is "Licking Stick, Licking Stick" from 1968. It was written by James Brown, Bobby Byrd, and Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis and recorded by Brown as a two-part single in 1968. Byrd provides backing vocals on the song. It was the first stereo single release by King Records. The song was later included on the album Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud. The title of the song refers to a stick used to administer corporal punishment (a "licking"). The single reached #2 on the Billboard Soul Chart and got to #14 on their Pop Chart.
Song #41 is next. It's a B side that was very popular in some markets.
t***@iwvisp.com
So, funny story, now not then. First year in radio I was the 5 to 10 PM jock at WNNT, Warsaw, By God, VA: Country during the day, A C for PM drive, and Top 40 evenings. Because the population was about 50% black and 50% white I developed a Salt and Pepper format: Three Dog Night, Supremes - Guess Who, Stevie Wonder, etc. I would tape requests on a Reel to Reel and play them back over the Intros.
Phone rings: "WNNT What's your request?"
"Scapzm."
"I'm sorry, What?"
"I wahh hear Scapzm."
"One more time. Give me the name of the song and the artist."
Loud and clear: "I WANNA HEAR XSCAPISM BY JAMES BROWN."
"Great. Thanks for calling."
Now, as I'm hanging the phone up, thinking he's already hung up, I mutter to myself, "dumb ass."
I cue the tape, start Escapism, hit the tape and play the request. And just before JB's first word I hear, "Dumb Ass."
Then the phone rings. The previous caller asks what time I get off. I say 10 PM, why? He says, "'Cause I'll be there at 10:00 PM to KICK YOUR ASS...DUMB ASS!"
Luckily he didn't show. I know because I stayed there until 5:30 AM when the morning guy showed up.
Post by t***@iwvisp.com
I remember this, I could hear your asshole puckering all the way in New Jersey!
Dean F. 2019-05-21 04:37:01 UTC
t***@iwvisp.com 2019-06-20 20:51:07 UTC
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Irish Abroad: Irish lead nominations for 18th Moët British Independent Film Awards
First trailer for Super 8 is a winner
Movie News, Trailers
#Review: Free Fire (BFI London Film Festival)
#IrishTalent: IADT gives Honorary Fellowships to Lenny Abrahamson and Niall Breslin
Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson and Irish musician Niall Breslin, known as Bressie, have received Honorary Fellow Awards from the Institute of Art, Design + Technology (IADT).
The award of Honorary Fellow is a mark of distinction that IADT makes to a person in recognition of their distinguished record and close association with IADT.
Lenny Abrahamson has been a great supporter and friend of IADT for more than a decade. He receives the award today for his outstanding contribution to the Irish arts and Film industry in Ireland. Abrahamson was born in Dublin in 1966. After graduating in philosophy (1st class Hons, Gold Medal) he directed the short film 3 Joes which won the Best European Short Film award at the 1991 Cork Film Festival. In 2015 he directed the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel, Room (2015), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.
Lenny Abrahamson records Dr Annie Doona,President Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology as she helps Bressie gown up for the ceremony. Pics Brian Farrell
Bressie (who described himself as a selfie stick) takes a selfie with director Lenny Abrahamson and Dr Annie Doona,President Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Pics Brian Farrell
Niall Breslin, a graduate of IADT, receives the award for bringing to the fore of the public agenda the issue of positive mental health. Breslin is an Irish musician and former Westmeath Gaelic footballer and Leinster rugby player, representing Ireland at Under-21 level in the Rugby World Cup. He found success as the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter with pop band The Blizzards, as a co-writer and producer with XIX Entertainment, and as a solo artist and music producer. His work in the area of mental health education and empowerment began two years ago, after his own struggles led him to open up publicly on the issue.
IADT is Ireland’s only Institute of art, design and technology with a specific focus on the creative cultural and technological sectors. Programmes in both the Faculty of Film, Art + Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Enterprise + Humanities are unique in that they combine practical, transferrable skills with academic learning. Our mission is to continue to specialise in creativity and innovation and to work with learners and stakeholders as partners to develop graduates who are innovative, creative, entrepreneurial and adaptable, and who are ready to meet the challenges of the digital age.
IADTInstitute of Art Design and TechnologyLenny AbrahamsonNiall Breslin
#IrishTV: Principal photography begins Sally Rooney adaptation Normal People
#IrishTalent: Warner Bros. Ireland awards scholarship to National Film School student Sarah Ahern
#ArTeilifis: Lenny Abrahamson and Element Pictures to adapt Sally Rooney’s Normal People for BBC Three
Industry: Warner Bros. Ireland awards scholarship to National Film School student Allyn Quigley
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Is TIF Failing the “But-For” Test?
Home > Is TIF Failing the “But-For” Test?
Is TIF Failing the “But-For” Test? [1]
www.richmondheights.org [2]
Graham Renz
Tax-increment financing (TIF) is a development subsidy program abused all over Missouri, and especially in Saint Louis. See exhibit A: the Boulevard development [3] in Richmond Heights, just east of the Galleria.
The development has been awarded more than $30 million [4] in TIF over the years for the construction of high-end shopping, office, and luxury residential spaces in one of the most economically successful areas in the region. Just read this [5] developer overview, which claims this part of Richmond Heights “forms the metropolitan area’s most successful and dynamic commercial and residential district.” The area hardly looks like the “urban blight [6]” TIF was originally designed to remedy.
But there’s a recent development, beyond the (ahem) questionable use of subsidies in this area, worth touching on.
The most recent phase of the development was originally estimated [7] to cost just shy of $80 million. Back then, developers claimed the project was financially infeasible without TIF and other subsidies. But now the project’s costs are up $20 million [8] and it’s still moving forward. But how can this be? How can a project that was infeasible at $80 million be moving ahead when it is now $100 million?
Here are three theories:
The magnanimous developers decided they could part with an additional $20 million of their own funds even though they claimed the original cost of their project was too high to burden privately.
The initial request for public assistance was far more than was actually required to move ahead, and so, the $20 million setback can be easily absorbed. (Though I doubt any public assistance could be considered reasonable for this project.)
The developers were going to build their project with or without public assistance, but helped themselves to taxpayer cash because it was being offered.
This list may not be exhaustive; there may be other ways to explain the project going ahead. Nevertheless, if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on #2 or #3. Why? Because much of the academic research [9] on TIF suggests developments will happen regardless of whether or not subsidies are awarded. The Boulevard development is consistent with this theory, and suggests that perhaps taxpayer handouts aren’t as essential to economic growth as many public officials seem to think they are.
TIF [10]
Richmond Heights [11]
Policy Analyst
Graham Renz is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute.
https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/subsidies/tif-failing-%E2%80%9C-%E2%80%9D-test
[1] https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/subsidies/tif-failing-%E2%80%9C-%E2%80%9D-test
[2] http://www.richmondheights.org
[3] http://www.theboulevard.com/
[4] https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2005/11/21/story1.html
[5] https://www.cbredealflow.com/View/51283f8eed1c4370983227c640455698/The%20Boulevard%20brochure.pdf
[6] http://showmeinstitute.org/blog/subsidies/tif-requests-affluent-areas-beat-goes
[7] http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/pace-proposes-million-retail-residential-expansion-at-the-boulevard/article_b07e09d4-e2f1-5278-89b2-085334a2f800.html
[8] http://www.stltoday.com/business/columns/building-blocks/million-richmond-heights-development-to-open-by-end-of/article_27afe8f8-bff3-540d-8087-f4fc2a7816c4.html
[9] https://planning.unc.edu/people/faculty/williamlester/LesterTIFinChicagoforthcoming.pdf
[10] https://showmeinstitute.org/tags/tif
[11] https://showmeinstitute.org/tags/richmond-heights
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Arts/Literature
Hobbits, wizards, and storm troopers: the future of fan art
By Guest Scrogue on May 8, 2009 • ( 5 Comments )
by Josh Catone
This past weekend saw the online release of the first non-spoof, fan-created film set in the Lord of the Rings universe. That by itself is fairly unremarkable, but a number of things set The Hunt for Gollum apart from your standard fan created fare. It’s long (about 40 minutes), it has better than average acting and writing (think direct-to-DVD caliber), it features incredibly high production values despite a meager £3,000 budget, and it is based on canon. That last bit especially, had some wondering if Gollum would run afoul of rights holders at Tolkien Enterprises.
Where most fan art uses original characters and story lines, The Hunt for Gollum‘s writer and director Chris Bouchard based the script on appendices to Tolkien’s original work. That the film uses Tolkien’s actual story could have spelled trouble for the entire production. There are two understood rules in the world of fan art: don’t use official material (like logos, music, and to a lesser extent known characters), and don’t try to make money off your creations.
Bouchard smartly cleared his film with Tolkien’s estate before releasing it. “We got in touch with Tolkien Enterprises and reached an understanding with them that as long as we are completely non-profit then we’re okay. We have to be careful not to disrespect their ownership of the intellectual property,” he told the BBC. And there are undoubtedly a plethora of fans happy he did.
The Hunt for Gollum has been a huge success, amassing over 600,000 views on Daily Motion since it was released on May 3rd, and garnering mainstream press attention from the BBC, WIRED, NPR, and Entertainment Weekly. It’s hard to imagine that all that attention is doing anything but increasing the value of Tolkien’s intellectual property. That’s why Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee thinks studios should encourage fan films.
Fan films are nothing new — Wikipedia pegs 1926 as the birth of the genre — but the proliferation of cheap, high quality production tools and the emergence of the Internet as a mass distribution platform has some rights holders waking up to the potential for fan art to keep a brand alive. Last year, for example, DC Comics reversed a long standing policy of aggressively protecting its copyrights and trademarks, including going after fan flicks, and officially okayed fan art that was done on a not-for-profit basis.
But what if fans did sell their art? Would that be so bad? Most fan art is a labor of love, but some fans sink serious time and money into their homemade projects. James Cawley reportedly put more than $100,000 into recreating the original Star Trek set for his well-received fan-made Star Trek web series, and donated crew time likely would have cost more than $1 million at market value.
According to TheForce.net, a fan site for the Star Wars universe, which enjoys a rich community of fan created art with the blessing of George Lucas, the sale of fan films is a “sensitive issue.” Fan filmmakers worry that one project trying to make a buck selling unauthorized fan art could cause rights holders to pull the plug on the entire community.
But Mike Masnick at TechDirt wonders if maybe fans should have more leeway in their ability to sell artwork based on someone else’s IP. Speaking of Bouchard’s agreement with Tolkien Enterprises to keep things non-commercial he wrote, “what if people made such a creative film without reaching such an agreement — or without promising to be totally non-commercial? Would that be so wrong? It wouldn’t take away from or harm Tolkien or Jackson’s work. It would only enhance it. So why should these fans even need to gain permission to create such a movie?”
I spoke to Matt Maggiacomo, who makes a modest living performing as “The Whomping Willows,” a band that sings songs set in the Harry Potter universe, about his thoughts on fan art. The Harry Potter rock community – or wizard rock, as it is known – enjoys one of the most liberal agreements with a copyright holder of any fan art community. Representatives of the wizard rock scene came to an agreement early on with lawyers for J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers allowing them to continue to create their music and even sell CDs, merchandise, and charge for shows (with a few restrictions, like not being able to sell merchandise online and not being able to use official logos and images on album art, t-shirts, etc.).
“I am lucky to be a fan of a series whose author is so generous with her creation,” said Maggiacomo, who thinks it is a testament to Rowling’s character that she is so open to fan art. “[But] it’s really up to the author/creator of the series. If Jo Rowling came out and said that she objected to wizard rock’s existence, I would quit. No questions asked. Ultimately we all began as fans of a series, and we have to keep that in mind. It takes a lot of work to create a universe; Tolkien and Rowling have each created one of the most complex fictional universes in the history of literature. We have to understand that these universes are the authors’ babies, and they have every right to limit and restrict use of their creations.”
Maggiacomo thinks that one of the reasons that Rowling, Warner Brothers, and Scholastic have been so open to wizard rock and have even allowed its participants to profit from their creations, is that the community as a rule donates a lot of time and money to charity. “I think this sets wizard rock and the larger Harry Potter fandom apart from other fan communities,” he told me.
In 2000, Henry Jenkins, the Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, predicted that fan involvement would only become increasingly more important to the success of commercial media. “Soon, [copyright holders] are going to need those active fans more than ever before,” he told the UK’s Guardian newspaper. “In a world with multiple media options, video on demand and micropayments, fans may become the new gatekeepers who help direct consumers toward interesting and engaging media content. The smart media executive should figure out which direction the media-consuming public is moving, run around in front and shout, ‘Follow me.'”
Nine years later, that prediction is likely more true than ever. Albrecht is almost certainly correct that rights holders would do well to encourage fan involvement and be more lenient with fan created art. And if allowing fans to sell their work could translate into a more vibrant and longer-lasting fan community, then Masnick might be right as well. It’s hard to argue against the wisdom of letting fans make money from their creations when looking at the wizard rock movement, which has been able to sustain itself for at least 5 years and has grown to support over 500 bands, while raising thousands of dollars for charity.
Either way, the future looks bright for fan art. More receptive rights holders combined with low cost pro-level tools means better fan art regardless of whether it is made for a profit.
Categories: Arts/Literature, Media/Entertainment
Tagged as: BBC, Chris Albrecht, Chris Bouchard, commercial media, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, copyright, DC Comics, entertainment, Entertainment Weekly, Fan Art, fan communities, fan flicks, film, George Lucas, Gollum, Guardian, harry potter, Henry Jenkins, Hobbits, intellectual property, J.K. Rowling, James Cawley, Jo Rowling, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Matt Maggiacomo, Mike Masnick, movies, NewTeeVee, not-for-profit, NPR, Scholastic, Star Trek, Storm Troopers, Techdirt, The Hunt for Gollum, The Whomping Willows, TheForce.net, Tolkien Enterprises, trademarks, Warner Brothers, Wikipedia, Wired, wizard rock, Wizards
The Karma wagon rolls around for Manny: respect the game, Tittie-Boy
ACCCE's "72% of opinion leaders" claim is unsupported bunk
In regards to the birth of fan films being in 1926, Wikipedia actually got that from my book, Homemade Hollywood, which just came out a few months ago. It traces the development of the genre and looks ahead to its future as well. Albrecht and I agree that studios should use fan rights as a small profit engine, but I wonder if acceptance wouldn’t kill fan films–part of the “fun” for many fan filmmakers is the idea that they’re outlaws. Anyway, if you want to find out more about the world of fan films but don’t want to shell out for the book (ask your library to get it!), you might want to check out my daily fan film blog, fancinematoday.com.
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Russ Wellen says:
However strange the whole concept of fan art is to me, I understand how popular it is. Glad to hear this:
More receptive rights holders combined with low cost pro-level tools means better fan art regardless of whether it is made for a profit.
Pingback: Weekly Wrock Wrap Up | Wizrocklopedia
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Brisbane Graphic Arts Museum (Dan Ryan)
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Math ⋅
Algebra ⋅
How to Find the Nth Term in Cubic Sequences
••• oatawa/iStock/GettyImages
How to Solve an Arithmetic Sequence problem with Variable Terms
By Elio Lewis
After you have learned to solve problems with arithmetic and quadratic sequences, you may be asked to solve problems with cubic sequences. As the name implies, cubic sequences rely on powers no higher than 3 to find the next term in the sequence. Depending on the complexity of the sequence, quadratic, linear and constant terms may also be included. The general form for finding the nth term in a cubic sequence is an^3 + bn^2 + cn + d.
Check that the sequence you have is a cubic sequence by taking the difference between each consecutive pair of numbers (called the "method of common differences"). Continue to take the differences of the differences three times total, at which point all the differences should be equal.
Sequence: 11, 27, 59, 113, 195, 311 Differences: 16 32 54 82 116 16 22 28 34 6 6 6
Set up a system of four equations with four variables to find the coefficients a, b, c and d. Use the values given in the sequence as if they were points on a graph in the form (n, nth term in sequence). It is easiest to start with the first 4 terms, as they are usually smaller or simpler numbers to work with.
Example: (1, 11), (2, 27), (3, 59), (4, 113) Plug in to: an^3 + bn^2 + cn + d = nth term in sequence a + b + c + d = 11 8a + 4b + 2c + d = 27 27a + 9b + 3c + d = 59 64a + 16b + 4c + d = 113
Solve the system of 4 equations using your favorite method.
In this example, the results are: a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, d = 5.
Write the equation for the nth term in a sequence using your newly found coefficients.
Example: nth term in the sequence = n^3 + 2n^2 + 3n + 5
Plug in your desired value of n into the equation and calculate the nth term in the sequence.
Example: n = 10 10^3 + 2_10^2 + 3_10 + 5 = 1235
NRICH: Nth Term of a Cubic Sequence
Based in Tucson, Ariz., Elio Lewis has served as a writing tutor since 2005. He received a B.A. in linguistics from the University of Arizona.
How to Find the Volume of a Sphere in Terms of Pi
How to Use the Quadratic Formula
The Difference Between Sequence & Function
What Is the Difference Between a Term & a Factor in Algebra?
How to Factorise a Quadratic Expression
How to Convert Cubic Foot to Linear Foot
How to Factor Binomial Cubes
What is a Geometric Sequence?
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Posts Tagged ‘Universal Studios’
The Creature from…
Posted in screenwriting, tagged Adam Levenberg, Arthur A. Ross, Beauty and the Beast, Big, Black Swan, Brubaker, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, Gary Ross, Iowa, Jaws, Julie Adams, Mary Shell, Mary Shelly, Piranha, Romeo and Juliet, Scorsese, Shakespeare, Steven Spielberg, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fight Club, The Fighter, The Starter Screenplay, The Wrestler, Universal Studios, Wakulla Springs State Park, Waterloo on January 1, 2011| 2 Comments »
“There’s no such thing as a totally new concept, just reworking old ones to make them current and fresh.”
The Starter Screenplay
We’ll start the new year by looking at an old trend in the movie business—Similiarities between films.
It’s not hard to look at Roger Corman’s Piranha (1978) and see how it was influenced by JAWS (1975). But it’s also not hard to see how JAWS was influenced by the classic 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’d like to think that a then eight year old Steven Spielberg saw Creature from the Black Lagoon when it first came out and thought, “Gee, when I grow up I think it would be fun to work at Universal Studios.”
—The creature and the shark both kill people
—The creature and the shark strand a boat that threatens all aboard
—Both stories have an element of greed on the part of the humans
—Both have quirky boat captains
—Both have scientists
—Similar music to announce impending danger of creature/shark (Da-Dum)
—Both are Universal Pictures
—The creature and the shark are killed at the end
I’m sure there are a few other similarities. Just as there are similarities between Creature and King Kong (1933), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). Of course Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein was published in 1818. And if we went back in time we have tales of creatures by the Greeks and Romans, and even in the Garden of Eden we have the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve.
To use Blake Snyder’s phrase, “monster in the house” stories have been with us a long time. (Even if the house is technically a lagoon or a small beach town.) Overall I think we put too much emphasis on the similarities of film instead of their differences. Earlier this week I watched Creature from the Black Lagoon and JAWS and found they each stand on their own.
I once had a teacher say that if you gave ten writers the basic concept of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and had them write a script you would have ten original stories. Heck, Scorsese has made a career out of lifting chunks of 1930s gangster films and giving them his own imprint.
So don’t be discouraged when people read your script and say, “Oh, it’s just like….” They’re just seeing patterns that are in every film. Last week I saw The Black Swan and I thought, “Oh, it’s The Wrestler meets The Fight Club.” Then I saw Mark Walhberg in The Fighter and even though it’s based on a true story, I still thought, “It’s part Rocky (1976) and part Fat City (1972).” Your originality will come from your own unique background.
And speaking of Creature from the Black Lagoon, I saw where screenwriter Gary Ross (Seabiscuit) is remaking the film. Turns out that Ross’ father, Arthur A. Ross, was one of the screenwriters on the original film. The elder Ross was nominated for an Oscar for the 1980 film Brubaker which was just eight years before Gary received his first Oscar nomination for Big—shared with co-writer Anne Spielberg, who happens to be Steven’s sister. (One big happy family, right?)
And lastly, I can’t help but point out that the actress (Julie Adams) who the creature from the Black Lagoon was attracted to, in real life was born in Waterloo, Iowa. (Just a few miles from where I type this post in Cedar Falls, Iowa.)
P.S. If you’re a filmmaker near the Florida panhandle, the exterior shots for Creature from the Black Lagoon were shot in Wakulla Springs State Park. I’m not sure what the requirements are to shoot there, but it’s as untouched today as it was when then filmed Creature. Crystal clear water and beautiful natural light.
© 2011 Scott W. Smith
The Tonight Show Tonight
Posted in Screenwriting Biz, tagged A Day at the Races, Beautiful Downtown Burbank, Burbank, California, Cecil B. DeMille, Clark Gable, Conan O'Brien, Corning, David Lynch, Disney Studios, Gone With the Wind, Iowa, Jay Leno, John Wayne, Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando, NBC, Red River, Richard Farnsworth, The Burbank Studios, The Grey Fox, the Marx Brothers, The Natural, The Straight Story, The Ten Commandments, The Tonight Show, The Wild One, Universal Studios, Vivien Leigh on June 1, 2009| 1 Comment »
When The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien premieres tonight it marks the end of one era and the beginning of another one.
The show will no longer be taped at the NBC studios in Burbank, but across the way at Universal Studios. Though The Tonight Show began in New York in 1954, since 1972 the show had come from Burbank, California. Hosted by Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992 I grew up listening to his references to “Beautiful downtown Burbank.”
It was meant as a put down because Burbank was a rather bland area (some would say that bland would describe the entire San Fernando Valley). But Carson’s jab helped put Burbank on the map for millions of viewers and it is still a catch phrase today.
These days Downtown Burbank is actually a nice area with a good mix of restaurants and a couple hundred shops. But when I moved there in 1982 it was a different story. Though Burbank is home to Disney Studios and The Burbank Studios (as well as NBC) back then there wasn’t even a single movie theater in the city. Just one drive-in theater near my Riverside Drive apartment. Today the drive-in theater is gone but there are over 30 movie screens in Burbank.
Once the theaters were built I remember going one night and standing in line for popcorn and there was an older gentleman in front of me who looked familiar. I asked him if he was Richard Farnsworth and he said he was. In those days I would have only known him as the actor in The Grey Fox (1982) and The Natural (1984). Little did I know that he was a full-fledged Hollywood legend having been a stunt man first and received his first film credit way back in 1937.
It wasn’t until the Internet and IMDB that I learned he was in Gone with the Wind, A Day at the Races, Red River, The Ten Commandments, and The Wild One. Which meant he was connected in film history to Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, the Marx Brothers, John Wayne, Marlon Brando and Cecil B. DeMille. He turned to acting after 30 years as a stuntman and received two Oscar nominations as Best Actor.
His last film was The Straight Story (1999) which was directed by David Lynch and for which Farnsworth’s nomination made him the oldest actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. The Straight Story was filmed right here in Iowa. You knew there had to be an Iowa angle, right?
And just for the record Johnny Carson was born Corning, Iowa and lived in southwest Iowa until he was 8 when his family moved to Nebraska.
Like many young people who moved to L.A. in the eighties I dreamed of getting on The Tonight Show and meeting Johnny Carson. Back in the day, that was seen as the pinacle of success. That never happened and I never even went to a single taping all the time I lived out there. But while going to film school I did work as a driver for a video equipment rental company and one day made a delivery to NBC.
I made a comment to the security guard about The Tonight Show and he asked if I wanted to see the set. Of course I did. So while not making it on the show, I did make it to the set. Almost famous.
And like a lot of things in life The Tonight Show set seemed a lot smaller in real life. But thanks to Carson and Jay Leno for all the memories and humor they kept flowing from Burbank the last 37 years.
And best wishes to Conan in his new venture.
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Tackling sex and gender disparities to improve health outcomes for women
by The George Institute for Global Health
(Academia)
Analysing sex and gender differences in chronic diseases that are major contributors to ill health and mortality in Australia and elsewhere.
Project implemented: July 2014
Project goal
Our goal is to improve evidence on sex disparities in healthcare and research for women, and as a result, improve their overall health.
why is this project important?
By identifying sex disparities in healthcare and research for women, Australia can dramatically improve health outcomes for women.
Key steps to make it happen
1Quantify sex differences
Use data to quantify the socio-demographic & clinical differences between women & men when they experience chronic disease
2Understand sex difference
Compare treatment given to women & men with chronic disease & test if such differences may be due to factors other than sex
3Information dissemination
Produce reliable, unbiased evidence to inform policy interventions. Disseminate through journals, meetings & media.
impact to date
To date we have published 34 peer-reviewed publications on sex disparities in chronic diseases, including two in The Lancet.
Our work is regularly quoted in reviews and policy statements relating to women’s cardiovascular health. Its policy implications have been presented to the all-party parliamentary committee in the UK.
Women and men often experience common diseases in different ways. However, sex disparities in health outcomes are frequently unappreciated, generally to the disadvantage of women. The George Institute for Global Health has developed a program that is tackling sex differences in chronic diseases (hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke); major contributors to ill health and mortality in Australia and elsewhere. This program is part of the Institute’s work globally to improve health outcomes for women and gender equality, especially in low- and middle-income countries, by broadening the women’s health agenda beyond sexual and reproductive health. Identifying the best care ‘pathways’ for women and men across the health system will help improve treatment guidelines, strengthen health systems, and lengthen lifetimes for both sexes. This program is done in collaboration with the University of Oxford.
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About Mark English
Mark English began working as a law clerk at Alexander Shunnarah Personal Injury Attorneys, P.C. in January 2015 under the mentorship of attorney Brian Hoven. Following his graduation from the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University and passage of the Alabama State Bar in 2016, English was hired as an attorney for the firm. English is passionate about the field of law and proudly serves to protect rights of individuals who have been injured by the acts of others.
While studying law at Cumberland, English earned his membership on the American Journal of Trial Advocacy and served the student body as an executive member of the Student Bar Association. He was also a member of Cumberland’s National Arbitration Team, a student member of the Judge James Edwin Horton Inn of Court, and was the selected recipient of the Class of 2015 Matt McClain Peer Scholarship. English also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Alabama.
Email:jrowe@asilpc.com
Skyler Donaldson
Email:sdonaldson@asilpc.com
Email:erand@asilpc.com
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November 11, 2015 3:42 PM PT
Wish List: Improving iPad multitasking
When the iPad Pro was announced, the new multitasking features of iOS 9 suddenly made a lot more sense. What’s a bit crowded on the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4 is much less so on the 12.9-inch screen of Apple’s jumbo tablet. Now that the iPad Pro is here, it’s worth considering the current state of multitasking on iOS 9 and how it could be better for all sizes of iPad.
It’s a tight fit.
Make room, make room! One limitation of multitasking on the iPad Air 2 (and iPad mini 4) probably only be solved by upgrading to an iPad Pro: The amount of room left on the screen once the keyboard slides in. That keyboard eats up a lot of space, and I’m not sure there’s a good solution. I find myself toggling the keyboard closed an awful lot, but I’m not sure how Apple could make it easier or more automatic without making something else more annoying.
But the size of that keyboard is definitely the biggest reason why I don’t use Split View on the iPad Air 2 more often, and what makes me suspect that the iPad Pro is the product this feature was designed for.
Scrolling through a long list. In iOS 9, both Slide Over (which is available on numerous iPads, not just the newest models) and Split View (available only on the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, and iPad Pro) are connected to a single app at a time, chosen from a list that you can view by swiping down from the top of the screen on the Slide Over/Split View side.
The list features an icon and the name (and sometimes, in the background, a preview of the contents) of every app that’s eligible for multitasking, with the apps that have been used most recently sorted to the top of the list. It’s a little hard to believe that the only way to select an app is to scroll through this long list, and that Apple didn’t anticipate that many users would have a huge number of multitasking-capable apps installed on their iPads.
The ability to search for an app would be nice, but I’d settle for the ability to pin a few favorite apps at the head of the list. A denser design that presented the app list in a more straightforward manner would be welcome, especially when the list is long. This is not a design that really scales to iPads with long lists of compatible apps.
Apps who are buddies. Apple has chosen to keep it simple by only having a single app available for multitasking (in either Split View or Slide Over) at any given time. Simple has a lot of appeal. Unfortunately, I keep finding that a lot of the apps I want to use in Split View come in pairs: I want to use Slack and Twitterrific together, say, or Safari and Notes.
I’d like to be able to pair those apps together and have them remember that they’re buddies. Or, failing that, to create some sort of shortcut that would automatically open a pair of apps together. I’d like to be able to use the app switcher (or something like Mission Control) to switch between these pairs, too.
Right now, when I use Split View I feel like I spend too much time and mental energy on maintenance, on fiddling around with the interface to open an app into Split View, to switch between different apps, and to get rid of Split View when it’s no longer needed. Imagine an iPad workflow where you have three preferred set-ups: Apps A and B together, apps C and D together, and app E by itself. Right now, to switch among those set-ups takes an awful lot of maintenance: You have to quit app A, open app C, and switch the sidebar to app D. Then when you switch to app E, you need to slide the sidebar off the screen entirely. Then to go back to the first setup, you have to launch App A, slide out app D, and switch it back to App B. It’s too much.
Drag and drop. It’s no surprise that Apple wouldn’t build a feature as rich and complex as drag-and-drop into the first iteration of split-screen multitasking. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be huge to be able to select an item on one side of the divide and drag it into the other app. I wouldn’t expect to see a feature like this before iOS 10 next fall, but it was clear—even in Microsoft’s demo during the unveiling of multitasking in iOS 9—that drag-and-drop between apps is a feature that needs to happen.
Here’s hoping that many (or dare I dream, all?) of these issues are addressed in iOS 10, and perhaps a few of them even sooner than that. In the meantime, I’m still quite looking forward to using that enormous iPad Pro display in Split View.
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Finer Values for the Fine Gaming Option
December 21, 2018 / Last updated : December 29, 2018 Kaplony Györffi Free Online Games
In less than a year, the video game has become the most popular game in the world, and especially one of the most profitable. He owes his enormous success to a seductive game mode, the Royal Battle, as well as a free download template.
Decryption of the rise of a game that has become a real social phenomenon
The incredible success of the online video game, linked to the free of charge model
The incredible success of the online video game is largely due to its free model and its engaging “Battle Royale” concept
When it was launched in July 2017, there was no hint of the phenomenal success that would have achieved in less than a year. However, for the last month of March, it estimated $220 million revenue generated by the video game created by Epic Games studios. At that time, the game was number 1 in global console sales, and fifth on PC. Some 150 million players in the world have already been seduced by the game on all types of platforms. Huge figures for this game with childish graphics, become in a few months a heavyweight in the video game industry.
An attractive “Battle Royale” concept
This is a free game combining shooting, survival and construction. Originally, the goal for the player was to defend the human race against hordes of zombies who attack it. A month after its release in July 2017 on PC, Mac and console, the game brings together a million players on its online games. But what will make it switch to a completely different commercial dimension is the release last September of his second free mode: the “Battle Royale”.
The concept of the “Battle Royale” could not be simpler. 100 players online are parachuted on a desert island where there are hidden weapons. Participants compete in an area that is reduced to the last survivor standing. This one contrasts with the ultra-military realism of his Korean rival. In here , players compete against each other with often absurd design weapons, without ever being splashed by the slightest drop of blood. The speed of sequencing between games (usually lasting less than 15 minutes each) also contributes to the popularity of this game.
A free model and a monumental audience
One of the main advantages of Battle Royale is that it can be downloaded for free on almost any medium: PC, console, or smartphones. Online gambling has adopted a popular “free to pay” model. Clearly, the game only pay for optional content: aesthetic accessories or hero outfits, which can be sold each between 5 and 15 dollars.
In the meantime, its success is so great that according to Bloomberg, Activision-Blizzard and Take Two , creators of the Call of Duty , Destiny and Grand Theft Auto games, lost 11% and 12% respectively in March quotation. Since then, it continues to impose its ubiquity on all media. Epic Games launched on April 2 its application for Iphone. The use of the Cartoon Strike unblocked 66 happens to be the perfect option here
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Smart Care Makes First Acquisition 6 Months After Spinning Out of Ecolab
Posted from Twin Cities Business
Now officially on its own after splitting from Ecolab at the start of the year, Smart Care Equipment Solutions on Monday made the first of what will be many acquisitions in the next several years.
Smart Care, a commercial kitchen repair and maintenance company headquartered in Ecolab’s former home, the Osborn370 building in St. Paul, said its deal for industry competitor Remco would bolster its position in southern states while growing its staff.
Remco, based in Birmingham, Alabama, serves customers in its home state, as well as Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida. The company employs more than 60 workers, 46 of which are trained service technicians that will join Smart Care’s existing technician team of more than 500 that service customers in every U.S. state.
“Remco has become the stand-out leader in commercial kitchen equipment service in the southeast,” said Smart Care CEO Bill Emory in a statement. “We are delighted to add Remco to the Smart Care family and are very pleased that [president and CEO] Rich Gory and [vice present of operations] Bruce Gory will continue to lead Remco.”
Smart Care did not disclose terms of the transaction, but Emory noted to Twin Cities Business that the deal was one of two to three acquisitions worth nearly $20 million that the company planned to make in the front half of 2018.
“Our goal is to grow by $30 million to $40 million each year,” Emory said. “When Smart Care was part of Ecolab, we grew organically from $130 million to $185 million in four years. We are now executing on a plan to double the size of our business in three to five years.”
Emory told the Star Tribune earlier this year he planned to grow Smart Care’s 900-employee operation into a half-a-billion-dollar company within five years. Its 2018 revenue is expected to be in the neighborhood of $200 million.
Ecolab sold Smart Care last August to Audax Group, a multi-billion-dollar middle market investment company out of Boston, for an undisclosed amount. The new ownership, Emory said, is what has helped fuel Smart Care’s acquisition push.
“Our growth plans have always included acquisitions and with the backing of private equity funding we are able to execute on that part of our strategy,” he said. “We are targeting white space opportunities and markets where we currently have operations and coverage, but what’s important to us is buying a well-run business with a management team that already shares our vision for quality of service and a commitment to both excellence and our people.”
Smart Care currently holds the largest foothold, a roughly 3 percent share, of the estimated $7.5 billion kitchen equipment maintenance and repair market, the Star Tribune reports. Although there’s growth in providing for full service and quick serve restaurants, Emory told TCB that the need is growing for Smart Care’s services in all of its customer categories, including health care, education, hospitality, government and corporate offices.
“We’re seeing an increased demand across all of our customer categories,” he said. “The commercial kitchen service industry has many service companies [and] growth opportunities for Smart Care’s buy and build national business model.”
WBR Announces 2019 Field Service Best-In-Class Awards Winners
Smart Care Promotes Gyner Ozgul to Senior Vice President, Operations
Smart Care® Equipment Solutions Announces Acquisition of Mid-South Maintenance
Avoiding Kitchen Performance Pitfalls and Pressure Cooker Situations
Smart Care® Introduces Nationwide Planned Maintenance Program
press@smartcaresolutions.com
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The forgotten Scottish radical to rival William Wallace and Keir Hardie
Gerard Carruthers, University of Glasgow
Gerard Carruthers
Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow
Gerard Carruthers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
University of Glasgow provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.
Ken Currie, The Trials of Thomas Muir, 2015, Oil on Canvas. (c) Ken Currie; Collection of East Dunbartonshire Culture and Leisure Trust
He was public enemy number one for his attempts to stand up for injustice. He was the subversive lawyer and political reformer that for many years was in danger of being forgotten. Yet in the 250th year since his birth, Thomas Muir has made quite a comeback. He is now being touted as the father of Scottish democracy, and could yet become an icon to rival the likes of William Wallace and Keir Hardie.
Dangerous ideas: Thomas Paine. Wikimedia
Muir ended up living the kind of boy’s-own story that could inspire a Hollywood movie. He was exiled to Botany Bay for 14 years in an outrageously rigged trial in 1793. He had been prosecuted for encouraging people to read Thomas Paine, who so far as the British were concerned helped to spark both the American and French revolutions. Muir had also been instrumental in the meetings of the radicalist Society of the Friends of the People in Edinburgh, and had personally sent messages of fraternal greetings to the United Irishmen on their way to becoming a revolutionary movement.
Radicalism on the high seas
Before reaching Botany Bay, Muir escaped aboard an American commercial ship; had adventures in modern-day Canada and South America; was subject to fierce diplomatic negotiations on his status between Spain and France; and was finally deported to Spain. En route, in an action where the British Royal Navy confronted the vessel on which Muir was being held, he had his face badly damaged by canon shot and, apparently, played dead under a pile of corpses to evade becoming a British prisoner, making his way eventually to post-revolutionary France.
Muir had been notorious in the years before his trial, though not always in ways you might expect. He represented the conservative part of the Church of Scotland in its attempt to have Robert Burns’ friend, the Rev William McGill, arraigned for heresy over a pamphlet the minister had written that was somewhat ambiguous over the divinity of Christ. Muir had also voluntarily excluded himself from the University of Glasgow after having questioned the financial management.
He instead entered Edinburgh University to study law, and provided free legal advice to the poor of the city. He was driven by his Calvinist as well as his political beliefs and these coalesced following the French Revolution, when the word “democracy” was mouthed by those in authority with a similar distaste to the way in which “radicalisation” is employed today. By the end of his life in 1799 at the age of just 33, Muir wanted Britain invaded by France, and to be divided into three republics: England, Ireland and Scotland. Unable to return home, he died alone in the French village of Chantilly in the last days of that January.
The Muir memory
For many years, he was not well remembered. He was one of the political “martyrs” of the 1790s commemorated on an obelisk on Calton Hill in Edinburgh in 1844, but his notoriety did not live on in folklore. Unlike other popular heroes, surprisingly few songs were written about him – an exception being “Thomas Muir of Huntershill” by folk singer Adam MacNaughton a couple of decades back (as sung by Dick Gaughan in this excerpt).
Courtesy of Flowers Gallery
But Muir’s star has been rising lately, partly thanks to a growing organisation called The Friends of Thomas Muir. To mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, this year has seen a speech by former first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond; a “retrial” of Muir, featuring the historian Sir Tom Devine and the advocate Donald Findlay; a new painting by Ken Currie; and even a T-shirt that sees Muir placed in a canon of similar T-shirts alongside Scotland’s national bard and Che Guevara.
These developments have received cross-party political support, but it increasingly looks as though the political ownership of Muir is being contested by the far left and the Scottish National Party. This is slightly strange to anyone of historical sensitivity since Muir had no access really to socialism or nationalism in their modern senses.
The Paris attacks help shed light on Muir for what he was not as much as what he was. He was not a revolutionary in the mould of the Islamic State, even if he was partly driven by his religious beliefs. The fact that he could support the United Irishmen, whose ranks included Catholics and Presbyterians, show that he was no theological fanatic. Instead Muir would have admired the hacker group Anonymous’ promotion of the power of the people, unsubverted and unafraid to disagree among themselves. “This is how we do things, so this is the right way” is a common sense attitude, but not much of a prospect for progress. Like Jeremy Corbyn, Muir was always unafraid to speak out against the consensus, even when at a time like these Paris attacks, the pressure is greatest to fall into line.
Anonymous protesters in London earlier in November. Dominic Lipinski/PA
In essence, Muir stands for a very positive version of humanity in our enduringly selfish culture. There is an uneasy divide between this year’s celebration of his contribution to democracy and the squabble to appropriate his legacy. Democracy, after all, is about how different people can be rather than how much they form part of a tribe. In these tense times, both in Scotland and further afield, we would do well to keep that in mind.
A commemorative concert to Thomas Muir featuring Dick Gaughan is being held at the University of Glasgow on November 20.
Paris attacks 2015
Blocking IS one click at a time? Pierre (Rennes)/flickr
Anonymous hackers could be Islamic State’s online nemesis
Paris’ famed Notre Dame Cathedral was in lockdown after terrorist attacks across the city killed more than 100 people. EPA/Ian Langsdon
Paris attacks: why Islam and Christianity are twin religions of war and peace
Are you ready Eddie? Chris Radburn/PA
Five things Labour will do in this campaign, and five things it definitely won’t
Better together? Stuart Rankin
Talk of a divided union does not reflect English opinion
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MovieMonday: American Violence
Before I render an opinion here, let me share my bona fides.
Last year I watched several superhero movies. These movies’ plots are designed to set up battle events involving various weapons and lots of computer-generated imagery. Nobody goes to superhero movies because of the plots, which is good because the plots stink.
The plot of “American Violence” is worse than the plot of a superhero movie, and it doesn’t have fun CGI to distract the viewer from that fact.
In short, “American Violence” is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
The story, and its generic-sounding title, imply that the movie is violent, and in this it delivers. There are scenes of torture, stabbings, shootouts and prison rape, as well as implied scenes of child molestation.
These moments are surprisingly unmoving, given the ludicrous nature of the script, which pretends to be a thoughtful examination of the morality of the death penalty, but whose elements are so contrived that they cannot be taken seriously.
The setup is that Denise Richards, here playing a criminal psychologist, is asked to advise the governor of Texas on whether he should cancel the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer. The governor is facing political resistance to capital punishment.
This is amusing for at least two reasons:
— There is no keen opposition to capital punishment in Texas. The state has executed 93 murderers since 2010, two since January 1 of this year. The number of killings ascribed to the inmate in the movie, if they resulted in prosecutions and guilty verdicts, would make him ineligible for a sentence review.
— Denise Richards is unconvincing as a professor of psychology. Her hair, light brown with lovely blonde highlights, is long and falls in ringlets that must take a hairdresser hours to arrange each day. She has perfectly arched eyebrows, a suspiciously full mouth and, always, great lighting. It may be that the film’s makeup crew chose to present her as a movie star, but her acting skills are not sufficient to convince an audience that she is anything more.
The death-row inmate, played by Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau, is interviewed by the psychologist, who discovers that he is very intelligent and highly self-controlled. The justification for his crimes is that he has been double-crossed repeatedly by unindicted criminals who face no legal consequences for their corruption — doctors, lawyers and a prison warden played by Bruce Dern, seemingly a total whack job but actually quite devious and evil.
The plot pulls so many rabbits out of hats that it is difficult to watch the movie without laughing. Its unrealistic constructs pile up, one on another, and completely invalidate the faux-serious death-penalty commentary that is supposed to end the film.
It’s a total mess. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
One bit player is Rob Gronkowski, who acquits himself well in a few on-camera minutes as a straight-faced, pistol-shooting guard. In real life, he is a tight end for the New England Patriots who was forced by injury to sit out last night’s Super Bowl.
Gronk has a winsome personality that has earned him a loyal base of fans who would support him if he decides to take up acting as his second career. If he wants to succeed at this, however, he will need to hire a discerning agent who will not send along scripts like the one for “American Violence.”
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Melodic Tendencies in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet
Ken Stephenson
chi square test
melody pattern
Joseph Youngblood
In 1958, Joseph Youngblood's article entitled "Style as Information" explored the notion of musical style as a set of mathematically verifiable preferences for certain musical structures over others.1 In the study, he concentrated on single melodic pitches and consecutive pairs of melodic pitches in certain works by three composers of tonal music—Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann—and rated the frequency of these structures in that early nineteenth-century style using the mathematical methods of information theory. One year earlier, Leonard Meyer, too, suggested information theory as an appropriate method for defining a given style.2 Much less mathematical and more descriptive than Youngblood in his approach, Meyer explains that (at least some) music has "embodied meaning," which arises, he says, when "within the context of a particular musical style one tone or group of tones indicates—leads the practiced listener to expect—that another tone or group of tones will be forthcoming at some more or less specified point in the musical continuum."3 Although he provides no examples, Meyer suggests the usefulness of mathematical approaches such as Youngblood's when he says, "Once a musical style has become part of the habit responses of composers, performers, and practiced listeners it may be regarded as a complex system of probabilities."4
Prokofiev's music is often said to be tonal, although it does not usually follow the norms of common-practice tonality. This study examines the melodies from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet as representatives of at least his later style, submitting them to information-theory calculations in order to compare this style with the early nineteenth-century style studied by Youngblood, and further exploring the style as "a complex system of probabilities" by submitting several aspects of the melodies to a chi-square test.
A couple of difficulties with such a mathematical analysis of these melodies must be dealt with at the outset. First, the results of the statistical tests reported below cannot be taken as impeccably dependable due to the impossibility of devising a truly random sample of data, or, in fact, of even determining the exact contents of the entire population. The difficulty is that the ultimate concern is not with discovering patterns that occur more often in actuality, but rather with those that seem to occur more often. If a given melody is repeated ten times over the course of a work, each pattern within that melody is itself heard ten times. Does any such pattern indeed seem ten times as normal as one found in a melody heard only once? Should the pattern occur in other melodies as well, the repetition of the first melody would seem to confirm the notion that the pattern is in fact an integral part of the whole style. But what of the comparison of a pattern that is found only in the ten-times-repeated melody with another that is found in five different melodies, each melody heard only once? The recurrence of the second pattern in five different contexts is likely to make it seem more normal than the pattern heard in only one context, despite the fact that the latter is heard twice as often. There can be no true resolution of this problem since any two listeners may approach it in different ways. Using V-I cadences and Tristan und Isolde as examples, Leonard Meyer has pointed out that it is possible, to a listener familiar with the norms of a particular body of literature, for a given pattern to seem an integral part of the style of a certain work even if no instances of it are heard in the work at all.5
Second, even if the methodology is allowed some leeway, an argument could be raised against using statistics in such a study: such methods often seem able to avoid being cold and inhuman only by being inexact and thus meaningless. As to the first possibility (that the methods ignore some human element in the music), any form of note counting can only be a first step in meaningful analysis. Subjective sense is always available, and indeed necessary, for interpreting findings. The purpose of this study is to compare Prokofiev's melodic style with that of earlier tonal composers by means of an established method, and the study proffered by Youngblood and its concomitant statistical methods provide the baseline for the comparison. So the concern of this study is indeed note counting, but the study is meant to be only a first step on one path toward understanding this music.
As to the second possibility, since the resolution of our subjective sense of what seems more or less normal is not nearly so refined as that suggested by the multi-decimal-place figures statistical computations produce, inexact figures should be enough for laying a basic foundation. In short, if the study is not expected to produce data complete enough and accurate enough, say, to drive a Prokofiev-imitating computer program, it can still be quite revealing.
Out of a total of forty-four different melodies in Romeo and Juliet, thirty-seven, those that begin and end in the same key, were included in the reckoning for this study, each of them counted only once. In a few cases, only major-mode melodies were counted. The location of each of these melodies is given in figure 1.6
Figure 1. List of melodies used in study.
1. Beginning: 1-4
2. 1:5-12
3. 1:13-20
5. 6:3-7:1
6. 9:5-11:1
7. 18:5-19:8
8. 30:1-8
10. 48:1-4
13. 60:1-4 14. 64:1-9
18. 84:1-85:8
19. 88:3-89:10
21. 106:1-8
22. 107:1-17
23. 111:1-112:8
Individual pitches (classification of pitch determined by its intervallic relationship to the prevailing tonic, hence the necessity for melodies that begin and end in the same key), contiguous two-note patterns, patterns of two notes separated by a third note, and melodic intervals were counted. Distributions of the tendencies were then subjected to chi-square tests to study their deviation from randomness, from other distributions provided by the same study, and from the distributions provided by Youngblood. In addition, Youngblood's method of information-theory computation was applied to these same distributions for further comparison with the nineteenth-century style he examined.
Explanation of Chi-square Test
The chi-square test is used to judge whether the difference between two nonnormal distributions is significant or not. In other words, given a nonnormally distributed set of probabilities (specifically, the probability for each possible value of a given discrete variable) as a basis for expectation, the chi-square test will determine, within a certain level of confidence, whether a set of observed frequencies could have resulted from those given probabilities. If not, a "significant" difference exists, and a factor other than chance can be assumed to have influenced the observed results.
The first step in this test is to subtract the observed frequency of each possible outcome from its expected frequency (the probability of that outcome multiplied by the total number of instances). The square of each difference is then calculated and divided by the corresponding expected frequency. The results are then totaled. This final figure is compared with figures in a chi-square table, which can be found in any statistics text. The table gives the minimum result needed to assume significance of deviation with confidence of a certain degree: 99%, 98%, 95%, etc. 99% confidence, for instance, means that the difference could have arisen by chance only one time in 100; the observer can be 99% sure that other factors, not chance, caused the difference. The table also gives different figures for varying degrees of freedom (df). For our purpose, the degrees of freedom is a number equal to the number of possible outcomes minus one. The notion of degrees of freedom reflects the interdependence of the frequencies of the various outcomes when the total frequency is given. If there are only two possible outcomes in a certain system and the total frequency is given, any result for one outcome determines the frequency of the other; there is only one degree of freedom in the system. If three outcomes are possible, the frequencies of any two outcomes are independent of each other, but the third is determined by the other two; there are two degrees of freedom. With greater degrees of freedom, higher chi-square figures are needed in order to determine significant deviation. Because the test involves dividing the square of each difference by the expected frequency, the fact that significance of deviation rises as the total frequency rises is taken into account. (Anything can happen once; probabilities take effect over multiple occurrences.) In the same feature, however, lies one weakness of the test: any expected frequency less than about 2% of the total frequency may, since it is used as a denominator, possibly lead to an overly large result.
As an example, let us imagine that for a given location, two-thirds of the days are sunny, one-third cloudy. The probability that any given day will be sunny is thus .67, that it will be cloudy, .33. Over a 30-day period, 20 sunny days would be expected, 10 cloudy days. An observation of 19 sunny days and 11 cloudy days would not seem unusual, and the chi-square test confirms that it is not so. The difference between the expected frequency of sunny days and the observed frequency is 1. The square of this difference is 1, and this divided by the expected frequency is .05. The difference for cloudy days is also 1. The square, 1 again, is divided by the expected number of cloudy days, for a result of .1. The sum of the results is .15. With one degree of freedom, a result of at least 3.841 is needed for even 95% confidence; the chi-square test indicates that only chance was involved in the deviation. Suppose, however, that 10 sunny days and 20 cloudy days were observed. This would be quite an unusual weather pattern for the location, as the chi-square test would affirm. The difference squared is, in each case, 100. Dividing 100 by the expected number of sunny days yields 5; dividing by the expected number of cloudy days gives a result of 10. Totalling these results yields a final chi-square figure of 15. Only 6.635 is needed for 99% confidence that a significant difference exists.
Explanation of Information-Theory Calculation
The information-theory calculation is also a summation of figures. For each outcome, the proportion of the observed frequency to the total number of events is multiplied by the log2 of that same proportion. (The log2 of a number is that power to which 2 must be raised to yield that number. 8 is 2 to the third power. Therefore the log2 of 8 is 3. 0.25 is 2 to the power of negative 2. Therefore, the log2 of 0.25 is -2.) The absolute value of the sum of these products yields the number of bits of information expressed by the system and is known as the entropy of the system, represented by the letter H. (A bit is the smallest amount of information, a binary choice, an indication of the state of a situation where only two possibilities exist. One bit of information is needed to indicate one of two objects. Two bits are needed to indicate one of four objects; the first bit narrows the field in half, and the second can then identify one of the two remaining possibilities. Three bits are needed to identify one of eight objects, etc.) Where the observed frequencies are the same for each possible outcome, the entropy will be the log2 of the number of outcomes. With four possible outcomes, for instance, the result would be 2. Where the frequencies are not equal, the theory states that less information is expressed by each event. Another way Youngblood explains it is that if a composition displays more instances of one possibility (a given pitch or rhythmic value, for instance) than another, the composer was less free to choose the rarer of the two. A lower entropy figure indicates less freedom of choice, more restrictions due to peculiarities of style. The entropy figure of a nonequally distributed system may be divided by the figure for an equally distributed system with the same total number of events to yield the figure known as relative entropy (Hr).
To demonstrate the information-theory or entropy test, I will relay Youngblood's example: a composer is writing a piece for four drums in which he uses drum A 12.5% of the time, drum B 12.5%, drum C 25%, and drum D 50%. The log2 of .125 is -3; of .25, -2; and of .5, -1. (.125 * -3) + (.125 * -3) + (.25 * -2) + (.5 * -1) = (-.375 + -.375 + -.5 + -.5) = -1.75. The absolute value is taken just for the convenience of having positive numbers as results. Thus H = 1.75. Since H would equal 2 in a system with four equally probable possibilities, Hr = 1.75/2 = .875 = 87.5%.
This method has two main weaknesses. First, there is no absolute standard for making judgments based on the results of this test, as there is in the case of chi-square. However, relative judgments may be made by comparing results and deciding which of two systems, for instance, displays more freedom of choice, i.e., which deviates from randomness less. Second, since only relative frequency and not absolute frequency is taken into account, the difference in significance that accompanies greater frequencies is not factored in. Getting "heads" only twenty-five times in one-hundred coin tosses is viewed by this theory as no less a product of chance than getting "heads" once in four tosses. Still, the method may be useful in corroborating findings from other tests.
Distribution of Individual Pitches
Before any multi-note patterns can be examined, the relative frequencies of pitches must be established. The distribution of frequencies of each pitch class as occurring in melodies 1-37 is shown in table 1.
Table 1. Frequency distribution of pitch classes in the Prokofiev melodies. PC designations are relative to tonic.
Relative Freq.
Total: 1461 Freq.
The "PC" designation in the first column refers to the number of half steps a given note lies above the tonic pitch of the melody in which it occurs. Thus, there are 256 instances of the tonic pitch in these melodies, 30 instances of the pitch one half-step above the tonic, etc. (These pitch-classes will be indicated in the text from this point on as an underlined integer, e.g. 3.) "Relative freq." refers to the proportion of a given PC's frequency to the total number of pitches, in this case 1461. A pitch chosen at random from the melodies of this ballet then has an 18% chance of being the dominant pitch (7), but is only about half as likely to be the leading tone (11). The distribution is clearly not random; the chi-square test yields a result of 584.86, where for 99% confidence with 11 degrees of freedom, a result of only 24.725 is required. Thus, these frequencies are significant aspects of the style. The dominant and tonic, in that order, are the most common scale degrees, followed by the third, the sixth, the second, the seventh, and the fourth degrees of the major scale. As might be expected, the chromatic pitches are less common. The entropy of this distribution is 3.300. Since the H for twelve classifications with equal probabilities is 3.585, the Hr for this distribution is .921. Meaningless now, this figure will prove somewhat useful when comparing other distributions to this overall distribution.
Youngblood's study dealt only with melodies in major keys. For this reason a division by mode of the melodies in Romeo and Juliet is desired. Distributions for each mode are given separately in table 2.
Table 2. Frequency distribution of pitch-classes by mode.
Major mode
Relative Minor mode
Not surprisingly, since it is the relative frequency of 4 and 3 which more than any other factor determines whether a melody is in the major or minor mode, in each mode here the appropriate third scale degree is found approximately six times as often as its counterpart. Also not surprising is that the minor mode employs the leading tone less often than does the major mode and employs the sub-tonic much more often. Of note is the much higher frequency of dominant pitches in the minor mode and the much lower frequency of the subdominant. The use of 6 just under 4% of the time in each mode is striking. As might be expected, the entropy figures for these distributions, 3.220 for the major mode (Hr =.898) and 3.189 for the minor mode (Hr = .890), are lower than those for all the melodies together. This is true because the strictures associated with each mode are isolated in the dual breakdown. In other words, the extra freedom indicated by the higher H value of the combined distribution represents the freedom to choose one of two modes.
We may now begin to compare the Prokofiev figures with those obtained in Youngblood's study. The H values for the three composers studied by Youngblood are as follows: Schubert, 3.127 (Hr = .87); Mendelssohn, 3.03 (Hr = .846); and Schumann, 3.05 (Hr = .85). Obviously, Prokofiev is more free in his choice of pitches than is any one of the three nineteenth-century composers. Schubert comes the closest, probably because he is the most chromatic of the three. An examination of differences between Prokoviev's choice of pitches and Schubert's may disclose specific ways in which the style of Prokofiev's music differs from an earlier tonal style. In table 3, Schubert's frequency distribution, taken from Youngblood, is given alongside Prokofiev's.
Table 3. Comparison of PC-probability distributions for Schubert and Prokofiev.
Relative Prokofiev (major)
Although it is clear which pitches Prokofiev uses more often than Schubert and which pitches less, the question at hand is whether any of the differences is significant. Assuming the proportions displayed for Schubert are typical, i.e., that they can be expected, are the discrepancies between the two composers possibly a matter of chance, or do they indicate significant differences in style? The chi-square figure obtained by a comparison of the full distributions is 170.895. With only 24.725 or greater needed for 99% confidence, it is clear that significant differences exist. What, specifically, are they?
The first issue is the matter of chromaticism. Of the 1025 notes examined in the Schubert study, 920 (89.8%) are diatonic, 105 (10.2%) chromatic. Of the 1160 notes in the major-mode Prokofiev melodies, 1017 (87.7%) are diatonic, while 143 (12.3%) are chromatic. The Prokofiev melodies thus display more chromaticism. Is the difference significant? The chi-square test suggests that it is. Given the Schubert percentages as the normal probabilities, the Prokofiev figures yield a chi-square value of 5.733. Since at 1 degree of freedom 5.412 is needed for 98% confidence and 6.6535 for 99% confidence, we may say with a little more than 98% confidence that the greater chromaticism in Prokofiev is in fact a significant difference of style.
The chi-square test can also give an indication of whether the difference in the frequency of any single pitch is significant. When the distributions are regrouped into two categories each, tonic pitches and nontonic pitches, the chi-square test yields a result of .120. Since 3.841 is needed for even 95% confidence, the difference appears to be trivial; statistics do not suggest that Prokofiev used the tonic pitch any differently than did Schubert, but rather that the slight difference in relative frequency is the product of chance only. Testing for a difference in the use of 1, however, yields a chi-square value of 39.649. Although chi-square figures are suspect any time the expected frequency is under 2.0%, this figure is so much higher than the 6.635 needed for 99% confidence that it is still safe to say that Prokofiev uses significantly more 1s than does Schubert. Even compared to Schumann, whose use of the pitch 1.5% of the time—a proportion closer to Prokofiev's—makes the chi-square test more sure, Prokofiev's use of 1 proves significantly higher. The test yields a result of 4.25, over the 95% mark.
Of the twelve pitches, Prokofiev's low use of 2 yields the greatest chi-square figure: 43.567. The smallest difference between the two styles is in the use of 5; the chi-square value is only .044. An abundant use of the raised fourth scale degree, 6, appears to be one of the most significant features of the style of Romeo and Juliet, as attested to by the chi-square result of 41.228. A result of 7.590 reveals, surprisingly, that Prokofiev's use of 10, a chromatic pitch, is significantly lower than Schubert's. A complete list of figures is given in table 4.
Table 4. Relative frequency of each pitch in Prokofiev as compared with use by Schubert.
chi2
(higher)
significantly higher
significantly lower
(lower)
somewhat lower
somewhat higher
In short, the greater use of chromatic pitches is accounted for by significantly higher numbers in Prokofiev of pitches 1 and 6 (although use of 10 is significantly lower), while the lower overall percentage of diatonic pitches is accounted for by the significantly less frequent use of pitches 2 and 7 (although use of 4 and 9 is significantly higher).
Consecutive-pair Patterns
Having examined the distribution of the frequency of each pitch, we now turn our attention to more specific syntactical uses for each pitch. In order to do so we will use another type of frequency table. This type of table will indicate the number of times each of the 144 possible pitch-class combinations occurs as a consecutive pair of notes. These tables will be arranged in twelve-by-twelve arrays, each line a distribution showing the number of times a given pitch is followed by the tonic pitch, by a representative of PC 1, by a representative of PC 2, etc. Each of these distributions may be analyzed in the ways the distribution of overall frequencies was analyzed, and they may be compared to it and to each other.
Table 5 shows Youngblood's table of frequencies of consecutive pairs in Schubert, as well as entropy figures.
Table 5. Frequencies of consecutive pairs in Schubert and Prokofiev.
1st Followed by:
Schub
Prok
*H
*Hr
Entropy for total distribution:
Prok 5.71
6.33 79.6% 88.3%
*H = entropy; *Hr = relative entropy (see definition under "Explanation of Information-Theory Calculation").
These figures have been recalculated and, in most cases, differ slightly from the figures, calculated before even pocket calculators were available, given by Youngblood. In addition, the table gives the frequencies and entropy measurements for melodies 1-37 in Romeo and Juliet.
In a comparison of the entropy measurements, it is quickly observed that Prokofiev's style is freer than Schubert's. In other words, more variety of patterns in consecutive pairs exists in Prokofiev's music, as indicated by the higher overall entropy level, 88.32% as opposed to 79.6% for Schubert. In fact, the level of freedom for each of the twelve separate distributions is higher in the music of Prokofiev. That is, after any given note, Prokofiev is less likely than Schubert to defer to typical tendencies. This is due in part to the general tendency to use more chromatic pitches, but must be mostly attributed simply to a general willingness to use almost any pitch after any other pitch. This difference is most obvious in the case of 1, in which Schubert limits himself to three possibilities, while Prokofiev is free to follow with one of eight different pitches. The striking difference between the 32.1% relative entropy in Schubert's case and the 78.7% in Prokofiev's bears this out. The least difference seen is in the case of pitches following 11. In this situation, Prokofiev is content to follow the traditional tendencies to continue with the tonic pitch or with the sixth scale degree, a judgment which is corroborated by chi-square tests, as noted below.
Now that it has been established that Prokofiev is freer in the use of each pitch than Schubert is, we wish to know details concerning the use of each pitch. In particular, we wish to know whether tendency tones exist. That is, do some tones resolve in particular ways a significant amount of the time? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to do more than just determine which notes follow a given pitch more often than others do. The higher frequencies may merely be a result of the generally high frequencies of occurrences of those pitches. For instance, although pitch 7 is followed most often by 7s and 0s, this fact may be the result of the general abundance of 0s and 7s. We might also say that, while motion to 7 and motion to 0 are tendencies of 7, this tendency is a general one and not peculiar to the dominant pitch. For ease of reference, a distribution for the Prokofiev melodies alone, with entropy and chi-square figures as well, is given in table 6.
Table 6. Frequencies of consecutive-pair combinations in the Prokofiev melodies.
6.33 88.3%
In general terms, the information-theory calculations indicate that Prokofiev is least free in his use of pitches 11, 1, and 6. These tones are therefore probably tendency tones. He is the most free in his use of 0 and 7. These tones are probably not tendency tones. With this imprecise tool we can be no more specific.
In order to determine more definitely the tendency tones and their respective tendencies we must use the chi-square test and compare each line in the consecutive-pair table with the distribution of overall probabilities. Since 17.52% of the pitches are tonic, 17.52% of the total frequency for each line is considered the expected frequency for the tonic pitch in that line, etc. Surprisingly, given the results of the entropy calculations, the only pitch we may not say with confidence is a tendency tone is 1. With 11 degrees of freedom, 19.675 is needed for even 95% confidence of significant difference. The figure of 13.611 calculated for PC 1 is not enough. The calculation for every other pitch except 3 exceeds the 24.725 needed for 99% confidence, and the result for 3 is very close. The reason the two tests give contradictory results for 1 is its low total frequency. Information theory indicates that the distribution is not close to random, but it does not take into account the fact that quite skewed distributions can occur by chance when only a few cases are observed. The sampling base is simply not large enough for us to come to a definite conclusion in the matter.
We will now examine each line in detail to see what specifically is peculiar about each distribution. Regrouping each distribution twelve different ways—0s and non-0s, 1s and non-1s, etc.—and comparing each result by means of a chi-square test with a similar regrouping of the proportions of table 1 will reveal just which differences, whether higher or lower, are truly significant, thus showing the specific tendencies of each pitch.
Pitch 0 is rather eccentric. The chi-square test for its entire distribution yields a very high 60.239, and indeed, upon examining the distribution of pitches following it, one sees 4 following it as many as 43 times while 6 follows only once. Of course one expects a high number of 4s and a low number of 6s simply because of their relative frequencies overall. Are these figures unusually exaggerated? 4 accounts for 12.87% of the pitches overall in the 37 melodies. The expected frequency of 4 in a distribution whose total frequency is 231 is therefore just under 30 (more precisely: 29.7297). In a comparison of this figure and the observed 43, the chi-square test yields a result of 6.804, over the 6.635 needed for 99% confidence; the frequency is significantly high. The tonic pitch has a tendency, then, to be followed by 4 an inordinate amount of the time. 6 represents 3.97% of all the pitches in melodies 1 to 37. 3.97% of 231 is 9.1707. Thus, nine 6s are expected, although only one is observed. The chi-square test's result of 7.580 affirms that the number of 6's actually observed is significantly low. The tonic has a definite tendency not to be followed by the note a tritone away. The most significant differences in the distribution are the high number of 1's (chi-square: 18.443) and of 11s (chi-square: 13.703). These differences can be explained perhaps by a preference in the style for conjunct motion. Curiously, however, the number of 2s is not significantly higher than the number expected (chi-square: .141). Other significant differences are the low number of 5s (chi-square: 4.535) and of 9s (chi-square: 4.649). The chi-square tests indicate that the high number of 0's and 7s following the tonic pitch is the result of their relatively high overall frequencies, not of any tendency peculiar to the tonic pitch itself. Thus, movement following 0 shows three definite positive tendencies and three definite negative tendencies. (The term "tendency tone" will be reserved for tones that show a single, very strong positive tendency.)
The distribution of notes following 1 shows only one significant tendency, to move to 5. The chi-square result of 4.597 allows us to say with something under 98% confidence that this surprising finding cannot be purely a product of chance. The high numbers of 1s, 2s, and 9s can be attributed to overall frequency and, in the first two cases, perhaps to a proclivity toward conjunct motion. But the chi-square test cannot support the claim that anything more than chance is necessarily involved.
The distribution for pitches following 2 contains three significantly high numbers and three significantly low numbers. Neighbors 0, 3, and 4 are inordinately high, revealing a tendency for 2 to move by conjunct motion. The pitch demonstrates a significant reluctance to repeat itself, to move by tritone to 8, or, surprisingly, to move to the dominant.
PC 3 demonstrates three significant tendencies. The most significant tendency (chi-square: 11.412) is for the pitch to repeat itself. Motion to 4, the pitch that most frequently follows 3, can be said with just under 95% confidence to represent a significant tendency. Like other pitches, 3 has a tendency not to be followed by the pitch six half-steps away, in this case, 9.
4 is the first candidate for the term "tendency tone." Not thought of as such traditionally, in this style the pitch shows a single, strong, positive tendency (chi-square: 58.997), namely, to move to 2. It has two negative tendencies: it never moves by tritone to 10, and it moves to the tonic pitch relatively rarely (32 cases expected, 15 observed).
5, which tends in traditional music to resolve down by step, shows the same tendency here. Over one-third of the notes that follow 5 in these melodies are 4s (chi-square: 44.801). In this style, however, another tendency is present. A chi-square figure of 15.938 demonstrates that the number of 6s following 5s is significantly high. This succession of 5 by the even more unstable 6 is truly non-traditional. The low figures for the tonic pitch and for 11, a tritone away, mark significant negative tendencies.
The situation with 6 is very similar to that of 5; the traditional resolution, up to 7, is present in this style, as well as a second, nontraditional tendency, motion down to 5. The latter is 6's most significant tendency (chi-square: 16.466). Both tendencies involve conjunct motion. The pitch also shows a significant tendency to repeat itself and significant negative tendencies with regard to 4 and 0, the latter being a tritone away.
Chi-square tests reveal seven tendencies for the dominant pitch, 7, four significant with at least 95% confidence, three nearly so. The positive tendencies are motion to 5, 6, 7, and 0. The negative tendencies include motion by tritone to 1, and motion to 2. Also among the negative tendencies is movement to 11. In fact, the dominant pitch moves to the chromatic 10 more often than to the generally more frequent 11.
8 demonstrates two positive tendencies, motion to 9 and motion to 10, and two negative tendencies, motion to 2 and motion to 4. Traditionally the pitch may serve as either a raised fifth, leading to 9, or a lowered sixth, leading to 7. While the first traditional tendency is represented in this work, the second, probably traditionally the more common, is not; the high number of 7s cannot be said with confidence to be a result of anything more than the generally high number of 7s. This discontinuation of a traditional tendency is balanced by the new tendency to move to 10.
The three positive tendencies demonstrated by 9, motion to 7, 10, and 11, all represent the general preference for conjunct motion. The negative tendencies are motion to 4 and to 6. The chi-square test does not support the statement that motion by tritone to 3 is significantly low.
10 may be added to the list of tendency tones. Its one significant tendency is motion to 11 (chi-square: 35.411). This tendency is directly opposed to the traditional tendency for 10 to resolve down. Although this traditional resolution is found, the number of 9s in this distribution is apparently attributable only to their overall frequency, not to any special tendency of 10. It shows significant reluctance toward motion to 4.
11, the strongest of the traditional tendency tones, like several others displays the traditional tendency plus other nontraditional tendencies. The chi-square figure of 54.243 for the traditional motion to 0 is high, but interestingly not as high as the figure for motion from 4 to 2. The nontraditional tendencies present are conjunct motions to 9 and to 10. The pitch shows a negative tendency to move to 3 or 4.
The study of consecutive pairs has revealed three general principles concerning the style of Romeo and Juliet: (1) that any pitch may be followed by practically any other pitch, although (2) conjunct motion is preferred, and (3) motion by tritone is avoided. The first of these tendencies represents a deviation from traditional tonal styles. With regard to more specific matters, traditional tendency tones 5 and 11 preserve their traditional roles, although they assume new secondary roles as well. This is also true of the chromatic pitches 6 and, to some extent, 9. Chromatic pitches 1 and 10, on the other hand, fill completely new roles in this style.
Nonconsecutive Pairs
In traditional tonal music, a tendency tone need not resolve immediately. Melodic embellishment may delay the resolution by one or more notes. It is important then to see if the immediate tendencies of any of the twelve pitches continue to have strength at a distance of two notes. In addition, other tendencies may be discovered. While it may be desirable to examine pairs with two, three, or even more intervening notes, this study is limited to pairs with only one note intervening. A table giving the frequencies of every combination is found in table 7.
Table 7. Frequencies of PC pairs with one note intervening.
Table 8 combines tables 6 and 7 by representing the number of instances in which a pitch is found either directly after a given pitch or two notes later. (If both notes following are of the same pitch class, the tally is increased only by one.)
Table 8. Frequencies of PC pairs with no notes or one note intervening.
It might be expected that the information-theory figures be higher when examining nonconsecutive pairs, representing more freedom, and the chi-square figures lower, representing less deviation from overall proportions. With 0, this is certainly the case. The change in the chi-square figure is especially dramatic. 13.625 is far below the 19.675 needed for 95% confidence that significant overall deviation from relative randomness exists. None of 0's significant immediate tendencies is evident in the non-consecutive chart. For instance, the chi-square test allows confidence of close to 95% that the number of 11s is significantly low in this situation, although motion to 11 is one of the very strong tendencies displayed by the tonic in immediate motion. (See table 6.)
The case of PC 1 is very interesting. Both the information-theory and the chi-square numbers are higher, the latter dramatically so. The reason for this contradictory situation is again the low total frequency. It is difficult to make definite conclusions based on this low number of total observations. The indications given by chi-square tests, however, are that the number of 0s is low, the number of 8s high, and the number of 3s tremendously high (chi-square: 58.213).
Calculations show the nonconsecutive-pair distribution for 2 both more free than the consecutive-pair distribution and less deviant from general tendencies. Specific tests reveal only one significant tendency: to move to 11. This is probably a result of 2's tendency to move directly to 0 and 0's to move directly to 11.
3 shows little change in either deviation from overall probabilities or freedom. The strong tendencies are slightly different, however. 3 shows an unusual tendency to move, in the course of two notes, to 1 or to 6. The tendency to avoid 9 is still present.
4's strong tendency to move to 2 is replaced in this situation with a tendency (the chi-square figure of 3.440 approaches the 95% confidence mark) to move to 0—possibly a further indication of a preference for three-note, descending, diatonic scales—and to 11. The tendency to avoid the tritone, 10, is still present.
5's tendency to move to 4 and 4's tendency to move to 2 result in a significantly high number of 2s in the non-consecutive-pair distribution for 5. 5 also exhibits a strong tendency to move to 9.
In the nonconsecutive-pair study, 6 shows a drastic increase in freedom and decrease in deviation from overall proportions. The only tendency significantly different from overall tendencies is for the note to remain stationary. Only the 0 line contains more 6s, and there are four times as many 0s to begin with. It seems that once this relatively rare pitch occurs, it wishes to remain.
The number of 3s found two notes after occurrences of 7 is significantly high, perhaps representing a preference for a three-note descending figure in the minor mode. The number of 6s can be said with almost 95% confidence to be significantly low. Otherwise, the distribution represents very nearly the proportions found generally in the melodies.
Information theory suggests that 8 has less control over pitches that follow two notes later than it has over those immediately following. However, the chi-square test shows that the distribution is drastically less like the general distribution than is the consecutive-pair distribution. What appears random to information theory appears abnormal to the chi-square test since "randomness" should be biased in this situation toward the tendencies of overall proportions of the pitches, whereas information theory sees completely equal distribution as the base for comparison. Especially unusual are the high numbers of 10s and 8s. It seems that while scalar motion leads away from a starting pitch in many cases, it does not do so in the case of 8. The high number of 10s is probably due to the chromatic tendency of 8 to move to 9 and for 9 to move to 10. The chi-square test also indicates that the number of 1s is significantly high.
9 displays two strong tendencies in the nonconsecutive-pair chart: the number of 5s is significantly high and the number of 7s is significantly low. The first fact is probably a further instance of a preference for descending diatonic scales. The pitch class represented most often two notes after occurrences of 9 is 0. The number is higher than expected, but the chi-square test does not allow us to say with great confidence that the difference is significant. It may well represent, however, the product of the tendency of 9 to go to 11 and of 11 to go to 0.
Although 10 shows a strong tendency to move directly to 11 and 11 shows a strong tendency to move to 0, the three-note combination 10-11-0 does not seem to be common; the number of 0s two pitches after instances of 10 is actually lower than the number suggested by general probabilities. The only strong tendency displayed by 10 in this situation is to return to 10.
The distribution for 11 displays two strong tendencies. The number of 3s is significantly low, and the high number of 7s, the most common pitch in this situation, is significantly high. The second fact probably arises from the preference for descending diatonic scales.
In summary, pitches do not generally exhibit a tendency toward delay of their normal resolutions. That delayed resolutions occur is unquestioned; they are simply not significantly abundant. The greatest general tendency among diatonic pitches is toward descent by diatonic third. Chromatic pitches display more variety, although 6, 8, and 10 share a tendency to return two notes after they have sounded.
From observing the frequency distributions for consecutive pairs, one would expect an examination of intervals formed by consecutive pitches to reveal a high number of major and minor seconds and a low number of tritones. These two are indeed among the tendencies indicated by a tally of such intervals. (See table 9.)
Table 9. Frequencies of intervals formed by consecutive notes.
No. of half-steps
It will be seen that, in general, the smaller the interval, the higher the frequency. There are, on the other hand, several interesting exceptions to this general trend. For instance, the frequency of primes is actually lower than the frequency of any kind of step. Another interesting exception is that, while there are approximately the same total number of half-steps as whole-steps (342 vs. 324), there are significantly more descending whole-steps than half-steps and significantly more ascending half-steps than whole-steps. The consecutive-pair chart indicates that the reason for the high number of descending whole-steps is largely a result of the tendency of diatonic pitches 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11 to descend more often to diatonic pitches than to chromatic pitches. The chart also explains the high number of ascending half-steps as the result of a combination of the tendency for the leading tone to resolve up by half-step with the tendencies of chromatic pitches 3, 6, 8, and 10 to resolve up rather than down.
In both ascending and descending motion, leaps of three half-steps occur less often than motion by whole step, and leaps of four half-steps less often than leaps of three. However, in both directions, there are slightly more leaps of five half-steps than of four. As expected from the study of consecutive pairs, very few leaps of six half-steps in either direction occur. But the number of leaps of seven half-steps is still rather high. After this point, the numbers drop sharply again.
The tally, then, shows that the number of perfect fourths and perfect fifths is high considering the general situation, in which larger intervals occur less often. Although it is impossible to tell from Youngblood's chart the difference between ascending fourths and descending fifths, or between ascending fifths and descending fourths, or between these intervals and their octave equivalents, the chart does show a total of 112 fourths and fifths, 10.93% of the total intervals, while Prokofiev uses 218 fourths and fifths and their octave equivalents, 15.31% of the 1424 intervals used in these melodies.
The high use of fourths and fifths is well represented by the first melody in "Folk Dance." (See example 1.)
Example 1. Abundance of fourths and fifths in 151:1-152:1.
The use of these so-called open intervals lends a simple, elemental character to the music. Thus, whether used in the same way as in folk music or not, these intervals are able easily to invoke in the listener thoughts of folk music.
It is no surprise that the octave is the most numerous of the larger intervals, or that there are few intervals larger than an octave. These tendencies have been true of melodic style for generations. What is different from traditional style, however, is the greater number of large descending intervals compared to large ascending intervals.
In summary, the melodies of Romeo and Juliet, although based on diatonic scales, contain a high number of chromatic pitches. This high use of chromaticism is closely linked with a willingness on Prokofiev's part to follow, on occasion, any note with almost any other. On the other hand, most tones show strong tendencies toward particular resolutions, some traditional, some, especially in the case of chromatic pitches, new. Conjunct motion is preferred. A high incidence of fourths and fifths is observed, as well as a low incidence of tritones, two features not common to much other chromatic twentieth-century music.
The application of chi-square tests and Joseph Youngblood's information-theory techniques to the melodies of Romeo and Juliet points to enough obvious facts to demonstrate the validity of the methods. The assertion shown by the chi-square test that the Prokofiev melodies are significantly more chromatic than Schubert's, for instance, is just the result we would expect, as is the judgment from information theory that the entropy for Romeo and Juliet's major melodies is lower than that of all the melodies together. On the other hand, the tests reveal some less intuitive facts, showing the methods' usefulness: the tendency of 1 to precede 5, for instance, or the tendency of 10 to precede 11. While these kinds of melodic details form only one part of the complex system known as a style, they form a significant part, singled out by Meyer in his explanation of "embodied meaning." (See quotation by Meyer on the first page of this article.) In response to Meyer's implication in that quotation that style involves systems of probabilities for more than just the immediately forthcoming note, the present study seeks to extend Youngblood's method to pairs separated by one note, and with some success: the absence of inclination toward delay of note-to-note tendencies and particular findings such as the tendency of both 6 and 10 to return two notes later are surprising and thus significant.
What are we to make of these findings? As I mentioned earlier, any kind of note-counting technique should be taken only as a first step toward understanding. The work may be built upon in two ways. First, further studies could, by using this baseline, examine relationships between the style of these melodies and others. Just as the purpose of this study is to compare one style usually dubbed "tonal" with others by means of the baseline offered by Youngblood, the tendencies revealed here might be used as a frame of reference within which to examine melodies by other twentieth-century neotonal composers, or even other melodies by Prokofiev, thus perhaps revealing aspects of the development of his style. Second, an increased enjoyment of Romeo and Juliet should not be dismissed as an insignificant by-product of the study: the results of the statistical tests run here may be used as the basis for a more engaged hearing of the music. As Meyer points out, for a listener acquainted with a style, static probabilities become active expectations.
1Joseph E. Youngblood, "Style as Information," Journal of Music Theory 2 (April 1958): 24-35.
2Leonard B. Meyer, "Meaning in Music and Information Theory," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (June 1957): 412-424; reprinted as chapter 1 in Music the Arts and Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).
3Meyer, "Meaning in Music," 413.
6The source for these melodies and for the excerpt given as example 1 is Sergei Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, Piano Score (Melville, NY: Belwin Mills, n.d.). Locations in the score are identified using a measure number as counted from the appropriate rehearsal number. (100:5 refers to the fifth measure after rehearsal number 100.)
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Updated “Core Competencies” Document Now Available An updated version of AIHA’s Core Competencies for the Practice of Industrial/Occupational Hygiene is now available. The document, which was originally published in 2012, outlines the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities that an IH/OH working at different levels of practice should possess. The new version describes additional technical competencies, including emerging issues, fatigue management, and indoor air quality, as well as functional competencies such as "soft skills" that will contribute to the success of the industrial hygienist. Individuals can request a free digital copy via AIHA’s website.
New AIHA Webinar to Focus on Air Sampling On Tuesday, Nov. 6, the new AIHA webinar “Air Sampling Strategies and Analysis” will introduce a practical, systematic approach for selecting air-monitoring methods for a wide variety of workplace environments. Presenters from AIHA’s Sampling and Laboratory Analysis Committee will help participants develop a basic understanding of how OSHA methods, NIOSH methods, and others can be used to develop efficient, cost-effective sampling strategies. The two-hour webinar will also cover the basic differences between active and passive sampling, including the advantages and disadvantages of both types of media and when they can and cannot be used. Participants will also learn about the instruments used by industrial hygiene chemistry laboratories; the relationship between the properties of chemicals and the types of sampling media used to accurately measure their exposure; and the sampling requirements necessary to obtain a valid result from the laboratory, including blank samples, detection limits, sampling times, air volumes, and exposure limits. Presenter Mary Eide retired from OSHA Salt Lake Technical Center after working there for more than 30 years. Her experience includes analyzing samples on various instruments, working as a member of the Methods Development Team, and assisting OSHA field personnel in formulating sampling strategies for workplace contaminants. Co-presenter John Glowacki is an advanced chemist with the Wisconsin Occupational Health Lab at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene. Glowacki’s duties include method development, sample analysis, and customer consultation regarding analytical methodology and sample collection. Learn more or register for the webinar on AIHA’s website. Leadership Course Coming Up in November A new interactive road course offered by AIHA Education will focus on a variety of leadership skills and techniques. “Understanding Leadership from the Masters” will be held in Falls Church, Va., on Nov. 5, 2018, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. Presenter Carl Sall, CIH, CSP, will review leadership publications and discuss topics such as the role of power in leadership; time management techniques; the good, the bad, and the ugly of leadership; how to select key performance indicators to ensure success; and how to negotiate with and influence others. Sall is the director of health and safety at Louis Berger, a global professional services corporation in Exton, Pa. This course is intended to help participants employ successful leadership techniques, recognize techniques used to derail a leader, establish priorities, leverage goals and key performance indicators, communicate to senior leaders, and negotiate successfully. Individuals who attend this professional development course will have the opportunity to review the skills that current and historical leaders have employed on their roads to success. Attendees will also review and discuss the tactics and traits of successful leaders. Participants should have some leadership experience or desire to learn about leadership. More information about this course is available on AIHA’s website. 2019 Board of Directors Nominations
AIHA is seeking nominations for four Board of Directors positions that will be vacated in May 2019: vice president, treasurer-elect, and two at-large director positions. The deadline for nominations is Nov. 1, 2018. Electronic submission forms are available for all positions on AIHA's website. IAC Establishes Emerging Economy Projects Fund Later this month, the Micro-Grants Subcommittee of AIHA's International Affairs Committee will begin accepting applications for funding for international projects and training in developing countries. The IAC’s Emerging Economy Projects Fund was established to increase understanding and build capacity for occupational hygiene in developing economies around the world. Project proposals will be reviewed by the Micro-Grants Subcommittee, weighed against established criteria, and ranked by priority. The subcommittee will weigh available funds budgeted in the current fiscal year against those projects that show the most promise in achieving their stated goals. Final recommendations will be prepared and presented by the CEO to the AIHA Board of Directors for ultimate approval. Learn more on AIHA's website. Subscribe to SynergistNOW The SynergistNOW blog offers ideas, insights, and perspectives on important topics affecting industrial and occupational hygiene professionals, written by and for experienced IH/OHs, researchers, academics, and AIHA leaders. The blog is available to everyone with an interest in the IH and OEHS fields, but even AIHA members must subscribe. Visit SynergistNOW online.
Dates and Deadlines September 21–23
Future Leaders Institute in Washington, D.C. September 24–26 11th International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA) International Scientific Conference in Washington, D.C. September 24–28 Comprehensive Industrial Hygiene Review course in Ann Arbor, Mich. September 27–29 Product Stewardship 2018 in Washington, D.C. November 6 AIHA webinar: “Air Sampling Strategies and Analysis.” May 20–22, 2019 AIHce EXP 2019 in Minneapolis, Minn. For a complete list of events, visit AIHA's website.
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Mnuchin: Overall US Economy Not Harmed By Trade Battles
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
By Victor Caivano
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that the overall U.S. economy has not been harmed by the trade battles set off by President Donald Trump’s get-tough policies although some individual sectors have been hurt. He said the administration was exploring ways to help farmers and other specific industries that have been affected.
Mnuchin spoke to reporters on the sidelines of meetings of finance ministers and central bank presidents from the Group of 20 nations, composed of traditional economic powers such as the United States, Japan and Germany and emerging economic powers including China, Brazil, India and Argentina.
Mnuchin said that there had not been an adverse effect on overall growth from the tariffs but that certain industries were being harmed because other countries were retaliating by targeting specific industries.
“Certain countries have targeted very specific levels of things that are not coincidental,” Mnuchin told reporters. “So if you are looking at lobsters in Maine or you are looking at bourbon in Kentucky or you are looking at soybeans, there are clearly markets being followed.”
Mnuchin said that the administration would be “looking at different opportunities to help the farmers” and provide assistance to other sectors being “unfairly targeted” by tariffs from other nations.
“But I still think from a macro basis, we do not see yet any impact on what’s a very positive growth” performance for the U.S. economy this year, Mnuchin said.
At a briefing before the G-20 meetings began, U.S. Treasury officials told reporters that Mnuchin would be prepared to respond to concerns being raised by other countries about the Trump administration’s trade policies.
Also speaking in Buenos Aires at the G-20 summit, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the recent series of trade tariffs would significantly harm the global economy.
“In the worst case scenario under current measures” the impact on the global economy “is in the range of 0.5 percent” of gross domestic product on a global basis, Lagarde said.
The United States and China are now in a full-blown trade war with both nations imposing tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods with even bigger tariffs being threatened. Despite the standoff, U.S. officials said Mnuchin had no individual meetings scheduled with China during the G-20 meetings. Mnuchin did have about a dozen one-on-one sessions scheduled with other countries.
In a recent appearance before the House Financial Services Committee, Mnuchin said that the talks with China had broken down and indicated that the United States was waiting for China to come up with concessions to break the impasse.
The United States and China have hit each other with tariffs on $34 billion goods with another $16 billion in penalty tariffs in the pipeline. The Trump administration is preparing to impose tariffs on another $200 billion and Trump has threaten4ed to add $300 billion more to that figure.
On Saturday, the Treasury Secretary said the U.S. administration has been very clear that the objective is to have a more balanced trading relationship with China.
“We purchased about $500 billion of goods from them; they purchased about $130 billion of goods from us. We share a desire to have a more balanced relationship. And the balanced relationship is by us selling more goods,” Mnuchin said.
In addition to the sessions of the G-20, there will be an hour-long meeting among G-7 finance ministers and central bank officials. Treasury officials said part of this meeting would be to allow G-7 officials to discuss China’s unfair trade practices
AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger in Washington contributed to this story.
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Goa to have urban climate resilience policy
Panaji: Goa could become the first state to have a State Urban Climate Resilience Policy. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) that has been working with the Corporation of the City of Panaji for the past two years under the USAID-sponsored Climate Resilient Infrastructure Services has partnered with the Goa State Urban Development Agency to prepare a road map for the policy.
TERI has already prepared a first draft of the policy and submitted it to the GSUDA and the town and country planning department on Wednesday morning for consideration, also discussing it with departments of water resources, PWD, forest, GSPCB and GCZMA among others. TERI is fine-tuning the draft and hopes to have it ready to submit to the Goa cabinet by December.
The policy could become a guiding factor for other states to follow suit.
Although there’s much to be done, principal investigator of the programme and TERI fellow Divya Sharma says that it’s fortunate to work with GSUDA and have the government’s support for the policy right from the beginning.
“We worked very closely with the CCP for two years and the government is keen to prepare itself for climate change. There hasn’t been any decline in their interest level.”
Goa is expected to witness a sea level rise of one metre in the next 100 years. This rise together with extreme rainfall could flood coastal as well as inland Goa where areas like Patto, Ribanar, St Inez, Campal, Caranzalem are likely to get inundated or waterlogged.
Goa’s real estate has buried khazan lands under concrete. Altinho, which was one of the sponges of the city with springs at the bottom of the hill, is under pressure of development from construction on its slopes, a documentary by TERI and presented at the National Conference of Climate Resilient Coastal cities last year states.
St Inez nullah that absorbed the high tide of the River Mandovi is now polluted and choked. The worst impacted by the high tide are the low-lying slums of the city, the documentary further states.
Goa is not prone to cyclones like states on the east coast, but to precipitation and excessive rainfall, TERI fellow and team member, Ashwini Panandiker, said.
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Last night I went to Spielberg’s and Kushner’s Lincoln, after having been apprised of the historical and political limitations of the film. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed. The writing, acting, and direction were all splendidly done. Some moments were a bit schmaltzy, but not too much so. It was very restrained for a Steven Spielberg film. This film instilled in me a greater respect for Lincoln and for Thaddeus Stevens.
There has bee a lot of sniping at the film from some left-wing websites. It seems to me that what has provoked them is not so much the film itself, but the liberal politics of Kushner and Spielberg. In interviews, Kushner has compared Obama to Lincoln. Eve worse, he has taken a reactionary view of Reconstruction, claiming that
The inability to forgive and to reconcile with the South in a really decent and humane way, without any question, was one of the causes of the kind of resentment and perpetuation of alienation and bitterness that led to the quote-unquote ‘noble cause,’ and the rise of the Klan and Southern self-protection societies.
What’s interesting to me is that Kushner’s own screenplay contradicts his arguments. In it, Lincoln is not a cautious compromiser like Obama. In fact, he never really compromises at all. Instead, he uses various methods, some of them quite ruthless, to pass the 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery. The closest he ever comes to compromise is when he agrees to meet with a Confederate “peace” delegation, in order to get conservative Republicans to back the Amendment. Yet he delays meeting with the delegates, fearing that if the war ends, Congress won’t pass the Amendment. When he finally does meet with them, after the Amendment has been ratified, he finds that they are unrepentant slave-owners who want to preserve slavery. “Slavery is done,” he tells them, ending the negotiations.
I don’t know how Kushner came to his views on Reconstruction, but his idea that Obama is somehow like Lincoln is common among liberals. Obama has done nothing to earn this comparison, just as he did nothing to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. The only thing he has in common with Lincoln is that both men are hated by Southern racists. When I lived in Eugene, Oregon; there was a restaurant there that had on one of its wall a drawing of Obama with a stovepipe hat and a Lincolnesque beard. The image was so large that it was almost impossible to ignore it. There is something about this sort of thing that is almost akin to the worship of the Kim family in North Korea. All right, that may be going a little far, but you have to admit that there is the same desire for a hero in each.
One of the things I liked about this film is its sympathetic portrayal of Thaddeus Stevens (brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones). Perhaps this film will reawaken an interest in Stevens. In addition to his opposition to slavery, this was a man who championed the rights of women, of Native Americans, of Chinese immigrants, and of Jews. He was a seminal figure in the forgotten history of American radicalism.
Posted in Cinema, Civil War, Obama, Racism | Leave a Comment »
More Thoughts on Black Friday
Black Friday has come and gone, and what everyone expected to happen happened. There were near riots at Wal-Marts across the country, as people scrambled for limited amounts of discounted items. However, nobody was killed this year (although two people were shot), so perhaps that’s progress of sorts. No doubt the executives at Wal-Mart and other department store chains were happy with this. They got to watch poor people scramble for a few crumbs. I’m sure they found this highly entertaining. These are the sort of people rail against government programs and “entitlements”, while relying on food stamps to keep their workers from starving.
Black Friday videos have been posted all over the Internet. One can only wonder what impression this gives people in foreign countries about Americans. Republicans claim to be concerned about the U.S.’s image around the world, yet they are silent about Black Friday. Nor has the Obama Administration complained about it. As I’ve said before, the only people who have tried to do anything about this
According to PRWEB, Black Friday doesn’t even offer the best deals. According to them:
Data from Decide.com over the last two years reveals that Black Friday is not the best time to purchase most items. Nine of the 11 major consumer product categories averaged a lower price leading up to Black Friday, the week after Black Friday or the week before the Christmas holiday. Overall, shoppers save a substantial amount of money on popular products by skipping Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
So the whole thing is just a scam. Welcome to capitalism in the twenty-first century.
Posted in Capitalism, Holidays, Wal-Mart | Leave a Comment »
It’s perhaps an indication of how corrupt our society has become that giant retail store chains are being allowed to effectively destroy a national holiday. Black Friday used to start at 9 AM on the Friday following Thanksgiving. Then they moved it up to 6 AM and then 5 AM. Last year it started at 10 PM on Thanksgiving evening. This year it’s going to start at 8PM on Thanksgiving. Black Friday is like the giant chicken heart in that famous radio play by Arch Oboler: it just keeps growing and growing until it starts crushing everything around it.
The only resistance that’s being offered to this hypertrophying monstrosity comes from the workers at Wal-Mart. They are rightly angry that their holiday has been taken away from them. Retail workers get paid low wages, and they usually get little or no benefits. Now they don’t even get Thanksgiving.
I suspect that one reason that this has been allowed to happen is that Thanksgiving isn’t as important to people as it once was. The purpose of Thanksgiving, we are told, is so we can give thanks for what we have. Since wages have been declining for decades, and millions of Americans are currently without jobs, it has become increasingly unclear to people what it is that they are supposed to be grateful for.
Nevertheless, we should support the Wal-Mart workers. And we should support all retail workers by sitting out this Black Friday madness.
Posted in Capitalism, Holidays, Labor Unions | Leave a Comment »
I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder.
– Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog’s 1970 film, Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen). This film was shot with a cast consisting entirely of dwarfs. According to Herzog, he did this to show that “the world is created in a way that is not theirs”. The objects around them are designed for full-sized people. In one scene, for example, Hombre (Helmut Döring) tries unsuccessfully to climb onto a bed. “The dwarves in the film are not freaks,” Herzog says; rather, “[they are] well proportioned, charming, and beautiful people.” It is the world around them that is freakish. The film is a critique of our consumer culture. The characters are surrounded by over-sized chairs, motorcycles, cars, and other objects that they can’t really use. When this film was released, it was banned in Germany for being “anarchistic and blasphemous”. Some claimed the film was meant to ridicule the student movement of that time. Herzog certainly was not sympathetic to the movement. He once said:
Contrary to most of my peers, I had already been much further out into the world. I had traveled, I had made films, I had already taken on responsibilities that very few people my age had. For me, this very rudimentary analysis that Germany was a fascist and repressive prison state, which had to be overpowered by a socialist utopian revolution, seemed quite wrong. I knew the revolution would not succeed because it was rooted in such an inadequate analysis of what was really going on, so I did not participate.
The characters in this film certainly don’t have any analysis of their situation. They seem to act purely on impulse, which eventually becomes a form of nihilism.
The film is set in an institution whose purpose is never made clear. One day the inmates rise up and take over the place. The director (Paul Glauer) is holed up in his office. He has taken one of the inmates, Pepe (Gerd Gickel), hostage. The inmates amuse themselves by playing games, which are fairly innocent at first, but which gradually become destructive. They kill a pig, pull down a palm tree and set fire to flowers. They torment two blind inmates. In a scene that is clearly meant to be sacrilegious, they “crucify” a monkey by tying him to a cross, which they then parade around the yard. (No doubt it was this scene that got the film banned in Germany.) The director eventually goes mad and runs away. In the last scene, we see Hombre laughing stupidly while a camel kneels in front of him and defecates.
This film is disturbing to watch, yet there are moments that are actually funny in a dark sort of way. Herzog has alternately called this film “darkest of comedies you can imagine” and “a very profound…collective nightmare”. In Herzog’s comedy and horror are never far apart. There are even funny moments in Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Violence and megalomania are appalling and yet grotesquely humorous.
During the filming of Even Dwarfs Started Small, one of the actors suffered a mild injury. Herzog promised the cast that if they made it through the rest of the filming without any more injuries, he would jump into a large cactus plant. He later kept his promise. Incidents such as this have made Herzog an almost mythical figure in contemporary cinema. The 2004 mockumentary, Incident at Loch Ness seeks to exploit this. It is purportedly a documentary about Herzog making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. Although it has amusing moments, it feels a bit familiar. It’s only been twenty-eight years since the making of This is Spinal Tap, yet already the mockumentary is becoming cliché. How about a mockumentary about the making of a mockumentary?
Posted in 1960's, Cinema, Germany | Leave a Comment »
The War in Gaza
I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.
– Moshe Dayan
Those who support Barack Obama should ask themselves what he has done about the current war in Gaza that Romney would not have done. The Obama Administration has endorsed this act of sheer insanity by the Israeli government. According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, the Hamas Leader, Jabari, had been working on a ceasefire with Israel when he was asassinated. Clearly, the Israeli government does not want peace. And since Obama has endorsed this, he clearly does not want peace either. We are in the age of endless war. We have drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The Obama Administration is angling to find some way to keep at least some troops in Afghanistan after 2014. It gives the government officials an excuse to give money to their friends in the defense industry while cutting social spending. It gives them an excuse to spy on their own citizens and to meddle in other country’s affairs.
Randolph Bourne once said, “War is the health of the state.” For Israel, and increasingly for the U.S., it is becoming the state’s whole raison d’etre.
Posted in Afghanistan, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen | 2 Comments »
The Fall of General Petraeus
Gen. David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a really good sex scandal in Washington, so the one involving Gen. Petraeus comes as a welcome relief after a truly dreary presidential election. Petraeus is accused of having had an affair with his “biographer”, Paula Broadwell. She is the reputed author of an admiring book about Petraeus with the perhaps unfortunate title of All In. (It has also come out that this book was at least partly ghost-written.)
There is more than a little moral hypocrisy in all this. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is chair of the Democratic National Committee, has said: “Disturbing is the word that has come to my mind since all of this has come to light. Really, I think it goes without saying if you’re the director of the CIA, if you are a four-star general in the United States army, that you have to hold yourself to a higher standard. And you can’t put yourself in a compromising position.” Yes, a man who authorizes torture and drone strikes can’t sully himself with extra-marital sex. Schultz, by the way, helped organize last summer’s Democratic convention, at which one of the featured speakers was former president Bill Clinton, who coaxed a White House intern into giving him blow jobs.
It all started when Jill Kelley, a friend of Petraeus’s family, told an FBI agent, with whom she was apparently involved in some way, that she had been receiving harassing e-mails from Broadwell. Even though the FBI normally doesn’t investigate this sort of thing, those intrepid G-Men went to work, eventually examining 20,000 pages of e-mails. (I’m not making this up.) Not only did they discover Broadwell’s affair with Petraeus, but they also discovered that Kelly was having an affair with Gen. David Allen, Petraeus’s successor in the Afghanistan command.
Kelley is an interesting person in her own right. According to the Los Angles Times: “…she has angered some senior officers for what were described as persistent efforts by her to forge close personal ties to successive Central Command four-star officers by deluging them with emails, a former Central Command aide said.” Could there be such a thing as a military groupie? There must be something about a man who bombs villages in Afghanistan.
Some will cite this affair as evidence that the American empire is in decline. This is nonsense. There is, for example, good reason to believe that Eisenhower had an affair with his female chauffeur during World War II. And at one point in his career, MacArthur was demoted when it was discovered that he had a mistress.
The FBI agent who started the investigation – who has so far only been identified as Agent Shirtless – is said to have a “worldview” that is “hostile” to Obama. I think we can guess what that probably means.
Those who live by the media, die by it. When the Iraq war wasn’t going well, the government and the media decided that they needed a hero to distract people. Petraeus, who wears more medals than a Soviet-era bureaucrat, seemed a logical choice. He was given credit for a non-existent victory in Iraq, to hide the fact that Bush had actually cut a deal with Sunni militia groups. Now Petraeus has been undone by one of those who worked hardest create his myth. Shakespeare would have relished this.
Posted in Afghanistan, Imperialism, Iraq, Media, War on Terror | Leave a Comment »
Fritz Lang made three films about the super villain, Dr. Mabuse. This character was clearly inspired by Conan Doyle’s Dr. Moriarty, as well as by Allain and Souvestre’s Fantômas. Like these two, Mabuse heads a criminal gang that carries out daring and elaborately planned crimes. (And, like Moriarty, Mabuse is a scientist.) Like Dr. Caligari, he is an expert hypnotist. Mabuse, however, has the added twist that he has the ability to perform telepathic hypnosis, making people do things against their will, sometimes simply by looking at them, even when they have their back turned on him. The character of Mabuse was created by the novelist, Nobert Jaques, but he is best remembered for the Fritz Lang films in which he appears.
The four-hour Dr. Mabuse the Gambler was released in 1922 in two parts. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) uses his hypnotic abilities to swindle wealthy men at card games. With the riches he makes, Mabuse plans to make himself the most powerful man in the world. His activities arouse the suspicions of the courageous, but not overly bright, State Prosecutor Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke). The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they eventually catch up with Mabuse. At the end of the film he goes mad, and the police take him away to an asylum.
In The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), the good doctor has been treated at the asylum by Prof. Baum (Oscar Beregi, Sr.). Through a special form of hypnosis, Mabuse begins to control Baum’s mind. Baum then forms his own criminal gang. He identifies himself to his henchmen, who are not allowed to see him, as “Dr. Mabuse”. After Mabuse dies, he seems to completely takeover Baum. Whereas, in the first film, Mabuse’s aims were pecuniary, Baum/Mabuse shows no interest in making money. His crimes are committed merely for their own sake. This time he is opposed by Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), who is a little sharper than State Prosecutor Wenk. Lohmann foils Baum/Mabuse’s plan to release a cloud of poison gas over Berlin. At the end of the film, Baum/Mabuse voluntarily commits himself to his own asylum.
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) was the last film that Lang made, before he retired due to failing eyesight. At the beginning, we are told that Mabuse died in 1932, yet a criminal named Mabuse is now operating in Berlin with a new gang. It seems that the spirit of Mabuse lives on and has occupied another body. (I won’t say the name of the actor who plays him, since part of the suspense of the film is that it is unclear which character is actually Mabuse, although the cover of the DVD that I have effectively gives it away.) Mabuse controls the Luxor Hotel in Berlin. There are cameras installed in every room, which he uses to acquire information he can use for crimes. He has set an elaborate trap for Henry Travers (Peter van Eyck), an American industrialist. His aim is to take over Travers’s company so he can build a stockpile of nuclear weapons with which to take over the world. (Yes, that’s right, the hero of this film, Travers, is a nuclear arms manufacturer. That was the Cold War for you.)
It has often been argued that Dr.Mabuse the Gambler anticipates Hitler. At times, Mabuse does express a megalomania that is strikingly similar to Hitler’s. It seems to me that a more plausible explanation is that Mabuse represents a type of cynicism that was common in Europe (and particularly in Germany) following the horrors of the First World War. Hitler’s Weltanschauung happened to be an extreme form of this cynicism.
Mabuse can also be viewed as a Nietzschean, particularly in his attitude towards women. At one point he cruelly tells his lover that there is no such thing as love, only desire. Lang’s biographer, Patrick McGilligan, claims that this was Lang’s own view, even though the screenplay was actually written by Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou. This raises serious questions in my mind about the reliability of McGilligan’s biography.
In The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Baum/Mabuse speaks of creating an “empire of crime”. This reportedly prompted Goebbels to ban the film, because he feared that people would see it as a criticism of the Nazis. (It didn’t have its German premiere until 1961.) This makes me wonder: did Hitler, Goebbels, and other Nazis see themselves as creating an “empire of crime”? If so, what does this tell us about the historical conditions that created the Nazis?
In hindsight, there is something eerie about the fact that Mabuse tries to use poison gas as a weapon of mass murder. This is no doubt a coincidence, but one can’t help noting it.
In The 1000 Eyes of Mabuse, made after the Second World War, Lang makes an explicit connection between Mabuse and the Nazis. We are told that the Luxor Hotel was used by the Gestapo, and Mabuse employs secret rooms and cameras that they used. No doubt this idea came to Lang in response to the enormity of what had happened. It makes this film an unsettling diminuendo to what is perhaps the greatest film trilogy ever made.
Posted in Cinema, Cold War, Fascism, Film Noir, Fritz Lang, Germany, Hitler, Literature, Nazism, Popular Culture, Science Fiction, Surrealism, World War II | Leave a Comment »
Prep School Bully Gets a Wedgie
I’m glad that Mitt Romney lost, partly for reasons I discussed in a previous post, and partly because I won’t have to spend the next four years looking at his smug, arrogant face. I also like the fact that this is a thumb in the eye to Rupert Murdoch, whose propaganda machine did everything in its power to prevent Obama’s re-election. Since Obama has been good to Murdoch’s Wall Street friends, one can only suppose that race is the reason for Murdoch’s antipathy. The same goes for the Koch brothers and their Tea Party zombies.
Romney was arguably the most feckless presidential nominee since Barry Goldwater. Try as he might, he could hide that fact that his worldview is essentially that of a prep school bully. One striking giveaway was his comments about the London Olympics. The man just brims over with sneering condescension towards other people, particularly foreigners. Mind you, the reason Romney was nominated was because the other candidates were considered to be even more inept. At this point, one must whether the Republican Party has any future. It seems to be kept on life support by Fox News.
This election indicates that the U.S. is becoming more socially liberal. Marijuana was legalized in Washington and Colorado. Same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington, Maine, and Maryland. Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn’t seem to be becoming more progressive on economic and foreign policy issues. We still a lot of work to do.
Posted in Democrats, Fox News, Marijuana, Mitt Romney, Obama, Republicans | Leave a Comment »
Gilad Atzmon, Peter Jenkins, and the “Just War”
Dissident Voice, which posts articles by Israel Shamir and Andre Fomine, continues to lower its bar by posting an article by Gilad Atzmon. Entitled Ex-British Envoy Told the Truth (for a change), the article begins:
Peter Jenkins, Britain’s former representative on the International Atomic Energy Agency, has told the debating union at Warwick University that a “just war” is not a Jewish notion. Jenkins was obviously telling the truth but the Zionist Jewish Chronicle is not happy.
The retired Foreign Office diplomat, speaking in a debate on nuclear proliferation in Iran, said: “Israelis don’t practise an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, they practise ten eyes for an eye and ten teeth for a tooth.” He also added that “the idea that a just war requires the use of force to be proportionate seems to be a Christian notion and not a Jewish notion.”
So, does Jenkins believe that the Crusades, in which many Jews and Muslims were killed, were a “proportionate use of force” in response to the peaceful Muslim occupation of the Holy Land? Or how about the invasion and conquest of Mexico, done in the name of spreading Christianity? Was it a “proportionate use of force” in response to the mere existence of the Mexican people?
Jenkins’s argument is obviously nonsense – so, of course, Atzmon fully approves of it. Responding to criticism of Jenkins, he writes:
Yet, I am slightly perplexed, why is telling the truth about Jewish culture anti-Semitic? Is not the Old Testament far more violent than any Quentin Tarantino film?
I can think of many things that are far more violent than a Quentin Tarantino film. Here are just a few: the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Mabinogion, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (I’m not kidding about the last. You should read them in the original German, or in a faithful translation.) The authors of the Old Testament certainly weren’t the only people who like to write about violence.
A little later, Atzmon comments:
I would obviously argue that it is our intellectual duty to call a spade a spade and to criticise Jewish politics and Jewish culture for what they are.
What exactly does Atzmon mean by “Jewish politics”? Noam Chomsky? Norman Finkelstein? Alan Dershowitz? Joseph Lieberman? Binyamin Netanyahu? Amy Goodman? Your guess is as good as mine. Atzmon doesn’t seem aware that the term “Jewish politics” embraces quite a large spectrum of personalities, ranging from Karl Marx to Ayn Rand.
In response to one critic of Jenkins, Atzmon writes:
Mr Sacerdoti is obviously a Hasbara spin master. He mentions that “this particular view, that Jews do not adhere to the concept of ‘just war’ implies that Jews are by nature bloodthirsty and unjust. I believe any such generalisation about the nature of Jews is racist.” But here is a slight problem, Mr Jenkins didn’t speak about Jews, the people, the ethnicity or the race, he was clearly referring to “Israel”, i.e., The Jewish State and to Jewish culture.
You see, Jenkins wasn’t referring to the Jews; he was actually referring to Jews. (“The Jewish State and Jewish culture” pretty much includes all Jews, does it not?)
Atzmon ends:
The truth better be said. Mr Jenkins told the truth and actually used a moderate and careful language. I wish the BBC and The Guardian were as courageous as Mr Jenkins. I also do not think Zionist organisations should be the ones who moderate the critical discourse of the Jewish State and Jewish culture.
And, clearly, Atzmon shouldn’t be moderating that discourse either.
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Christianity, Dissident Voice, Fake Anti-Imperialism, Israel, Israel Shamir, Judaism, Literature, Middle East, Religion | Leave a Comment »
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Coachella Band Preview: Empire of the Sun
The first weekend of Coachella is 3 weeks away. Yes three weeks is what separates us from the hot sunny Indio Desert, the greens of the Empire Polo Fields swarming with festival-goers, palm trees swaying to the cool breeze and rad tunes, epic sunsets over the mountains, and the sweet sounds of music from incredible artists entering our ears. I only have a few band previews left before the annual festival begins and time is of the essence so I better get to it.
Empire of the Sun is an electronic/alternative rock band from Sydney, Australia. The band formed in 2007 as a collaboration between Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore. Both had worked together on music for each other’s bands before forming Empire of the Sun. Those bands each performed different styles of music. Steele brought the alternative rock genre to their new band and Littlemore brought the electronic dance music. Their first album, Walking on a Dream, was released in 2008 with the first single of the same name debuting about a month before the album’s release. Both the single and album were charted in the top ten of the ARIA charts. Although their only intention was to create a studio album, they decided to do live performances in response to the album’s success. However the live shows did not include Littlemore, who decided to opt out of touring early on. By the end of 2009, the band received 7 ARIA Awards for the album including Album of the Year.
2010 was the year the band embarked on the festival circuit playing Glastonbury and Lollapalooza for the first time and by the end of the year Littlemore and Steele discussed creating a new album for the band. Production on the album began in 2011 and Littlemore stated he would go out and tour in support of this one. 2011 also involved a North American tour for the band, which included a stop at Coachella.
The duo released their second album, Ice on the Dune, in June 2013. The new album brought more touring throughout 2013 and into 2014. The band made their second stop at Coachella in 2014 and headlined the Sahara Tent. Their music was also featured in the film Dumb and Dumber To, which came out in late 2014.
The band continued to tour into 2015 while simultaneously working on their third album. Their third and latest album was just released this past October. 2016 also marked the first time that the band broke on to the Billboard charts. It was their 2008 hit “Walking on a Dream” that earned the band the number 3 spot on the Alternative Music charts after it was used in a U.S. Honda commercial in early 2016.
Their music, as I said, is a combination of alternative rock and electronic music. It can’t be described much better than that, although some may say the band fits genres like synthpop or glam rock. I feel like their sound has stayed consistent over the course of three albums so if you love the song “Walking on a Dream” or only know music from that album, you’re bound to dig some of their more recent stuff.
I discovered Empire of the Sun in 2011. There’s no significant story of how so I’m guessing it was through a recommendation from Youtube or Pandora because I listened to similar music on either channel. Of course the first song I heard was “Walking on a Dream”. Throughout the past few years I’ve heard their other stuff here and there and I’ve liked it. I’ve also heard the song “Walking on a Dream” multiple times in various circumstances throughout the same time period. It’s no surprise it’s their biggest hit. I never got into them as a band though. Nor have I been dying to see them live, but I’ll tell you why I would definitely check them out at Coachella.
Music festivals give you an opportunity to see bands live who you might like but not like enough to buy a ticket for a touring show making Coachella the perfect time for someone like me to check them out. Empire of the Sun does some pretty cool live performances too. The performances are as much of a visual art as they are a musical art. They wear elaborate costumes, have dancers or other performers, and display mesmerizing visuals often seen as part of electronic shows. They play Friday at Coachella. They’ve already headlined the Sahara Tent at the festival once before so that might happen again. As long as their set doesn’t overlap with some other great performers, it’ll definitely be a spectacle worth seeing. Here’s a few songs to know if you go:
Walking on a Dream
High and Low
Standing on the Shore
Two Vines
Concert Pitch
To Her Door
Posted in Music, Uncategorized and tagged 2009 ARIA Awards, alterantive rock music, alternative electronic rock, alternative electronic rock music, alternative rock, ARIA Awards, ARIA Awards 2009, ARIA Charts, Australia, Australia electronic music, Australian bands, Billboard, Billboard Alternative Charts 2016, Billboard charts, Coachella, Coachella 2017, coachella bands, coachella festival, coachella preview, Coachella Stage, Coachella Valley, Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival, coachella valley arts and music festival, coachella valley arts and music festival 2017, dance music, Dumb and Dumber To, EDM, electronic, electronic alternative rock, electronic alternative rock music, electronic dance music, electronic music, electronic rock, electronic rock music, Empire of the Sun, Empire Polo Club, Empire Polo Fields, festival, festivals, glam rock, glam rock music, glastonbury, Gobi Tent, Ice on the Dune, indie music, indio, indio california, indio desert, Lollapalooza, Luke Steele, Main Stage, Mojave Tent, Music, music festival, music festivals, Nick Littlemore, Outdoor Stage, palm trees, Pandora, rock, Sahara Tent, Sydney Australia, synthpop, synthpop music, Walking on a Dream, youtube on March 23, 2017 by prostreetcross. Leave a comment
Coachella Survival Tips
As you know, Coachella begins this weekend. As you also know (if you’ve followed my blog), I attended Coachella last year for the first time. Sure this doesn’t make me a Coachella veteran at all. In fact, I didn’t even camp out like many festival-goers who attend the annual event in the Indio desert. All that aside, I still feel like I can offer some tips for first timers attending the festival and staying at hotel nearby (sorry campers!) based on my experience.
1. Figure out which bands are must-see acts once the schedule gets released. Every year Coachella releases the lineup schedule a few days prior to Weekend 1 of the festival. Good news for you, it was released earlier today. Check out the times of the bands you want to see and note them in your phone or on the Coachella app, which I believe has a feature you can use to keep track of your favorite acts. Also make note of the stages (and locate the stages!). Sometimes bands may be playing on stages close enough together that you can catch half of one set then half of another set. Many times you’ll find that two of the bands/acts you want to see are playing at the same time, especially if the day is stacked with your favorite talent (Sia vs. The Chainsmokers on Sunday night). If that’s the case you’ve gotta make a choice, or like I said maybe you can do the half and half thing. If your favorite acts aren’t coming on until later in the day, sleep in and head to the festival later too. Last year on both Saturday and Sunday we went to the festival a few hours later than when gates opened because the acts we wanted to see weren’t coming on til late afternoon. After exploring the festival in full on Friday, it got boring waiting around til whatever time the next band we wanted to see came on. We adjusted accordingly for the next two days. Always allow yourself enough time to arrive though because sometimes security gets increased and it takes longer to enter the festival grounds.
2. Get merch the first day. If you want a t-shirt, poster, or other special merch from the festival, don’t wait around til Sunday to hit up the merch stand. They will run out of your size and you’ll have way less options. Last year we hit up the merch stand immediately after we walked in on Friday (along with the Ferris Wheel, which is another good thing to do the first day, if you plan on riding). We were able to get the Coachella t-shirts we wanted and I was able to get Coachella socks from the artsy-ish building next to the merch stand. On Sunday, I decided I was going to get my uncle a t-shirt for buying me dinner the night before we flew out for the festival. Many of the tees I liked for him were unavailable in his size, so I settled for what was left. If you’re wondering, yes the line is long on Friday. It may take a little while and you may get hot and sweaty from being in the crowded line, but it will all be worth it when you have solid proof of your Coachella attendance.
3. Eat a big meal before you come to the festival. There’s both advantages and disadvantages to this. Sure at some point you’re going to get hungry while you’re at the festival. There really are so many delicious options to choose from, but lines can be long and the food is expensive, like $10 for a personal pizza expensive. Last year we went out to eat each day before the festival. It helped save money and time. The disadvantage: you don’t get to sample all the cool, creative vendors Coachella has to offer, unless of course, you want to over stuff yourself. By going out to eat before getting to the festival, we were filled for most of the day. Then, later on, we got something if we felt hungry. In this way, we only dealt with the long lines and expensive food once a day or so.
4. Stay hydrated. Coachella is in the desert. It’s hot in the desert. During the day temps can be in the 90’s to over 100 degrees. It’s important to drink plenty of fluids at the festival even if you don’t feel thirsty. By fluids, I don’t just mean alcohol either, but its even more important to stay hydrated if you’re choosing to drink, especially in the day. You don’t wanna pass out or end up in a hospital. Water at Coachella is cheap. It’s $2 per bottle. There’s also water stations where you can refill your bottle. Pro tip: The water in the refilling stations is extremely warm, so I only recommend this if you’re broke or desperate. One cool thing I discovered last year is that they sold fresh fruit waters at the festival. There was pineapple and watermelon water. These waters are awesome. Buy one if you feel like splurging a little on hydration. The benefit to these waters though is that when you finish the water you have a cup of ice left so you can easily refill your cup from a station and not have piss warm water. By doing this you’ll get your money’s worth and necessary hydration.
5. Wear sunscreen. Besides the fact that it gets super hot in the desert. It’s also clear and sunny about 97% of the time (this is a made up number, but it seems accurate) in Southern California, especially in the desert. Those rays are strong. Sunscreen is a necessity if you don’t want to turn into a tomato or end up in a lot of pain anytime someone touches or bumps into you. Apply daily before you hit up the festival. I also believe you’re allowed to bring sunscreen into the grounds, but apply before regardless. You may forget about sunscreen once you arrive with all the distractions the festival has to offer.
6. Bring a sweatshirt/jacket. For as hot as it is in the day time, it can get about 30 degrees cooler each night. Before my first day at the festival last year, I decided to bring a backpack with a sweatshirt inside for night time. I wore a tank top and shorts. I didn’t believe I would need the sweatshirt at night because even with the temp dropping 30 degrees it would still be in the mid to upper 60’s. I figured I could handle that at night. Wrong. 60’s in the desert with a breeze each night is freezing, especially when your body is adjusting from a hot 90 degree day. If I was watching a set in a giant crowd it was less chilly, but standing in an open space in front of the main stage….brrrrr. Even standing in crowds I was slightly chilled and wore my sweatshirt. Some people even bring pants to wear at night. You know how well your body handles different temps though. Prep for what you need, but like I said, bring a covering of some sort for later.
7. Charge your phone each night. You know it and I know it. You’re going to use your phone a lot at Coachella. Whether it’s to check set times, take selfies with friends or pics of the art installations and festival scenes, post to social media, or send out texts and snapchats, your phone will get a lot of use. Many people bring their phone cords to recharge at the festival. As I found out last year though, those recharging stations don’t always work. You can always bring a portable recharger (which you’ll have to charge), or you can try to conserve battery when you’re not using your phone. Pro tip: Put your phone in airplane mode (I did this several times last year). I’ve also noticed that newer iPhones have a feature called Low Power Mode that you can turn on. There’s plenty of ways to keep your battery charged when you’re not on your phone at the festival. To be safe though, charge it every night. Start with 100% battery power each day and hopefully you make it through the day before you return to your nightly accommodations.
8. Find a meeting spot. I read this several times when I was prepping for my first Coachella. With the amount of people in such a small space at Coachella the cell service can be poor. If you lose your group of friends or plan to separate, it’s good to have a meeting spot. I actually believed I lost my cousin for a brief time last year on the last night of the festival during Florence and the Machine’s set. I wanted to be close for the set. Her back was sore so she wanted to sit further back and relax. We decided we would meet to the right of the last sound tower after the set was over. I had some issues with getting close. The set was more crowded than I anticipated and I wasn’t having fun. I decided to walk back and sit with my cousin but she wasn’t at our meeting spot. My cell service was spotty at that time due to the large amount of people at the set (people were arriving for Drake afterwards too). I couldn’t reach her. I had no idea where she went. Fortunately we found each other before the set was over because a few of my messages finally sent. After that experience, I understood the need for a meeting spot.
9. Take the shuttle. Since I’m writing this post for people who aren’t camping, I recommend you take a shuttle to the festival each day. Taking a shuttle is less of a hassle than driving. Last year we had a travel package that included rooms, wristbands, and shuttle passes. If you don’t have a packaged deal and are staying at a hotel, I recommend buying a shuttle pass. The shuttles take you directly to the festival and directly back. There’s different shuttle lines to different hotels. You don’t have to worry about parking, finding your car, getting too drunk, or even just keeping track of your car keys. Each day it took about an hour to arrive by shuttle from the moment we decided to leave our room until we were inside the festival gates. Of course travel time depends on where your hotel is relative to the festival. Ours was about 13 miles away. We never had to wait in a huge line for a shuttle either. Maybe that was because we arrived and left at non-peak moments. If you’re staying at a rented house, a hotel that’s not part of a direct shuttle line, an AirBnB, or some other type of nearby accommodation, find the closest shuttle line and walk or drive to it. Sure the driving part might defeat the purpose a bit, but you still won’t have to drive as far, worry about parking or finding your car, and you’ll have a bit of time to sober up on your ride back. A shuttle is the way to go.
10. Arrive early to get a good spot at a set. If you have a favorite band or artist you want to see up close, arrive to the set early to work your way to the front. Actually, arrive a set or two before your favorite act comes on that way when people leave the earlier set(s) you can work your way up as people in front of you disperse. No one likes a person who tries to push to the front at the last minute. You don’t want to be that person. Plus majority of attendees aren’t fortunate enough to have a V.I.P. pass that gives you access to special V.I.P. viewing areas at most stages. You have to get a good spot the old fashioned way. Arrive early and move up. If you’re desperate to try to see a headliner up close, come 2-3 sets early. I realize this isn’t always possible because there’s other bands you want to see. Just do your best and make sacrifices if you have to. Trust me when I say, even if you’re in the back and you can barely see the artist on stage, you’ll be able to hear the music, you’ll know if there’s any surprise appearances, and most importantly, you’re at fucking Coachella! There’s so many people who would love to be in your spot. Just soak in the atmosphere, the moment, and all the good vibes. Sing out loud. Dance your heart out. Be kind to others. Make new friends. Be young. Be wild. Be free. And have fun! Coachella is one of the best and most well-known music festivals in the world, so enjoy every second.
And with that last tip, that’s all I have to offer for Coachella 2016. Let’s get this year’s party started! Until next year…
Happy Coachella!
Posted in Music, Uncategorized and tagged cali, california, california music festivals, Coachella, Coachella 2016, Coachella app, Coachella experience, coachella festival, Coachella festival guide, Coachella festival survival guide, Coachella festival survival tips, Coachella festival tips, Coachella Guide, Coachella Survival Guide, Coachella Survival Tips, Coachella Tips, Coachella Valley, Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival, coachella valley arts and music festival, coachella valley arts and music festival 2016, Coachella Weekend 1, Coachella Weekend 2, desert, desert breeze, food, hotel, hydration, indio, indio california, indio desert, merch, Music, music festival, music festival survival tips, music festival tips, music festivals, palm desert, Palm Springs, palm trees, phone charger, shuttle, so cal, southern california, sun tan lotion, sunny, sunscreen, survival tips, surviving coachella, travel packages, warm, Weekend 1, Weekend 2 on April 13, 2016 by prostreetcross. Leave a comment
It’s with great pride and pleasure that I can now say I’ve lost my Coachella virginity. As you know, if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, I was beyond stoked to go to the epic three day festival in Indio, CA. Now that I’ve been there though, it’s difficult to put into words just how special it is. The atmosphere is filled with the best vibes imaginable. It’s incredibly relaxed (possibly due to all the pot smoking). People are in good moods (mostly…I ran into a girl who seemed a little angry the last day before the Florence and the Machine set when I put my hand on the bar she was going to lean on). The bands and artists bring their best performances because they’re just as excited to be there as everyone else. The artwork is innovative. The food, although overpriced, is delicious and there are plenty of options to choose from. The setting makes it though. It’s so beautiful. Palm trees line the polo fields with vast mountains in the background as the signature ferris wheel from the California State Fair rotates giving riders the ultimate view of the festival. It’s incredible and it’s difficult to appreciate when you’re there since you want to catch as much music as possible. That’s really the most important thing about Coachella. It’s about the music. Without it, Coachella wouldn’t exist. Everything else is extra. Fortunately I only experienced a few conflicts but I made it work so that I was able to catch at least part of, if not all of the sets I wanted to see.
On Friday, I planned to see Angus & Julia Stone, Alabama Shakes, Tame Impala, and AC/DC. My cousin (she attended with me) and I got to the festival early the first day to do a bit of exploring before the Angus & Julia Stone set in the late afternoon. We rode the ferris wheel, got some merch, checked out the stages, saw the artwork, and relaxed in the field before the set. Angus & Julia Stone play mellow indie music so the set was very laid back. A lot of people were sitting and relaxing while they listened. We were too.
Alabama Shakes hit the Outdoor Stage just as the sun was setting. Brittany Howard brought the house down with her powerful vocals. I was a little disappointed the band didn’t play my favorite song (“Hold On”) but they did debut some new material from their soon to be released album Sound & Color (April 20th on iTunes, in stores April 21st). Either way they killed it.
Tame Impala hit the main stage right before Friday night headliner, AC/DC. The crowd really started buzzing when they launched into their hits “Elephant” and “Feels Like It Only Goes Backwards”. They also debuted some new tunes at the festival and the crowd was totally loving it.
AC/DC closed out Friday with a mixture of new tunes and old favorites. We were spent by the time AC/DC started and only ended up staying for half the set. They put on a great show though. I heard some of my favorites like Back in Black, Thunderstruck, and You Shook Me All Night Long. I was even singing along to the faint sounds of T.N.T. as we made our way to the shuttles. I was glad I had the opportunity to see them live.
On Saturday with the reminders of how tired we were, how late we got to bed, how much cell phone charge we had left by the end of the night (the charging stations didn’t work…such false advertising), and by the desire to sample local eats, we decided to head to the festival about 2 hours later than we did on Friday. We were both more pumped for Saturday’s planned lineup which featured Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Milky Chance, Jungle, Belle and Sebastian, alt-J, and Jack White because there was less waiting time in between sets (we had lot on Friday and we were getting antsy). After a longer than planned ride/entrance to the festival due to security reasons, we made it in with a little over a half hour to spare before Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness took over the Outdoor Stage. We grabbed some drinks and headed over there. Upon arrival, the crowd was small. It was so small that I could have managed being in what would be considered the second row. It was hot though so I was fine with hanging back a bit. By the set time more people had come in behind me, but unlike some sets I went to on Sunday there was enough room to breathe.
His set was one of my favorites of the entire weekend. He engaged the crowd and you could tell just how excited he was to play Coachella (he stated it as well but he didn’t even need to). He included a Jack’s Mannequin song (“Dark Blue”) and a Something Corporate song (“I Woke Up in a Car”) in the set which were both favorites among the small crowd who sang along with vigor. Then he followed up with their single “Cecilia and the Satellite”. At some point during the set large balloons were brought out and members of the Andrew McMahon team held them in the crowd. Near the end of the set (it might have been during “Cecilia and the Satellite), the balloons popped and confetti was released from them. It was such a fun moment and added to the already enjoyable performance. I think the most memorable part came during the last song when gym class parachutes were given to and held by the crowd and Andrew came off the stage and sang with everyone standing under them. The set was a great way to kick off my Day 2 and left me pumped for the rest of the evening.
Next on the list was Milky Chance. We could only stay for some of the set because Jungle overlapped slightly. I wanted to make it to the Jungle set to get a good spot. I only knew two songs they played including the one everyone knows, “Stolen Dance”. We were able to hear both but I thought the performance of “Stolen Dance” wasn’t as great as I had hoped. They only sang the verses of the song. When the chorus came around Clemens Rehbein (vocals) left it up to the crowd. However the crowd wasn’t large enough to get the desired effect of everyone singing along. From where we were standing all you could hear was the music. It was disappointing so we left for Jungle.
Jungle’s set was jam packed with songs off their debut album. The crowd danced and sang along to their funk inspired sound. A favorite amongst everyone in attendance was “Burnin’ Easy”. It got the flower headband wearing hippies moving. Their final song “Time” had the same effect.
Shortly after Jungle finished, Belle and Sebastian began their Coachella set. We only stayed for a few songs because I knew we needed to be at Main Stage early for alt-J. Belle and Sebastian were a perfect example of an indie band playing the festival. Their songs are both mellow and upbeat. It’s not the type of music you’d necessarily bounce around and shake your head furiously to. It’s the stuff you would sway your body around to, which was what the audience did to the few songs we heard. I read the band played a lot of good hits near the end of the set (the part we missed) and the crowd was really into it, but I think the spot for alt-J was worth it.
We ended up with a spot on the barrier next to the V.I.P. area, which allowed for a celebrity sighting during the set (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul), but it was also close enough to be in the thickness of fans. Alt-J opened with “Hunger of the Pine” (Miley didn’t show much to my displeasure) and had the crowd bumping the whole time to a mixture of songs off both An Awesome Wave and This Is All Yours. Of course the most pleasurable reactions came from current hit “Left Hand Free” and closing/well-known song “Breezeblocks”. It was another favorite set of the day for me.
Jack White took the stage after alt-J. His performance and talent on the guitar was unreal. It began to my surprise with a White Stripes song, “Icky Thump”. His whole set included a bunch of White Stripes songs including the last song “Seven Nation Army” which had the crowd chanting “O-O-O-O-O-O” at one point when they cut the music during the song. The set wasn’t all White Stripes of course and had songs like “Lazaretto”, “Love Interruption”, “High Ball Stepper”, “Would You Fight For My Love?”, “The Black Bat Licorice”, and “Sixteen Saltines”. Jack White’s beliefs and passion for music were evident through what he spoke about in between songs. He was my favorite headliner. We were able to see the entirety of the set since his time slot was pushed down in favor of the Weeknd closing out Saturday night. I’m glad it was.
Sunday was the busiest day of the festival for us. It was the only day with conflicting set times. The biggest one was deciding between RAC and St. Lucia (St. Lucia started 15 minutes after RAC). Since I had listened to RAC more in prep for Coachella and because my cousin also likes one of their songs, we went with RAC (although still managed to make it to the Main Stage for the last 2 St. Lucia songs). They were also first on the list for Sunday. Like the day before, we decided to head to the festival around the same time since we needed to check into our flight around 1 and wanted to try a pizza place for lunch about 2 blocks from our hotel (it was better to only eat once or so at the festival since it was overpriced). Because of that, I missed the Night Terrors of 1927 and Saint Motel sets. It would have been nice to check those guys out but it wasn’t a necessity since I don’t know that much of their stuff anyway (two good bands nonetheless).
RAC’s set was a blast. They played all my favorites off their album Strangers including “Tear You Down”, “All I Got”, “Hollywood” which special guest Penguin Prison came out to perform, and “Cheap Sunglasses”. It did surprise me that RAC only had one special guest since Matthew Koma performed on Saturday and could have easily made an appearance. Unfortunately St. Lucia couldn’t join them for the song they collaborated on because they were playing at the same time. Still, it was a great set and I was dancing and singing along the whole time.
After RAC we rushed over to hear the end of St. Lucia’s set. We heard “September” and “Elevate”, both were good so I’m sure the rest was great too. I think seeing either band (RAC or St. Lucia) would have been comparable as far as enjoyment level goes for me, but I got a little of both with the choice I made.
My cousin decided she wanted to hear Vance Joy’s set so on the way over I caught one song by Conor Oberst and his punk band Desaparecidos. I didn’t even recognize Oberst as he looks way different now than he did as the dark haired, emo Bright Eyes front man. The set also attracted a smaller crowd and would have been fun to attend if it didn’t overlap with others.
While waiting for Vance Joy to come out, the Mojave stage got super crowded. After he played one song my cousin decided she’d rather get out of the tight bunch of people and listen from a more comfortable spot. I agreed. Vance Joy could have easily been an Outdoor or Main Stage performer as his set attracted an overflow of people from the covered Mojave. I tried to listen to Vance Joy in preparation for the event but I wasn’t feeling his music. I like “Riptide” but beyond that it wasn’t my vibe. I guess it wasn’t my cousin’s either so we listened as we “Coachilled” (A Coachella term meaning to sit and relax) from a spot just outside the crowd and tented stage. We sang along with “Riptide” as Vance Joy closed out his set then made our way back to the stage as the crowd filtered out. Brand New was on next.
I was hyped for Brand New. I decided I wanted to be closer than the previous times we saw bands on the Mojave stage. I was so ready to go hard to one of my favorite high school bands. To my dismay though, Brand New’s set was mostly songs off the two most recent albums Daisy and The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (my two least favorite Brand New albums). I planned on going so hard to all the Brand New songs but it didn’t work out that way. However, when the beginning of “Sic Transit Gloria” started and the whole crowd let out a scream, I did as well. Everyone belted out the Deja Entendu classic. That was followed by “Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t” another favorite amongst the crowd (I went so hard). It seemed like those two songs along with “Jesus Christ” and “Sowing Season (Yeah)” got the biggest crowd reaction (they closed out the show with those two along with “Degausser” in between). The set featured no songs from “Your Favorite Weapon”. I think because of my high hopes for that I was disappointed and found the set less enjoyable than expected. Don’t get me wrong the set was great and everyone there was dancing hard while screaming out the lyrics to their favorite songs, but from my perspective, it was disappointing.
St. Vincent was next on my list for the day followed by Florence and the Machine (one of my most anticipated acts of the weekend). We saw St. Vincent perform a few songs. “Digital Witness” was one of them, but once I noticed Kaskade finished his extremely popular set on the main stage (which was right by the stage St. Vincent performed at) we headed there to get a good spot for Florence.
My cousin’s back was sore so I told her to sit in the back next to a speaker pole (A9 to be exact) while I made my way closer to the stage. It was a difficult task. I planned to try to go to the opposite side of the stage from where we were for alt-J, but with the amount of people it didn’t work out like that. I was near the same spot I was at for alt-J (near the V.I.P. area). It was so cramped. A girl was annoyed that I tried to “steal her spot”. To be fair I left enough room for her to stand near the bar where we were, but she just didn’t want to share. It was dark by then. The V.I.P. area filled up too so it was difficult to see if anyone famous was hanging out, which I’m sure there was. When Florence and the Machine took the stage, I couldn’t see anything. All I saw was the big screen which showed what I could’ve easily watched at home on YouTube. I made the decision to leave the cramped spot during the second song “What Kind of Man” (she opened with “What the Water Gave Me”). Cell reception was at its worst of the weekend so I had a hard time figuring out where my cousin was (she was not at pole A9). I visually missed a large chunk of the set because I was looking for her. I did stop to watch at times though. It was just a difficult moment. We finally reunited (she was at pole A7) and I was able to watch the end of the set which included new song “Ship to Wreck”, “Shake It Out”, and “Dog Days Are Over”. Singing and dancing along to “Shake It Out” and “Dog Days..” made up for lost time. During “Dog Days..” she had the crowd embrace each other, take off an article of clothing and wave it around, and jump up and down, which she took part in as well (She took off her shirt. It was wild!). If it weren’t for all my issues during the set (being cramped and losing my cousin) I would have fully enjoyed it. Everything I saw of it was amazing. Florence and the Machine put on a hell of a live performance. I’d love to see them again in a more intimate capacity (you know just a Florence show rather than at a festival).
The last set of the night was Drake (my cousin’s choice and I figured “Hey I’ll see him just to say I saw him” because Drake is not my type of music). His set started a half hour late. I knew zero songs. My cousin knew one which he only sang/rapped part of. We left around 11 which was 15 minutes or so after it started. We missed the whole Madonna thing. It wasn’t a big deal to us though. The best part of the Drake set for me was his pre-show playlist. It included Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” which got the whole crowd going. Back in the day when I liked rap and Eminem, I used to listen to the song before every 8th grade basketball game so it was fun to sing/rap to again.
Leaving the venue during the Drake set concluded my first Coachella experience. Like I said it was incredible. I feel so blessed to have gone and experienced it. I would recommend it to anyone to attend. Sure there are other huge similar style festivals like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and now even Firefly, but there’s something special about Coachella. Maybe it’s the atmosphere or maybe it’s the hype with the parties and fashion and tons of celebrities that go every year. No matter the reason, it was a dream experience. For me, it was the music. It’s always the music. To quote something Jack White said during his set, “I hope you realize for a few seconds every day that music is scared. That music is sacred! That music is sacred! That music is sacred!” I agree Jack. So whether it be Coachella or any concert or festival or radio station or CD or record or ipod/iphone playlist, let’s remember that. Music is sacred.
Posted in Music and tagged Aaron Paul, ac/dc, alabama shakes, alt-j, andrew mcmahon, andrew mcmahon in the wilderness, Angus & Julia Stone, belle and sebastian, brand new, ca, california, California music, california music festival, california music festival 2015, california music festivals, california music festivals 2015, Coachella, coachella 2015, coachella festival, Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival, coachella valley arts and music festival, coachella valley arts and music festival 2015, coachillin, conor oberst, desaparecidos, drake, Eminem, florence and the machine, florence welch, indie music, indio, indio desert, jack white, jack's mannequin, jungle, jungle band, Kaskade, Lose Yourself, milky chance, music festival, music festivals, music festivals 2015, night terrors of 1927, palm trees, penguin prison, RAC, rap, Remix Artist Collective, Saint Motel, SoCal, something corporate, st. lucia, st. vincent, tame impala, The White Stripes, vance joy, White Stripes on April 16, 2015 by prostreetcross. Leave a comment
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Paper’s Revenge: Handwritten Letters Are Making a Comeback
This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine.
In the back room of a Los Angeles area stationery store, where handmade rubber stamps and intricate notecards line walls and shelves, more than a dozen people let pen and ink flow over fancy paper and envelopes.
“Thank you so much for the birthday goodies!” one member writes in a classic, almost calligraphy-style penmanship.
“How are you? How’s the weather?” another member scrawls in giant block letters.
Whether they write in cursive or old-school print, members of the LA Pen Pal Club drive for miles to meet one evening a month at Paper Pastries. Married or single, in their 20s or older, the mostly female members of the group said they get together to take part in what many would think is a long-lost art in an era of instantaneous communication: pouring out pieces of their lives in handwritten letters to loved ones, childhood friends, or those they’ve never met except through snail mail.
“I think people still get really excited about getting something in the mail,” said Chris Go, 50, a member of the group. She wrote to her college boyfriend off and on for 20 years, even after he moved to his native Philippines for a brief period. The two eventually married, and her husband is now also a member of the club.
“It’s a piece of you,” Go added. “Letters can even smell like the person sending them.”
The LA Pen Pal Club, one of more than an estimated two dozen similar clubs nationwide, made its premiere at Paper Pastries in 2015. Hosts Margaret Haas and Victoria Vu don’t arrange pen pals for people, but rather provide a friendly, social space for letter-writing enthusiasts to be in the company of others who share their interest. Haas, 33, owns Paper Pastries and had gotten the idea for the club while hosting a similar gathering at a gift shop where she worked. She met Vu, 34, at those gatherings. In addition to selling paper products, Haas also makes rubber stamps in-house with witty sayings and themes.
Both Haas and Vu said they were drawn to handwriting letters because they like the slower pace.
To Haas, writing a letter is unlike any other part of her life and is sort of paradoxical when she thinks about it.
“It is a solitary activity that leads to communication with another person,” she said. “Writing a letter by hand forces me to slow down, and I think more deeply about my thoughts as a result. I have worked through many issues by taking the time to share them with a pen pal. It is therapeutic that way.”
Handwritten correspondence is a patient, meaningful way to keep in touch, Vu added.
“It gives you the chance to wholeheartedly focus on the person you’re writing to, to channel your care into their hands via paper and pen,” she said.
“I never want to sit down and crank out that email,” Vu said. “I would rather write that letter.”
“Millennials purchase more greeting cards than any other generation.”
On one fall evening, LA Pen Pal Club members shared homemade cornbread and sipped virgin painkiller cocktails. Then they settled around a long table to write. Some of them embellished their notecards and envelopes with shiny heart stickers, others with simple sketches of flowers.
In days, their words and decorated envelopes will travel to cities and towns throughout Georgia and Virginia, South Carolina and Pennsylvania, among others.
Member Jo Bozarth, 37, said she’s been writing to her pen pal in Pittsburgh since she was 12 years old. They met through a classified ad in a teen magazine. Theirs is a friendship that has evolved without ever hearing each other’s voice or seeing each other face to face.
Through the handwritten word, they have shared laughs and tears through various milestones: boyfriends who came and went, new jobs, marriage, children who have grown, and parents and loved ones who have died. Bozarth said it has never occurred to her to contact her pen pal via Facebook or other social media.
Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock
Though the 140-year-old greeting card industry last had its heyday in the 1980s, sales are steady. Americans buy about 6.5 billion greeting cards each year, spending about $7 billion to $8 billion. Millennials in particular are opening new stores, and even experimenting with non-paper products, such as cards made of wood or metal.
“I have seen a significant trend toward new stationery companies being started by entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s, often women,” said Aaron Hazard, director of sales at the National Stationery Show. “There is a very strong, vocal, and engaged group of people in this age range who are getting back to the basics of paper and then reinventing what can be done with the medium.”
Though there is no hard data available, industry leaders said millennials also are purchasing more greeting cards. “Millennials purchase more greeting cards than any other generation,” said Peter Doherty, executive director for the Greeting Card Association. “We try to understand why that’s happening. We’ve come to the conclusion that millennials and Gen Y are looking for a more meaningful experience. We see that people are looking for something real, something lasting that can be personalized.”
“In taking the time to write a letter, you engage a different part of your mind.”
As for the popularity of writing to pen pals, that too has endured and is even gaining in popularity, said Kathy Zadrozny and Donovan Beeson, founders of the Chicago-based Letter Writers Alliance, an organization dedicated to preserving the cultural tradition of letter writing.
Formed in 2007, the alliance boasts 15,000 members and is growing. Interest in the group has been generated, in part, by word-of-mouth and social media, specifically from Instagram and Reddit, Zadrozny noted.
“It has been a gradual growth, but each year we see about a 20 percent uptick in membership from the previous year,” she said.
Members of the alliance are based all over the nation, but they’re mostly on the West Coast or in the Midwest and are between either 15 and 23 years old, or 45 and 85 years old.
“We certainly have letter writers in the ages in between, but those two age groups are the ones who join our group the most,” Zadrozny said, adding that the age rage makes sense because of common transitions in those years.
“This is when you are either in high school or college or after your children leave for college or you leave your job,” she said. “These are the times where you are looking for those connections, the sparks with those who are interested in what you are interested in.”
Letter writing never went out of style, she added. “In taking the time to write a letter, you engage a different part of your mind. When you write, it feels nearly confessional. You say things on paper you wouldn’t otherwise say in person or via text.”
The members of the LA Pen Pal Club agree. Many of them say those cards and letters help them see unique traits and a different side of the sender.
“It’s really fun to see people write back to you, to see what their handwriting looks like,” said Colby Beck, 31. She began writing letters in college to keep in touch with a boyfriend, and the habit stayed with her.
“My dad writes in all caps. My mom is a cursive writer. My sister writes in bubble letters,” she said.
To Beck and other members of the group, the feel of pen and paper, and the time to write out thoughts and emotions, is invaluable.
Susan Abram wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Susan is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and former newspaper reporter. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the Orange County Register, and the Los Angeles Daily News, among others.
By Susan Abram | May 15, 2019 | Community, Culture, Relationships | Cards, Connection, Correspondence, Handwriting, Letter Writers Alliance, Letters, Paper, Pen Pals, Stationery, Writing
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ayondo takes over gamified trading app TradeHero to fuel SEA expansion
Snapchat parent Snap Inc. has reportedly filed for its humongous IPO
Published on 16 November 2016, 07:29 Asia/Kolkata Updated on 16 November 2016, 07:32 Asia/Kolkata
Kajal Joshi
UK and Germany-based online social trading platform ayondo has taken over Singapore-based TradeHero. The acquisition will extend branding of the former outside of China and the United States by stepping into Singapore. The announcement comes nearly a year after it inked a partnership with KGI Fraser Securities Pte Ltd to launch KGI Contrax, a platform for investors to trade Contracts for Difference (CFD).
The collaboration of the two firms is clear. ayondo’s social trading platform allows retail investors to copy the trades of experts while TradeHero enables users to simulate trading stocks based on real-time data from international markets. Dominic Morris, co-founder of TradeHero and the new Head of Innovation for ayondo Group, in an official press release, said,
ayondo and TradeHero share the same vision, that is to democratise the world of investing through easy-to-use disruptive technology and knowledge sharing.
ayondo is expanding into Asia in full swing. It is engaged in advanced negotiations with a SGX-listed company on a Reverse Takeover (RTO) transaction which could result in ayondo being the first FinTech company to be listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the head office being relocated to Asia’s fintech hub. It is well positioned with its pioneering business model and scalable solutions for B2B and B2C clients. With over 220,000 users from 195 countries, the company offers a new and highly attractive way of investing in global financial markets.
TradeHero’s mobile technology specialists have built the foundation for ayondo’s Singapore based Mobile Lab, where the latest research and development takes place giving the group an edge in designing, building, experimenting and refining new technologies for its platforms. Robert Lempka, CEO of the ayondo Group, says,
For ayondo, mobile technology is a big part of the Group’s strategy for expansion and growth. The TradeHero brand is extremely well established in Asia and was the missing piece in our product range.
In 2014, ayondo opened its first office outside of Europe in Singapore, after private equity fund Luminor Capital became a convertible bond holder in the firm.
kajal@thetechportal.in
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JOHNSON CREEK (TARRANT COUNTY)
JOHNSON CREEK (Tarrant County). Johnson Creek rises near Interstate Highway 20 in eastern Tarrant County (at 32°41' N, 97°07' W) and runs northeast for thirteen miles to its mouth on the West Fork of the Trinity River, within the city limits of Grand Prairie in western Dallas County (at 32°46' N, 97°01' W). The stream, which is intermittent in its upper reaches, was probably named for Middleton Tate Johnson, who in the early 1840s settled at Marrow Bone Springs, which he renamed Mary Le Bone Springs, about three miles south of the present Arlington City Hall. Johnson owned a great deal of land in eastern Tarrant County and founded Johnson's Station near the creek. Settlement in the area continued in the 1850s. Johnson Creek traverses gently sloping to level uplands characterized by deep, loamy, moderately well-drained soils. The creek, which flows through Arlington and Grand Prairie, has been altered by much urban development along its banks. It forms the northern boundary of Six Flags Over Texas, an amusement park. In those areas where development has not been substantial, native plants such as honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, mustang grape, American elm, hackberry, oak, pecan, and cottonwood can still be found growing along the stream banks.
Julia Kathryn Garrett, Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph (Austin: Encino, 1972).
Handbook of Texas Online, "JOHNSON CREEK (TARRANT COUNTY)," accessed July 19, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rbj38.
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Favorite games from every year of my life – Part 3
Apr3 by Jesse (The artist formerly known as Richenbaum)
and now for the thrilling conclusion…
Another vastly underrated game, Hellgate: London was a first-person RPG that mixed sci-fi and horror fantasy elements, and was made by some of the same people that created the original Diablo. The result was something that felt very much like some kind of futuristic first-person version of Diablo. It had everything that made Diablo so great, great action, great monsters, a ton of loot, and even a good co-op system.
Oddly enough, it seems that the Hellgate: London that you see for sale nowadays is almost a completely different game. The original developers went bankrupt and the rights ended up going to some Korean company that re-worked it and re-marketed it as some kind of free-to-play online-only game. So you’d need to track down a disc of the original version to play it, but that’s not too hard. It’s well worth it if you’re into this kind of game.
Dead Space was easily the best action horror game to hit the scene since Resident Evil. It was probably the first new horror series to succeed in a such a way since then too. Oh there had been plenty of others, but none that got two whole major sequels. Dead Space was a dream come true for me, combining sci-fi with horror and having creatures that looked like they stepped right out of John Carpenter’s The Thing.
The Dead Space series seemed to be a huge hit and EA had been talking about doing even more sequels and even some spin-off games, one of which was rumored to be a space-flight-sim, but then Dead Space 3 sold a “mere” 2.5 million copies and EA said “oh, nevermind”, dropped all plans for any more titles, and then took the development team, Visceral Games, and said “ok, we’re just going to have you make budget action games that no one wants until we fire you all!”. Thanks again EA.
All the kids today are crazy about Dragon Age, and I still like the series and all, but things have never been as great as Origins was. This was a fantasy RPG that was so dark that it kind of felt like a horror game. It was so bleak and dark, the monsters were delightfully grotesque and challenging, and it seemed like every damn person you dealt with was lying to your face and had sinister ulterior motives. Man, it was great.
Hm, I wonder how much longer it’ll be before EA kills BioWare?
Nier was a surprise sleeper hit in much the same way Drakengard was. On the surface it looked like a decent, but not particularly memorable action-RPG. I wasn’t even going to bother playing it, except my wife took a liking to it for some reason and bought it for me right when it came out. I had no idea that it was from the same creator as Drakengard and that it was actually even a spin-off sequel whose world was the way it was directly due to the events of the final battle of Drakengard.
Also much like Drakengard, it wasn’t particularly impressive in terms of gameplay, but it made up for it with the pure power of story and atmosphere. It’s got one of the most complex and twisted stories I’ve ever seen in a game. Amazing soundtrack too.
I have to admit, I kind of avoided Dark Souls when it first came out. I kept hearing about how overly difficult and frustrating it was that it just didn’t sound worth all that trouble. It wasn’t until a few years later that I finally gave it a shot when it was at a really reduced price during a big sale. Little did I know what I would be beginning. Yes there was intense difficulty and frustration, and yet…I couldn’t seem to put it down. No matter how mad I got and how close I came to smashing that controller, I didn’t want to stop. It was all just so well-designed and brutal and dark that I felt myself oddly compelled not just to press on and succeed, but when it was all over I wanted even more! Such is the beautiful curse of Dark Souls, I suppose.
Arkane Studios has always done really good games, but Dishonored was where it felt like they had really become masters of their craft. It’s the bastard lovechild of System Shock and Thief and few games have made thieving and assassinating so very satisfying. There’s just something so hilarious and liberating about doing crazy things like coming upon a couple being mugged in an alley, stabbing the mugger, getting thanks and a reward from the couple, then stabbing them too and taking the rest of their money. I don’t know, stealth games just bring out the hidden psychopath within me!
Speaking of stealth games…I guess this is maybe cheating a little, but dammit, this collection did come out in 2013 and I actually hadn’t played the majority of the games on it. It made for one hell of a year, playing through 8 Metal Gear titles so I could be all caught up to play Phantom Pain when it came out. Previously I’d only ever played the NES version of Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, and gave up when I got to Metal Gear Solid 2 back in the day and was probably too drugged up at the time to be able to follow the ridiculously convoluted plot.
Playing them all back to back and with a clear mind was one hell of an experience though. What an absolutely insane and beautifully complex story, and they even had the seriously good gameplay to back them up too. RIP Metal Gear!
Binding of Isaac infected me a lot like Dark Souls did. I had heard all about the original version, but didn’t want to deal with the alleged severe difficulty. After Dark Souls gave me a taste of “gitting gud” I decided to give this a try though. The revamped and expanded Rebirth version was out by the time I got to it, and was also available on Vita so I could play it on the go (by which I actually mean in bed), which seemed to suit the gameplay rather well.
Let me tell you, it had been quite some time since a game had so utterly consumed me. Once you figure out the obtuse mechanics and get into the rhythm of things, it’s almost impossible to put down. The twin stick shooting action and retro NES Zelda theme combined with gross-out horror and religious themes, just came together to form this amazingly addictive monstrosity that never seemed to stop squirting out surprise after surprise. I couldn’t tell you how many hours I dumped into it, but I had to have beaten it over 100 times. There’s just so many damn items, characters, and extra gameplay content to unlock and with such a large variety of abilities and monster types, every session was wildly different. It took a long, loooong time for me to finally get tired of it, by which point I’d done almost everything there was to do in the game.
Later the game would get enhanced even more with the Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ expansions, but due to supposed technical limitations of the Vita the creators never brought them to Vita. What was I to do then? Buy the game and expansions all over again on PS4 and transfer my save over? Ehhhh…I’d rather be able to play it on a portable again. What’s this though? Afterbirth+ is out now on Switch? Uh oh…that’s a tale for another time though…
And then there was Bloodborne. From Software took all the dark visual and musical themes and monstrous enemies of Dark Souls and turned it all up a few notches, resulting in a Souls-like game that was more horror than ever before. It also had combat mechanics that rewarded aggressive play and much more limited options in terms of ranged combat, so you really had to get in there and get skilled at it. It was the ultimate Dark Souls experience that wasn’t even actually Dark Souls. A true masterpiece of a game, and I still can’t get that boss battle music out of my head!
The newest incarnation of Doom actually followed a kind of similar formula to Bloodborne. It wasn’t Bloodborne level of difficulty (though it was still quite challenging for a modern FPS), but it did reward you for taking on a more aggressive and brutal playstyle. You needed to keep moving and killing as much as possible to keep your health and ammo up, as they would both be quickly drained under the crushing weight of the demon hordes.
This game just completely nailed the feel of the classic Doom games and wrapped it up in a package of amazing high-end modern graphics, design, and gameplay. It was a truly impressive vision of hell and a more than worthy addition to the Doom legacy. If only they would have given Quake the same treatment.
And finally we’ve reached the final year of this thing. Unsurprisingly, the honor goes to Resident Evil 7. I don’t want try to sound elitist on you here, but if you haven’t experienced this game in VR, you almost haven’t really experienced it. I’ve tried it in both modes and I can say without exaggeration that Capcom’s addition of high quality VR added an unbelievable level of immersion. The horror atmosphere really did go back to something closer to the original game this time, in fact, it surpassed the original by a pretty huge amount.
It was the only time a game really made me feel scared, and I don’t just mean jump scare startled like every other horror game does, I mean filled with unease and dread as I’m forced to live through things like walking down a dusty old staircase into a broken down old basement in the dark as strange, disgusting sounds can be heard in the distance, knowing that I had to be approaching something terrible, but unable to do anything about it.
I only wish that I could somehow go back and have it be the first time all over again, because like with most horror games, once you’ve played it and know what all the surprises are, it kind of loses something that you can never get back.
Well, that finally concludes that. If this turns anyone on to some great new games that they missed out on, that’s great, but if not…
This entry was posted in Games and tagged binding of isaac rebirth, bloodborne, dark souls, dead space, dishonored, doom, dragon age origins, favorite games from every year of my life, Games, hellgate london, horror, metal gear solid legacy collection, nier, pc, ps3, ps4, psvr, resident evil 7, vita, windows, xbox 360.
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4 comments on “Favorite games from every year of my life – Part 3”
ignitedmoth says:
You picked a lot of really good games throughout this series of posts you did. 🙂 A few of the ones you did definitely made me want to play them again sometime soon. Kudos to you for completing this challenge, too, I’m sure it was a lot of work narrowing each year down to one specific game. Here’s to many more years of awesome games! 😀
Richenbaum Fotchenstein says:
Thanks. Now if only I had time to play all of them all over again. Sometimes I almost wish there weren’t so many good new games so I had more time to replay old ones.
Haha That is definitely understandable. 😛
iplayedthegame says:
Hellgate! I remember playing that for all of 2 hours before giving up on it. I loved the idea but I just couldn’t get into it.
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Sri Chinmoy's recollections of the 1000 mile race
Sri Chinmoy participated in the 1985 1000 Mile race, with a total mileage of 208 miles. These recollections are taken from the book Run and Become, Become and Run, part 16
Originally I wanted to run seven miles every day during the 1,000-mile race. I felt that if I tried to do 13 miles, I would not be able to continue. But at the end of the race I had completed 208 miles-an average of 13 miles a day for the 16 days of the race. Three people completed the full distance: 1,000 miles! Here is the proof that there are a few things the mind cannot understand-when the soul operates through the heart or through the vital. To run 1,000 miles is beyond the comprehension of the mind; the mind cannot imagine it! Perhaps now people will be inspired to sponsor 1,000-mile races.
By the first week of August I do hope to complete my 1,000 miles. I am going on, going on. God knows if I can do it!
-17 May 1985
I have run a little over 200 miles during the 1,000-mile race, but already I am blessing my forefathers that I have promised to run 1,000 miles. Even my imagination gets frightened! But I am sincerely proud of those who have completed the race. Look at Trishul! The race ended just yesterday, and already he is here at the meditation, enjoying his spiritual life.
The end of the 1,000-mile race was on the 6:30 news last night on television. When they mentioned my name they had trouble with "Sri"; they said, "Sir." They called me "Sir Chinmoy, the Queens Fitness Guru."
Sri Chinmoy 700, 1000 and 1300 Mile Races
The Passing of a Friend: ultrarunning legend Al Howie
Sri Chinmoy's athletic activities - more articles
Carl Lewis and Sri Chinmoy Open New York Games, 1990
Photos: (l to r) Martin Bentz, Allan Steinfeld, Sri Chinmoy and Fred Lebow
"Lewis and Chinmoy open New York Games." The Indiana Runner. September 1990.
"Carl Lewis sang the National Anthem and Sri Chinmoy offered a Moment of Peace to open the New York Road Runners Club's New York Games, Sunday, July 29th, at Columbia's Wein Stadium.
Lewis's pride and love for America were demonstrated in his heroic sports efforts and soulful song. Close friend and advisor, Sri Chinmoy, stood by Lewis's side as thousands of spectators and athletes gratefully listened to Lewis's rendition of America's Anthem...
The New York Games, the only track and field event of this sort in New York, are aptly organized by Fred Lebow and the New York Road Runners Club. To honor Lebow and his organization, Sri Chinmoy dedicated a song to the New York Games, also performed on the sports field at the meet's finale."
Carl Lewis gives Autographed World Record Shoes to Sri Chinmoy
Carl Lewis (l) and Sri Chinmoy. Lewis is holding the Peace Run Torch, symbol of a global torch relay that seeks to promote harmony amongst people from all backgrounds.
"Carl Lewis Gives Autographed World Record Shoes to Sri Chinmoy." The North/West Facts (the northwest's largest African-American owned publication). September 11, 1991.
Carl Lewis sent his world record shoes to Sri Chinmoy, mentor and friend, for the peace leader's 60th birthday in New York. Lewis had broken the 100-meter world record before 75,000 spectators at he world Championship Games in Tokyo on August 25th. Lewis' record time of 9.86 beat former world record holder and teammate Leroy Burrell, who finished second in 9.88.
Carl Lewis autographed the shoes with '9.86' and thanked Sri Chinmoy on television for his help in winning the world record. Sri Chinmoy, who is known for his peace meditations, the arts and athletics, has advised Lewis on many occasions (as mentioned in Carl Lewis's book 'Inside Track') the peace leader talked with the track superstar by phone just before the meet and told Carl that now was the time to break the world record in Japan, the country that Lewis loves so dearly.
Before the Games, Carl performed Sri Chinmoy's theme song titled 'World Championships,' on Japanese television. Lewis will be present at a special awards dinner in New York on September 11 celebrating Sri Chinmoy's 60th birthday. The track star has been in Seattle on two occasions recently and met with local members of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.
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Sri Chinmoy's athletic activities
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Current 2018 Main Ed. (1/14/2019); Titles 1 to 4 2012 Ed. and Supplement V (1/12/2018) 2012 Ed. and Supplement IV (1/6/2017) 2012 Ed. and Supplement III (1/3/2016) 2012 Ed. and Supplement II (1/5/2015) 2012 Ed. and Supplement I (1/16/2014) 2012 Main Ed. (1/15/2013) 2006 Ed. and Supplement V (1/3/2012) 2006 Ed. and Supplement IV (1/7/2011) 2006 Ed. and Supplement III (2/1/2010) 2006 Ed. and Supplement II (1/5/2009) 2006 Ed. and Supplement I (1/8/2008) 2006 Main Ed. (1/3/2007) 2000 Ed. and Supplement V (1/2/2006) 2000 Ed. and Supplement IV (1/3/2005) 2000 Ed. and Supplement III (1/19/2004) 2000 Ed. and Supplement II (1/6/2003) 2000 Ed. and Supplement I (1/22/2002) 2000 Main Ed. (1/2/2001) 1994 Ed. and Supplement V (1/23/2000) 1994 Ed. and Supplement IV (1/5/1999) 1994 Ed. and Supplement III (1/26/1998) 1994 Ed. and Supplement II (1/6/1997) 1994 Ed. and Supplement I (1/16/1996) 1994 Main Ed. (1/4/1995)
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26 USC 6041: Information at source Text contains those laws in effect on July 18, 2019
From Title 26-INTERNAL REVENUE CODESubtitle F-Procedure and AdministrationCHAPTER 61-INFORMATION AND RETURNSSubchapter A-Returns and RecordsPART III-INFORMATION RETURNSSubpart B-Information Concerning Transactions With Other Persons
Jump To: Source CreditAmendmentsEffective DateMiscellaneous
§6041. Information at source
(a) Payments of $600 or more
All persons engaged in a trade or business and making payment in the course of such trade or business to another person, of rent, salaries, wages, premiums, annuities, compensations, remunerations, emoluments, or other fixed or determinable gains, profits, and income (other than payments to which section 6042(a)(1), 6044(a)(1), 6047(e), 6049(a), or 6050N(a) applies, and other than payments with respect to which a statement is required under the authority of section 6042(a)(2), 6044(a)(2), or 6045), of $600 or more in any taxable year, or, in the case of such payments made by the United States, the officers or employees of the United States having information as to such payments and required to make returns in regard thereto by the regulations hereinafter provided for, shall render a true and accurate return to the Secretary, under such regulations and in such form and manner and to such extent as may be prescribed by the Secretary, setting forth the amount of such gains, profits, and income, and the name and address of the recipient of such payment.
(b) Collection of foreign items
In the case of collections of items (not payable in the United States) of interest upon the bonds of foreign countries and interest upon the bonds of and dividends from foreign corporations by any person undertaking as a matter of business or for profit the collection of foreign payments of such interest or dividends by means of coupons, checks, or bills of exchange, such person shall make a return according to the forms or regulations prescribed by the Secretary, setting forth the amount paid and the name and address of the recipient of each such payment.
(c) Recipient to furnish name and address
When necessary to make effective the provisions of this section, the name and address of the recipient of income shall be furnished upon demand of the person paying the income.
(d) Statements to be furnished to persons with respect to whom information is required
Every person required to make a return under subsection (a) shall furnish to each person with respect to whom such a return is required a written statement showing-
(1) the name, address, and phone number of the information contact of the person required to make such return, and
(2) the aggregate amount of payments to the person required to be shown on the return.
The written statement required under the preceding sentence shall be furnished to the person on or before January 31 of the year following the calendar year for which the return under subsection (a) was required to be made. To the extent provided in regulations prescribed by the Secretary, this subsection shall also apply to persons required to make returns under subsection (b).
(e) Section does not apply to certain tips
This section shall not apply to tips with respect to which section 6053(a) (relating to reporting of tips) applies.
(f) Section does not apply to certain health arrangements
This section shall not apply to any payment for medical care (as defined in section 213(d)) made under-
(1) a flexible spending arrangement (as defined in section 106(c)(2)), or
(2) a health reimbursement arrangement which is treated as employer-provided coverage under an accident or health plan for purposes of section 106.
(g) Nonqualified deferred compensation
Subsection (a) shall apply to-
(1) any deferrals for the year under a nonqualified deferred compensation plan (within the meaning of section 409A(d)), whether or not paid, except that this paragraph shall not apply to deferrals which are required to be reported under section 6051(a)(13) (without regard to any de minimis exception), and
(2) any amount includible under section 409A and which is not treated as wages under section 3401(a).
(Aug. 16, 1954, ch. 736, 68A Stat. 745 ; Pub. L. 87–834, §19(f), Oct. 16, 1962, 76 Stat. 1058 ; Pub. L. 94–455, title XIX, §1906(b)(13)(A), Oct. 4, 1976, 90 Stat. 1834 ; Pub. L. 95–600, title V, §501(b), Nov. 6, 1978, 92 Stat. 2878 ; Pub. L. 97–34, title VII, §723(b)(1), Aug. 13, 1981, 95 Stat. 344 ; Pub. L. 97–248, title III, §309(b)(1), Sept. 3, 1982, 96 Stat. 595 ; Pub. L. 98–369, div. A, title VII, §722(h)(4)(B), July 18, 1984, 98 Stat. 976 ; Pub. L. 99–514, title XV, §§1501(c)(1), 1523(b)(2), Oct. 22, 1986, 100 Stat. 2736 , 2748; Pub. L. 104–168, title XII, §1201(a)(1), July 30, 1996, 110 Stat. 1469 ; Pub. L. 108–173, title XII, §1203(a), Dec. 8, 2003, 117 Stat. 2480 ; Pub. L. 108–357, title VIII, §885(b)(3), Oct. 22, 2004, 118 Stat. 1640 ; Pub. L. 111–148, title IX, §9006(a), (b), Mar. 23, 2010, 124 Stat. 855 ; Pub. L. 111–240, title II, §2101(a), Sept. 27, 2010, 124 Stat. 2561 ; Pub. L. 112–9, §§2(a), (b), 3(a), Apr. 14, 2011, 125 Stat. 36 .)
2011-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 112–9, §2(b), struck out "amounts in consideration for property," after "salaries, wages,", "gross proceeds," after "emoluments, or other", and "gross proceeds," after "setting forth the amount of such".
Subsec. (h). Pub. L. 112–9, §3(a), struck out subsec. (h) which related to treatment of rental property expense payments.
Subsecs. (i), (j). Pub. L. 112–9, §2(a), struck out subsecs. (i) and (j) which read as follows:
"(i) Application to Corporations.-Notwithstanding any regulation prescribed by the Secretary before the date of the enactment of this subsection, for purposes of this section the term 'person' includes any corporation that is not an organization exempt from tax under section 501(a).
"(j) Regulations.-The Secretary may prescribe such regulations and other guidance as may be appropriate or necessary to carry out the purposes of this section, including rules to prevent duplicative reporting of transactions."
2010-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 111–148, §9006(b), inserted "amounts in consideration for property," after "salaries, wages,", "gross proceeds," after "emoluments, or other", and "gross proceeds," after "setting forth the amount of such".
Subsec. (h). Pub. L. 111–240 added subsec. (h). Former subsec. (h) redesignated (i).
Pub. L. 111–148, §9006(a), added subsec. (h).
Subsec. (i). Pub. L. 111–240 redesignated subsec. (h) as (i). Former subsec. (i) redesignated (j).
Pub. L. 111–148, §9006(a), added subsec. (i).
Subsec. (j). Pub. L. 111–240 redesignated subsec. (i) as (j).
2004-Subsec. (g). Pub. L. 108–357 added subsec. (g).
2003-Subsec. (f). Pub. L. 108–173 added subsec. (f).
1996-Subsec. (d)(1). Pub. L. 104–168 substituted "name, address, and phone number of the information contact" for "name and address".
1986-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 99–514, §1523(b)(2), substituted "6049(a), or 6050N(a)" for "or 6049(a)".
Subsec. (d). Pub. L. 99–514, §1501(c)(1), in amending subsec. (d) generally, substituted "information is required" for "information is furnished" in heading and, in text, substituted references to persons required to make returns for former references to persons making returns.
1984-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 98–369 inserted "6047(e),".
1982-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 97–248 substituted "6049(a)" for "6049(a)(1)", and "or 6045" for "6045, 6049(a)(2), or 6049(a)(3)".
1981-Subsecs. (d), (e). Pub. L. 97–34 added subsec. (d) and redesignated former subsec. (d) as (e).
1978-Subsecs. (c), (d). Pub. L. 95–600 added subsec. (d) and redesignated subsec. (d) as (c).
1976-Subsecs. (a), (b). Pub. L. 94–455 struck out "or his delegate" after "Secretary".
1962-Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 87–834, §19(f)(1), substituted "(other than payments to which section 6042(a)(1), 6044(a)(1), or 6049(a)(1) applies, and other than payments with respect to which a statement is required under the authority of section 6042(a)(2), 6044(a)(2), 6045, 6049(a)(2), or 6049(a)(3))" for "other than payments described in section 6042(1) or section 6045)".
Subsec. (c). Pub. L. 87–834, §19(f)(2), repealed subsec. (c) which related to returns of payments of interest by corporations.
Effective Date of 2011 Amendment
Pub. L. 112–9, §2(c), Apr. 14, 2011, 125 Stat. 36 , provided that: "The amendments made by this section [amending this section] shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2011."
Pub. L. 112–9, §3(b), Apr. 14, 2011, 125 Stat. 36 , provided that: "The amendment made by this section [amending this section] shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2010."
Pub. L. 111–240, title II, §2101(b), Sept. 27, 2010, 124 Stat. 2561 , provided that: "The amendments made by subsection (a) [amending this section] shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2010."
Pub. L. 111–148, title IX, §9006(c), Mar. 23, 2010, 124 Stat. 855 , provided that: "The amendments made by this section [amending this section] shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2011."
Amendment by Pub. L. 108–357 applicable to amounts deferred after Dec. 31, 2004, with special rules relating to earnings and material modifications and exception for nonelective deferred compensation, see section 885(d) of Pub. L. 108–357, set out as an Effective Date note under section 409A of this title.
Pub. L. 108–173, title XII, §1203(b), Dec. 8, 2003, 117 Stat. 2480 , provided that: "The amendment made by this section [amending this section] shall apply to payments made after December 31, 2002."
Pub. L. 104–168, title XII, §1201(b), July 30, 1996, 110 Stat. 1470 , provided that: "The amendments made by subsection (a) [amending this section and sections 6041A, 6042, 6044, 6045, 6049, 6050B, 6050H to 6050K, and 6050N of this title] shall apply to statements required to be furnished after December 31, 1996 (determined without regard to any extension)."
Amendment by section 1501(c)(1) of Pub. L. 99–514 applicable to returns the due date for which (determined without regard to extensions) is after Dec. 31, 1986, see section 1501(e) of Pub. L. 99–514, set out as an Effective Date note under section 6721 of this title.
Amendment by section 1523(b)(2) of Pub. L. 99–514 applicable to payments made after Dec. 31, 1986, see section 1523(d) of Pub. L. 99–514, set out as an Effective Date note under section 6050N of this title.
Amendment by Pub. L. 98–369 applicable to payments or distributions after Dec. 31, 1984, unless the payor elects to have such amendment apply to payments or distributions before Jan. 1, 1985, see section 722(h)(5)(B) of Pub. L. 98–369, set out as a note under section 643 of this title.
Amendment by Pub. L. 97–248 applicable to amounts paid (or treated as paid) after Dec. 31, 1982, see section 309(c) of Pub. L. 97–248, set out as a note under section 6049 of this title.
Amendment by Pub. L. 97–34 applicable to returns and statements required to be furnished after Dec. 31, 1981, see section 723(c) of Pub. L. 97–34, set out as a note under section 6652 of this title.
Amendment by Pub. L. 95–600 applicable to payments made after Dec. 31, 1978, see section 501(c) of Pub. L. 95–600, set out as a note under section 6001 of this title.
Amendment by Pub. L. 87–834 applicable to payments of dividends and interest made on or after Jan. 1, 1963, and to payments of amounts described in section 6044(b) of this title made on or after Jan. 1, 1963. with respect to patronage occurring on or after the first day of the first taxable year of the cooperative beginning on or after Jan. 1, 1963, see section 19(h) of Pub. L. 87–834, set out as a note under section 6042 of this title.
Allowance of Electronic 1099's
Pub. L. 107–147, title IV, §401, Mar. 9, 2002, 116 Stat. 40 , provided that: "Any person required to furnish a statement under any section of subpart B of part III of subchapter A of chapter 61 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 for any taxable year ending after the date of the enactment of this Act [Mar. 9, 2002], may electronically furnish such statement (without regard to any first class mailing requirement) to any recipient who has consented to the electronic provision of the statement in a manner similar to the one permitted under regulations issued under section 6051 of such Code or in such other manner as provided by the Secretary."
Employer's Duties in Connection With Recording and Reporting of Tips
Pub. L. 94–455, title XXI, §2211, Oct. 4, 1976, 90 Stat. 1905 , as amended by Pub. L. 99–514, §2, Oct. 22, 1986, 100 Stat. 2095 , provided that:
"(a) Suspension of Rulings.-Until January 1, 1979, the law with respect to the duty of an employer under section 6041(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 [formerly I.R.C. 1954] to report charge account tips of employees to the Internal Revenue Service (other than charge account tips included in statements furnished to the employer under section 6053(a) of such Code) shall be administered-
"(1) without regard to Revenue Rulings 75–400 and 76–231, and
"(2) in accordance with the manner in which such law was administered before the issuance of such rulings.
"(b) Effective Date.-This section shall take effect on January 1, 1976."
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Read Next: Paul McCartney Has Been Secretly Writing an 'It's a Wonderful Life' Musical
July 24, 2018 1:50PM PT
‘Hamilton’ Performance Reportedly Sparks Studio Movie Rights Bidding War
CREDIT: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
Hollywood studios are bidding for the movie rights to a recorded version of a live performance of the smash hit musical “Hamilton,” with the price as much as $50 million, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal, citing two unnamed people with knowledge of the deal talks, said Tuesday that the sellers are asking that the recording not play in theaters or stream until 2020 or 2021. The recording at the center of the bidding war was made in 2016, shortly before Lin-Manuel Miranda departed from the cast.
The play was inspired by Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography “Alexander Hamilton” with Miranda writing the music, lyrics, and book. Miranda mixed hip hop, R&B, pop, soul, and show tunes to create a blockbuster production that debuted on Broadway in 2015 and received a record-setting 16 Tony nominations, winning 11 along with the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Miranda has become a significant presence in Hollywood since then. He was the composer of the score for “Moana” and received an Oscar nomination for the song “How Far I’ll Go.” He also stars opposite Emily Blunt in the upcoming “Mary Poppins Returns.”
Warner Bros. has set a June 26, 2020 release date for Miranda’s musical “In the Heights,” which won the 2008 Tony Award for best musical. Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for the production and starred in the show’s lead role, earning a Tony nomination for best actor in a musical. The movie project has “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon Chu attached, along with the musical’s book writer and screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes.
Miranda also announced on July 19 that he would be making his feature directorial debut on a movie version of the play “Tick, Tick…Boom!”
Reps for “Hamilton” and Miranda did not reply to requests for comment.
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MoviePass Parent’s Stock Slides to Another Record Low
MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson Analytics’ stock has declined to its lowest closing price amid ongoing concerns on Wall Street about a cash shortage.
It slid 5 cents, or 12%, to close at 41 cents on Friday. The issue has now lost more than 80% of its value during the past three weeks and declined steadily since a May 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that revealed it had $15.5 million in available cash at the end of April, plus $27.9 million on deposit with merchants while monthly expenses totaled $21.7 million.
The filing also said if adequate funding did not materialize, the company could be required to reduce the scope of its growth or otherwise alter its operations. An independent auditor also raised questions in April about MoviePass’ ability to continue operations.
The stock hit a 52-week high of $38.86 a share in October, two months after it lowered its monthly subscription fee from $50 to $9.95. The company is losing money because it pays movie theaters full price for the tickets its customers buy.
In an interview last week at the Cannes Film Festival, Helios and Matheson chief Ted Farnsworth told Variety that the subscription service was viable and had roughly $300 million available from an equity line of credit. The Helios chief was at the festival to premiere John Travolta’s “Gotti,” which MoviePass is releasing with Vertical Entertainment.
Helios and Matheson Analytics
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Posts Tagged ‘confession’
How is that Indians still do not know as to “Good Friday” is “Good” or “Bad” or that day is for mourning or celebration?
Business people want to do business on holidays: In a week filled with public holidays including Holi, Good Friday and Easter [(25-03-2016 (Friday), 26-03-2016 (Saturday) and 27-03-2016 (Sunday)], e-commerce sites have tried to capitalise on the four-day weekend by luring shoppers with heavy discounts[1]. It is quite natural thay business people want to do business on holidays! Therefore, the use of term ‘good Friday’ in a promotional campaign by E-commerce firm Snapdeal on Good Friday, a day observed to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, triggered a row, after which the company apologised[2], as reported by the Indian press is intriguing. It added the feason that the content of the promotions did not go down well with members of the Christian community, as despite its name, Good Friday is not a day of celebration. Instead, it is the day on which Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. It is a day of fasting and penance for the community. It is in this context that some Christians felt that the advertisements put out by Snapdeal and Myntra were in bad taste[3]. Though, these media-guys suddenly became so “christian” to defend christians had not been intelligent enough to poin out the faux pas. Ironically, the so-called intelligent or secular Indian media did not point out when the ads were put on.
Snapdeal and Myntra offers on Good Friday: Issuing an (sic) statement, the e-tailer said: “We regret the tag line used. It is an error on our part”. “We extend our sincere apologies to all whose feelings we may have hurt inadvertently. We will work to ensure that something like this never happens again,” said a Snapdeal spokes person[4]. To cash in on the extended weekends due to Holi and Good Friday, Snapdeal had sent promotional e-mails to its customers with a subject line “It’s a really really good Friday|Flat 40% Off”[5]. Another retailer Myntra also reportedly run a similar promotional campaign offering steep discounts ranging from 50 per cent to 80 per cent to its buyers on the day[6]. Despite several efforts, Myntra company officials could not be reached for comments. However, a section of people (Christians) felt offended to this as Good Friday is not a day of celebration.
It (the objection of Christians) started with Goa: “I was appalled when I got the app notification from Myntra,” said Fernando Monte Da Silva, a journalist from Panjim in Goa. “I was shocked at the ignorance and insensitivity on display.” Silva said the prefix “Good” often misleads people into thinking it is a day for celebration. There are several theories surrounding the etymology of Good Friday, one of them being that the day is “good” because Christ showed his love for mankind by dying for their sins. However, Silva said this confusion could not be used an excuse in the case. “I had a professor who wished me for Good Friday, but that is an honest mistake,” said Silva. “In a company as big as Myntra, I would assume that there would be levels of scrutiny before such content is (are) put out. Ignorance is one thing, but when you’re using it as a promo to generate revenue, that’s just taking it a tad too far.” Silva shared a screenshot of the alert on his Facebook page and triggered a debate over whether sheer ignorance was at play or whether the content writers had pushed the boundaries of creativity. Thus, this news was also created out of Twitter only!
While few BJP leaders were wrong, Modi was correct on “Good Friday”: The faux pas occurred on a day when two senior BJP leaders were today left embarrassed after they set Twitter abuzz with criticism by “wishing happiness” on the occasion of Good Friday. After all when the business people with all nuances could not know “Good Friday” is “bad”, how the poor BJP leaders know. Any way, Modi tweeteed, “Good Friday is a day of prayer & a day to remember the noble, pious & compassionate thoughts of Jesus Christ, that touched many lives”! Any way, these Hindutwa guys have not been so sophisticated as the crooked, atheist and secular Karunanidhi who wishes and weeps dramatically for all non-Hindu festivals or mournings without fail, even if they forget.
Tech In Asia ‘s campaign against campaign: Eye-popping sales and deals of the week are pretty standard marketing gimmicks for retailers across the world, online or offline[7], thus noted one Techniasia. In India, where ecommerce is seeing breakneck growth, taking up any opportunity to promote sales has become a pretty standard deal. There are Diwali sales, Christmas deals, regional celebrations and in true American fashion, even back to school campaigns. However, it has failed to record that these campaigners too had gone in “American fashion” but, took it as “Black Friday”! Over the weekend, two Indian biggies – Snapdeal and Myntra, owned by Flipkart – pushed the envelope so far, it all fell apart. They used Good Friday, the day observed to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, as promotional material. Not surprisingly, customers lashed out online, thus, Techniasia continued its big lie, as if “all customers” indulged in such lashing out. “We know it’s a Good Friday when you get 50-80 percent off,” said a Myntra campaign[8]. Snapdeal went along similar lines, saying it was a “really really good Friday,” peddling a flat forty percent off campaign on the website. Snapdeal has since apologized for the faux pas, but Myntra just told Tech In Asia it had no comments i.e, they could not be reached[9].
Snapdeal’s Arvind confessed that they were ignorant about Good Friday!: That’s telling, given how a marketing campaign in these companies would have to be vetted and approved by an entire team before it went live, and couldn’t simply be a slip by one person. “There is pressure of increasing sales on all retailers, and it’s not just on online ones. But this purely a reflection of the ineptness of the marketing department at these companies,” chairman of management consulting firm TechnopakAdvisors told Tech in Asia. However, most industry watchers said this wouldn’t make a lasting dent on either company’s brand image. India is a secular country, but about 80 percent of its population is Hindu. Industry experts say the blunder may have been lost on a number of customers, who themselves may not be well acquainted with the significance of the day of mourning. “This is ignorance, but this won’t hurt the companies in the long run. When it comes to brand image, I don’t think customers will remember for too long,” Arvind said.
Black Friday and Good Friday in American way: BlacThe business people obviously confused with “Black Friday” (sales and shopping) with “Good Friday”! Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November). Since 1932, it has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US, and most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe “The Day After Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day[10]. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005[11].
Has Christianity and Christ failed in India?: From Snapdeal to Myntra amd politicians do not know about the significance of “Good Friday”, how common people of India know? For example, how many of Indian Christians, who were converted from Hindu religion really know about it mourn? The missionaries had been fooling the heathen Indians, idolatrous Hindus and what not for the last 300 years, but, yet, the “enlightened” converted Christians could not understand the theology of Good Friday and Easter. This clearly proves the religious fraud, failure of Christianity and Christ and utter uselessness of their theology. Why then thousands of missionaries of A to Z denominations come here, spent millions and loot millions to foll Indians and also fool themselves. Let them take a relook at themselves, as the commericial companies did blunder.
© Vedapraksh
[1] Scroll.in, ‘It’s a really really good Friday’: Myntra, Snapdeal irk Christians with ‘insensitive’ ads, by Scroll Staff, Published Mar 25, 2016 · 08:10 pm. Updated Mar 25, 2016 · 08:11 pm.
[2] The Financial express, Ecommerce: Snapdeal, Myntra eat humble pie on Good Friday sales, By: PTI | New Delhi | March 25, 2016 11:25 PM
[3] http://scroll.in/article/805679/its-a-really-really-good-friday-myntra-snapdeal-irk-christians-with-insensitive-ads
[4] Hindusthan Times, Snapdeal’s faux pas: Good Friday sales tagline backfires, PTI, New Delhi, Updated: Mar 27, 2016 02:39 IST.
[5] http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/ecommerce-snapdeal-myntra-eat-humble-pie-on-good-friday-sales/229613/
[6] http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-snapdeal-apologises-for-using-really-really-good-friday-as-tag-line-for-sale-2194084
[7] Techinasia, Two of India’s biggest startups really missed the mark on Good Friday, Nivedita Bhattacharjee, 6:55 PM on Mar 28, 2016
[8] https://www.techinasia.com/myntra-snapdeal-good-friday
[9] http://www.hindustantimes.com/business/snapdeal-s-faux-pas-good-friday-sales-tagline-backfires/story-gSgHhoVtFzmIGxznabQaTO.html
[10] “Pima County in Arizona Replaces Columbus Day with Black Friday”. BestBlackFriday.com. August 7, 2013.
[11] International Council of Shopping Centers.“Holiday Watch: Media Guide 2006 Holiday Facts and Figure”.; ShopperTrak, Press Release,ShopperTrak Reports Positive Response to Early Holiday Promotions Boosts Projections for 2010 Holiday Season at the Wayback Machine (archived November 29, 2010) (November 16, 2010).
Tags:aryan, bad friday, black friday, business, communal, confession, Congress, culture, e-comerce, good friday, history, myntra, resurrection, secularism, sin, snapdeal, tradition
Posted in atheism, bad friday, black friday, brahmin, canonization, caste, communalism, dating, dating methodology, denomination, DMK, exposure, good friday, idolatory, non-Hindu, prejudice | Leave a Comment »
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I was taking a stroll through the hallways today, thinking I'd make one last stop in each of our Sunday School classrooms. But I started - and stopped - with CNN's State of the Union.
Why? Well, call me crazy but it seemed appropriate to end the year with someone interviewing Anthony Scaramucci.
Yep - that Anthony Scaramucci, the one who once called Trump a "hack politician" and an "inherited money dude from Queens County" and who gave that super focused interview with CNN back in July, in which he was super focused on telling us what the president was super focused on.
Today, the Mooch was talking with Dana Bash, for reasons that I will likely never understand. I mean, you're CNN - the most reviled network in the country, at least with the president and his followers. You're number one with a bullet on the #FakeNews list, for cripes sake - and so you end the year talking to a guy who worked for the administration for 11 days before going down in flames because of his inability to control what he says to reporters? I can only imagine that Ivana Trump or Marla Maples were unavailable to offer their opinions on how the president feels about year one.
That was Bash's first question - how is the president feeling about his first year in office?
Listen, I think the president feels great. I talked to him last Monday. And he's very happy with what happened as it related to the tax reform bill that was put in place recently. And so, listen, I think you got - 2018 is going to be a big year, a big year for the Republicans.
Honing in on the tax reform question, Bash wondered if the president was punishing Blue states in the tax bill, with the SALT provision, which limits the deductions for state and local taxes. Trump implied he could have worked with the Dems on taxes. Scaramucci knows the answer on this one, he does.
I think all the president's saying there is that there are always chips on the table for bargaining purposes. And so, because they weren't willing to deal with him, a lot of the chips that they could have used were left on the table.
And so that is actually a signal from the president. He's trying to signal the Democrats that he's ready to work with them, and that whatever chips are on the table for health care or for DACA, he's there to negotiate with them.
I mean, I think that's been the hallmark of his entrepreneurial success as a business leader, is being a great negotiator, and I think he's just trying to signal to these guys, listen, there's stuff that we can do together.
As it relates to the SALT situation, I know people on the Democratic side will say that was a punishment for the blue states. I don't think anybody sees it that way. I think we're past that as it relates to tax strategy the good relationship with Secretary Mnuchin.
The goal there was just basically to find ways to lower the overall rate, but then also make everybody a little big more competitive and accountable on their budgets at the state and local level.
So -- so to me, I think, long term, that is probably short-term states for - short-term pain for the states like the one I live in, New York. But, long term, I think it will make those states more adaptive, aggressive, and leaner and more entrepreneurial. So I think it's a good thing, by and large.
They talked a little about the FBI and the president's attack on the agency, as well as attacks from other Republicans; Scaramucci thinks it's just the president expressing some "frustration" but Bash wondered whether it's really Trump being worried about the outcome of the investigation.
After discounting that, and referencing the NY Times interview about how "he expects the investigation of Mueller to treat him very fairly" he offered some insight.
So, I'm not worried about it. I don't think he's woried about it. I think he's frustrated about it. I think he doesn't like the scandals incorporated that go on in Washington, where we find the scandal du jour to try and distract our political opponents from their agendas by picking on them personally.
And so I think that has got to stop on both sides, frankly. I have said that if Senator Clinton had become president, they would be attacking her on her emails, they would be attacking her on Uranium One.
Washington has this magnificent way of finding scandals to hit people with to distract them from their agendas. The great news about the president is, he's undistracted, he's undeterred and I think he is going to have a phenomenal 2018.
There was more after that, but there's really no point in going any further.
Because while Scaramucci may have convinced the folks at CNN that he's still close to the president, I'm not sure that's really true. Heck, I could have given any of the answers that Scaramucci did - all you have to do is watch the news.
And the answer about the "scandal du jour" and the fact that if Clinton has been elected she'd be attacked on Uranium One and her emails -- good lord, the email stuff has never stopped and Trump himself has been hammering on the Uranium One issue. News broke today that AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has ordered an investigation, as was promised last month.
The Mooch would know that, and CNN certainly should know that -- and certainly should have questioned it, instead of letting it lie like a sleeping dog.
Closing out 2017 with this guy sort is a perfect way to wind things down. And allowing interviews like this to stand without questioning the easy stuff is something that hopefully we'll see less of in the coming year.
Labels: Anthony Scaramucci, CNN State of the Union, DACA, Donald Trump, Robert Mueller, Russia, Steven Mnuchin, Sunday School, tax reform, Uranium One
The Top Five Posts of 2017
OK, we've come to the last day of December, so you know what that means, right?
Yes, the time when everyone does that backwards glance over their shoulder, looks at the year that was, and makes plans for the coming year.
I'm not going to aggravate over it too much; there are professionals who are paid a ton of money to do that. Maybe we'll have the chance to catch up with some of them later, we'll see.
In the meantime, here are the top five most-viewed posts of the year, with an excerpt from each. Not surprisingly, the president is connected to four of the five.
(1) January 21st: #NeverTrump Answers to #TrumpVoter Questions. I could have included dozens more questions and answers in this post, but limited it to a few of the most common ones that could be strung together in a conversation.
It's January 21, 2017 and it appears that at least a very vocal, and, it seems, a very large percentage of Trump voters are stuck in a 'sore winners' rut and don't know how to get out of it. Which means I guess it's up to people like me, a #NeverTrump, to try and help them out.
Yeah, we'll need more than luck, I'm afraid. But I won't give up the fight. And I will continue to fight Trump without mentioning Hillary, for this is not about who lost - it's about who won.
(2) June 3rd: Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (v1). Kathy Griffin was upset that she faced a backlash for her hideous 'joke'? Oh, stop it.
Oh, Kathy Griffin, you poor thing you. Linda Ronstadt understands, she does.
I know you spend your time on the D-list, but does that mean you're living under a rock? Had you no idea that your highly offensive "comedic" video, you slowly raising your arm to gradually display a bloody, severed Donald Trump head, would bring consequences?
Did you really think that Trump himself, the victim of your prank, would be appreciative? Did you now know that the Tweeter in Chief, his family, staff, friends and supporters would rain down 140-character responses upon your (still attached) head?
(3) October 3rd: OrangeVerse XVII Puerto Rico. The poetry posts did well this year -- apparently I'm not the only one who is fascinated by the president's use of language.
The president held a rally in (oops, my bad) visited hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico today, and boy was he proud of himself. So proud, he made everyone else tell him how wonderful he and his administration are. And then he was bigly very proud. Here he is in his own words.
My People, Tis of Thee
And to all of my people -
And I have to say
General Buchanan...
there's no doubt about it
you are a general.
There's a reason
you're a general
But he's not games:
give me a general
I don't have to have any --
I don't want
to have a general
that plays games...
(4) June 4th: Sunday School 6/24/17 - this was the one where I didn't have the heart to fight my way through the Sunday talk shows, and instead provided links to arts, music and phys ed - important yet frequently cut courses when it comes to public education spending.
Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time weeding my garden, and I don't have the energy to pull the weeds out of the comments of the people who defend Trump on the news shows.
Maybe I simply lost interest this week, after all of the absurd tweets send by #NotNowNotEver #NotMyPresident Trump.
Or maybe, it's just covfefe.
(5) November 24th: Meanwhile, Back in Albany (v12), in which we looked at the reality of expanding casino gambling in New York State. Are we getting the promised benefits from the constitutional amendment?
The sure thing the government promised us? Let's look back that that ballot initiative:
The proposed amendment to section 9 of article 1 of the Constitution would allow the Legislature to authorize up to seven casinos in New York state for the legislated purposes of promoting job growth, increasing aid to schools, and permitting local governments to lower property taxes through revenue generated.
Fun times, right? Hopes were high back in those days. Not so much now though, According to an article from earlier this month, all three of the first licencees are underperforming.
So there you have it -- another year in the books. All the best to you and yours in 2018.
Labels: 2016 Vote, Andrew Cuomo, casinos, Donald Trump, Elections, Kathy Griffin, Poetry, Puerto Rico, Sunday School, year in review
And so we come to the last TGIF of the year -- incredible, isn't it?
I was going to do one of those Year in Review things, but tonight doesn't feel like the right time to do it.
I mean, it's Friday, for Pete's sake! We should be celebrating!
So, let's do that - let's celebrate the week that was, using presidential tweets.
Saturday, December 23: Perhaps more has been accomplished by the Trump Administration than by any other president.
Or, perhaps not.
Sunday, December 24: the massive drilling in the ANWR which is opposed by a majority of US voters, according to Trump's favorite polling company? Yeah, that's a n indicator of an incredible year right there.
Monday, December 25: Say it -- I dare you, just say it!
Um, OK, sure - 'our' cherished and beautiful phrase? If you say so.
Tuesday, December 26: Where are the people shouting warnings from the rooftops that the crazy growth in the stock market is unsustainable? What ever happened to good old irrational exuberance?
Wednesday, December 27. This one, I give him. I've seen nothing to dispute that His Generals have done an excellent job on this front.
Thursday, December 28: All I can say is, now is not the time to be talking about global warming and climate change. Remember? Now is the time to be talking about taxes.
Friday, December 29: Let's end the year by bashing one of America's companies, because its founder happens to own a major national media outlet.
Completely ignoring the real reason why the USPS is losing money, and missing an opportunity to get rid of a regulation that would make a huge difference.
Yep - another week in the books.
TGIF.
Labels: Alaska, Christmas, climate change, Donald Trump, ISIS, oil drilling, Post Office, stock market, tax reform, taxes, TGIF, Twitter, Weather
Poll Watch: Looking Back at 2017
In a fascinating look at some of 2017's poll findings, the folks at Pew Research Center put numbers around some of the things we may think we know, or think we see.
Let's take a look, starting with partisanship.
If someone asked you about that, would you think that things had gotten worse of late?
You'd be right. According to polls taken in June and July of this year,
The average gap between the views of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents across 10 political values has increased from 15 percentage points in 1994 to 36 points today.
And, it seems even when the parties tend to agree with each other, the partisan gap can actually grow; here's just one example.
For the first time, a majority of Republicans (54%) favor acceptance of homosexuality; just 38% did so in 1994. Yet over this period, the increase in the share of Democrats saying homosexuality should be accepted has been much larger (54% to 83%).
Even when they move in the right direction, the Republicans fall further behind...
What about how the world views America - do you think this has changed in the first year of the Trump Administration? You'd be right if you answered yes.
Looking broadly at global confidence in the US, there was a sharp downturn from the Obama administration (64%) to the Trump administration (22%). There was an even greater shift in the 'no confidence' rate, which went from 23% under Obama to 74% under Trump.
All but two of the 37 countries surveyed noted a decline in confidence in the US president doing the right thing. The outliers? Israel (+7 for Trump over Obama) - and Russia (+42). No surprise there. Countries with steep declines in confidence include Germany (-75), South Korea (- 71), France (-70), Spain (-68), Canada (-61) and the UK (-57).
Another interesting finding has to do with the effect of post-secondary education on the country.
Nearly six-in-ten Republicans and Republican leaners (58%) now say colleges have a negative effect. Two years ago, by contrast, 54% of Republicans said colleges were having a positive effect. Democrats and Democratic leaners have consistently held positive views of the effect of colleges on the US: 72% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say this today.
Those negative Republicans? Last year, the number was only 45%.
And the last one we'll look at has to do with the media. Not #fakenews, but opinions on the watchdog role the media plays.
70% of US adults believe that criticism from news organizations keeps political leaders from doing things that shouldn't be done; while 28% think that media criticism keeps political leaders from doing their jobs.
But in a survey from March of this year, there's a 47 point gap between Democrats and Republicans on this question, with 89% of Dems thinking the watchdog role is a positive and only 42% of Reps believing the same.
As recently as early 2016 (January/February), 74% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans shared that same supportive role for the watchdog media!
These days, it's almost hard to imagine there being a time when the Rs were more supportive of the media than the Ds, isn't it?
There are other interesting findings in the report, including opinions about automation; race and privilege; religions; and living without partners. It's a great snapshot of this remarkable year, helped in large part because the folks at Pew have asked the same questions over time, some of them for decades.
I'm thinking it'll be fun to look at these same surveys again next year, to see whether the Trump effect continues, or if things establish a sense of balance - even if it's an out-of-whack version of balance.
Labels: Donald Trump, France, Germany, Israel, opinions, Politics, Poll Watch, Russia, South Korea, United Kingdom
Random Post-Christmas Noodling
Back from a well-deserved few days off (I did deserve it right?) and catching up on things.
So, raise your hand if you've got battle scars from the war on Christmas. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
Honestly, I can see people maybe having battle scars from Christmas, especially in blended families where the dinner table conversation can turn ugly like a Christmas sweater, but not so much from the war on Christmas. Which is why it's probably a good thing the president ended that battle, before anyone got seriously hurt.
Do we know yet which of His Generals was responsible for this Operation Santa Buster?
And at what point did Merry Christmas become OUR cherished and beautiful phrase? Who is the 'our' he's talking about? Americans? White people? Evangelicals? Is it possible he truly doesn't know that Christmas is not an American holiday, or does he simply not care?
Speaking of Christmas, I was able to have my life-size cutout Donald Trump join one of our family Christmas gatherings. One of our younger family members -- an 11-year-old -- came around the corner and only saw the back of the cut out, and asked me who it was. I turned it towards him and got a "oh, him!" and a monster eye roll, and then it was back to some Merry Christmasing. Cracked me up.
What else has been going on? Well, it seems someone thought a package of horse manure would make a nice Christmas present for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
It was one of those gag cards you can buy in a drugstore. "Merry Catsmess!" read the caption. And in a personal touch, as if for emphasis, Robby Strong had enclosed a box of horse manure. "To Stevie," he wrote on the envelope, meaning Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for whose doorstep the manure was bound.
"We're returning the 'gift' of the Christmas tax bill. It's bulls---." Strong wrote on the card. "Warmest Wishes, The American People."
Strong, who at least at the time he delivered the manure in the general neighborhood of Mnuchin worked as a psychologist for LA County, believed his actions were necessary.
In the long run, if we don't do stuff like this, what are we going to have left? What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did when he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers, who were exploiting the people financially in the name of religion. I feel like that's what the GOP has done to the American people.
"If we don't do stuff like this, what are we going to have left?"
We'd have Mike Huckabee, maybe? We'll have him for a while longer, anyway - although, after he compared Donald Trump to Winston Churchill, not sure how much longer. Reaction was swift after this tweet:
Several referenced Trump's bone spurs (real or imagined). Others called out Churchill's intellect, his service, and that he unified his country - three things which have rarely been said about Trump by anyone other than Trump. Others were sharply critical of Huckabee's comedic skills. It's a fun read, if you have a few minutes.
The last one I was going to highlight was Orrin Hatch being named Utahn of the Year by the Salt Lake Tribune. Similar to Time Magazine's Man, Woman, Person, thing, movement, word, or hashtag of the Year, the honorific can be given for the best of reasons, or the worst of them.
According to the paper's editorial board,
The selection of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch as the 2017 Utahn of the Year has little to do with the fact that, after 42 years, he is the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, that he has been a senator from Utah longer than three-fifths of the state's population has been alive. It has everything to do with recognizing:
Hatch's part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
His role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation's tax code.
His utter lack of integrity that raises from his unquenchable thirst for power.
But, instead of talking about that, I'd rather point you to this guitar composition by Frank Zappa titled Orrin Hatch on Skis -- I kid you not.
I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. Happy holidays!
Labels: Christmas, Donald Trump, holidays, Orrin Hatch, Politics, random, Steven Mnuchin
It's the Friday before Christmas, and that for sure is a perfect reason for some TGIF wishes, don't you think?
We do have other reasons to raise a TGIF glass to this week, though. We've got the beautiful massive tax cut bill signed, sealed and delivered.
If all goes according to plan, we'll start seeing changes on February 1st, according to the president. And then on April 17th we'll start getting giddy about what we won't have to go through in 2019 when we'll be able to file our taxes on a postcard. Or something.
I don't know for sure what it will mean to our taxes -- I can't tell for sure, because the different calculators I've seen are all giving different results. But, boy, some folks must know EXACTLY what it means for them, because Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas has done the math.
Under #TaxCutsandJobsAct a married couple earning $100,000 per year ($60,000 from wages, $25,000 from their non-corporate business, and $15,000 in business income) will receive a tax cut of $2,603.50, a reduction of nearly 24 percent.
Right down to the half dollar, by jeepers! That's some pretty darn good number-crunching. Think he was using a Texas Instruments calculator?
We also had some testimony from Andrew McCabe, the Deputy Director of the FBI, before Congress this week. Seems he pissed off a lot of people by telling them James Comey let him know the gist of Trump's 'loyalty pledge' nonsense. That shouldn't sit well with Congress, nor with the president.
We had 'taking names' at the UN, and then we invited the countries that didn't vote against us to a party. In case you're wondering, the countries joining us and Israel were Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Togo.
But perhaps the most important thing that happened this week was the giant GOPgasm that happened at the White House. Fair warning - this picture may be disturbing. The faint of heart may want to avert their eyes.
There was dancing on the White House lawn, I tell ya! Giddy like children given too much candy by Grandma or something. To their credit, they waited until they actually had passed the darn thing, instead of that mess that happened the last time they tried this, remember the ill-fated health care 'repeal and replace' bill back in the spring?
Do you think next time they pass something, they'll bring in athletes to show them how to celebrate right?
TGIF, and Merry Christmas. Your postcard's in the mail.
Labels: Donald Trump, FBI, James Comey, Nikki Haley, taxes, TGIF, United Nations
Anyone not a corporation or other specific beneficiary of the GOP's 'massive' tax plan celebrating tonight, I wonder?
I hope my friends at AT & T be celebrating when they get their promised $1000 bonus. The bonus is being paid as a "Hey, about our merger with Comcast? We're promising $1B in investments, and a couple hundred million in bonuses, and we sure as hell hope that makes you like our merger way more bigly than you do now!"
Of course, one could cynically wonder how hard it would have been for AT & T to give this kind of bonus in the past, with or without a merger on the line or a corporate tax cut dangled in front of them. After all, according to this NY Times article from March, the company has benefited handsomely from tax subsidies.
In fact, it was the biggest winner of all companies receiving subsidies between 2008 and 2015:
AT & T: ($38.1 billion)
Wells Fargo ($31.4 billion)
JPMorgan Chase ($22.2 billion)
Verizon ($21.1 billion)
IBM ($17.8 billion)
General Electric ($15.4 billion)
Exxon Mobil ($12.9 billion)
Boeing ($11.9 billion)
Procter & Gamble ($8.5 billion)
Twenty-First Century Fox ($7.6 billion)
Time Warner ($6.7 billion)
Goldman Sachs ($5.5 billion)
Wells Fargo, number two on the list the heavily subsidized and a remarkably ethically challenged company, opening more than three million fake accounts on behalf of unknowing customers, firing 5000+ employees (as if they cooked up the whole scheme to open the accounts), and more, also announced it was raising the company's minimum wage to $15/hour and was planning $400M in philanthropic efforts next year. Call me crazy, but this is a company desperate to remake its reputation, and oh by the way is (maybe) facing almost $200M in penalties for their continued bad acts. I wonder if that has anything to do with their immediate announcement about how wonderful they are?
And I also wonder if Bernie Sanders is happy about the $15 an hour, or if he's mad about the corporate tax cut? Talk about being between a rock and a hard place, right?
Speaking of winners and losers, I've lost some respect for Maine's Senator Susan Collins for her votes on the tax bill. You'll remember initially she was a no on the bill, because she had serious concerns about the lack of funding for the cost-sharing reduction payments that were being made under the Affordable Care Act (the president killed the subsidies back in October, you'll recall), and she had concerns about the the anticipated increase in premiums stemming from the repeal of the individual mandate, which was included in the tax bill. In an exchange on the Senate floor, Collins obtained assurances from Mitch McConnell that the Senate would take up her two issues, "ideally prior to the adoption of any tax reform conference agreement and certainly before the end of the year."
That may mean before the end of 2018. Well, OK, probably sooner -- Collins issued a statement today with Sen. Lamar Alexander talking about maybe Valentine's Day would be more reasonable. I have to wonder what other "ideally" and "certainly" promises McConnell and his team made to other members of his caucus that will not be kept?
Finally tonight, let's wonder a little what the heck was going through Rosie O'Donnell's mind when she tweeted this potentially criminal offer:
I know I'm not the only one wondering if, like Kathy Griffin, O'Donnell will soon be parading her apology for all the world to see? Or, will she get the knock on the door from law enforcement asking if they can have a chat about her tweet before she gets the chance to suitably apologize?
What are you wondering about?
Labels: AT&T, Bernie Sanders, Ethics, GOP, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Collins, taxes, Wells Fargo, Wondering on Wednesday
WWYD: Disaster Tax Relief
As we wait for the House to re-approve the "massive tax cut for the middle class" today (after yesterday's SNAFU on a handful of provisions not meeting Senate reconciliation rules), and wait for another 'excitable boy' gavel bang from Paul Ryan, I thought it would be fun to put some of the changes through the What Would You Do? meter.
The Rs have said their plan 'reforms' and 'simplifies' our tax code; they did that by tinkering or massaging a tax benefit here and there. Tax benefits, for the purpose of this discussion, includes those things people derisively refer to as loopholes - things that benefit only certain Americans, primarily 'other people' (hence the derision).
One of these benefits extends to people who suffer losses from disasters such as floods and fires.
Right now, disaster victims can deduct losses that aren't insured and that amount to more than 10 percent of their incomes.
So, think about friends, family and others living in the Gulf Coast or Puerto Rico who were impacted by the hurricanes and floods earlier this year. Think back to Sandy, Irene, Katrina, and Andrew and all of the other storms we remember by name.
Think about all of the people who were impacted by the flooding right here in NY along the Lake Ontario shore, for months. The official declaration was made for most of counties along the shore back in November, but some were left out and are waiting for a review to be finished to know for sure whether they'll be included in the declaration.
It's easy to picture losses from those and other disasters far exceeding 10% of a homeowner's income, isn't it, especially since flood insurance is prohibitively expensive for many people? And, especially since in many cases (my own backyard included) the flood maps don't make a whole heckuva lot of sense outside coastal areas, major rivers, and other obviously flood-prone areas.
Think about all of the people who have lost their homes in the California fires this year - epic and historic wildfires, still burning. Sure, some of them are celebrities, but most of them are just regular folks, right?
So, what's different after the GOP's massaging of this loophole? Well,
Under the new tax plan, the deduction could only be claimed for those disasters that the president declares a federal emergency. The proposed change would go into effect January 1, 2018, meaning disaster victims could file one final deduction this year if they experienced a loss that did not receive Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) support.
What's the impact of the change? It's hard to say for sure, but we do have some historical info.
In 2015, more than 72,000 people filed a casualty or theft deduction resulting in $1.6B in claims, according to the IRS' Statistics of Income Division (The IRS lumps casualty and theft deductions together in its count).
Most of us can pretty readily recall the big ones, the national disasters that do receive the presidential declaration, but unless we are paying particular attention or are personally impacted, it's harder to remember the ones that don't. Here's a reminder of just one that didn't make the cut.
The historic wildfires that hit Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado last March, however, did not receive a federal disaster designation, meaning those affected would not have been able to utilize the personal-loss deductions if such an event had occurred under the new tax plan...
Losses to the High Plains wildfires last March were significantly less (than those associated with Harvey and Irma). The fires burned 2100 square miles in the four states, causing about $55 million in fence losses. In Texas alone, the personal losses to farmers and ranchers was estimated at $25.1 million.
While farm and ranch losses to wildfire, tornadoes, etc., pale in comparison to damage from major hurricanes, losses to individuals from either event are the same.
So, if you were making the decisions about how our tax plan should work, what would you do about deductions for disasters?
Allow deductions, with no percent of income limitation, regardless of whether a federal disaster is declared.
Allow deductions, with a percent of income limitation, regardless of whether a federal disaster is declared.
Allow deductions, with no percent of income limitation, only when a federal disaster is declared.
Allow deductions, with a percent of income limitation, only when a federal disaster is declared.
Do not allow deductions, but offer low interest federal loans to everyone to cover uninsured losses.
Do not allow deductions, but offer low interest federal loans only to those households with income under $200,000.
Do not allow deductions or federal loans; the homeowner, rancher, businessman, etc. would be responsible for either having enough insurance to protect themselves, or being able to secure loans through state or local governments or their financial institutions.
Have at it, legislators.
Labels: FEMA, GOP, hurricanes, natural disasters, Paul Ryan, tax reform, taxes, What Would You Do, WWYD
They Said It 12/19/17
Some random quotes from people who matter. Or, maybe not.
First, in international diplomacy, we've got this:
At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American people about where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thursday there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names. ~UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
And on the GOP Christmas present, we've got a few:
I oppose this conference report with every bone in my body. This tax bill is a $2.3 trillion holiday gift for Wall Street, the rich, and the wealthy, Conceived in darkness and birthed with the help of donor and funders. This bill is not for the people. It is not tax reform. ~Georgia Democrat Rep. John Lewis
If people are out there on TV telling mistruths, disguising the facts of this thing, that's going to make it unpopular. When you have a slingfest - a mudfest - on TV when pundits are slamming each other about this tax bill before it passes, that's what's going to happen. But when we get this done, when people see their withholding improving, when they see the jobs occurring, when they see a simpler tax code, that's what's going to produce the results. And results are going to be what makes this popular. ~House Speaker Paul Ryan
While the bill agreed to in conference today makes some improvements, unfortunately, the changes do not go far enough to guarantee tax relief for constituents in my district. Californians need tax relief now more than ever, especially as the tax factory in our State Capitol continues looking for ever increasing ways to take more of our hard-earned paychecks. Yet I still fear that, even in the revised proposal, many in my area could face higher taxes under this plan. Californians have entrusted me to fight for them. I will not vote to make the incredible tax burden they already endure even worse. California Republican Rep Darrell Issa
We think a lot of good provisions got left on the cutting room floor after the Senate Byrd bath there, so we're going to assess each of them to decide what the path forward is. ~House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady, talking about the provisions that got dropped from the Conference tax bill when it went to the Senate.
CEOs aren't waiting on a tax cut to "jump-start the economy" -- a favorite phrase of politicians who have never run a company - or to hand out raises. It's pure fantasy to think that the tax bill will lead to significantly higher wages and growth, as Republicans have promised. Had Congress actually listened to executives, or economists who study these issues carefully, it might have realized that. ~Billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg
And finally, as if the news wasn't odd enough, I'll close with this.
Saying the animals would not pause for a second if given the chance, a new study published by the University of Wisconsin on Tuesday found that chickens would have absolutely no qualms about caging and eating humans. "All the evidence clearly suggests that chickens would absolutely stuff human beings into poorly ventilated cages and then eat them without any hesitation whatsoever," said lead author Aliyah Carter, adding that the domestic fowls would not waver at all if the opportunity arose to cram people into windowless, disease-ridden coops and overfed them to the point that their legs literally could not support their bodies. ~The Onion
Labels: corporations, Darrell Issa, economy, John Lewis, Michael Bloomberg, news, Nikki Haley, Paul Ryan, taxes, They Said it, wages
I dropped in NBC's Meet the Press this morning.
One of Chuck Todd's guests was Marc Short, the Trump administration's director of legislative affairs, who was there to talk mostly about the GOP's tax plan. Todd started out by playing a number of Trump's promises about tax reform:
At the center of our plan is massive tax relief for the American middle class.
We're gonna have three brackets instead of seven we're doing a major major major simplification.
And we're gonna make it nice and simple. And we're getting rid of carried interest.
All of this does not add to our debt or deficit. In other words it's going to cost me a fortune!
And then he asked Short about those broken promises. Here's his answer.
Chuck there are many deliveries here in the bill that the president made promises on. One, it does simplify the tax code, some of the things you're not talking about is that it eliminates oil and gas production credits, it also eliminates many deductions that families and businesses were taking such as specifically lobbying expenses. It's helping to drain the swamp.
There are promises he made he delivered on. There are certain industries here that made it impossible for us to deliver on every single one of those. But keep in mind what's most important, Chuck, we've lowered the corporate rate from 35% to 21% to bring jobs back to our country. That was a signature accomplishment in this bill, a 40% reduction.
He is lowering and delivering middle income tax relief to families across the country. For an average single mom earning $40,000 with two children, she gets a $1400 tax benefit. For the average family of four earning $70,000 they get a $2000 benefit. He delivered on his promise to focus on middle income families as well as to provide corporate tax relief. The simplification, there are several elements we did simplify. We didn't get as much as we want, it's a part of the compromise here you have to work with.
Todd asked about Short leading with the corporate rate being the "signature accomplishment" of the bill, and how that part is permanent but the individual aspects are not. In part, short blamed the Senate's budget reconciliation process.
We would love to have the individual side permanent too. The reality is that corporations need to make investments years in advance to know what's going to happen as opposed to numbers continuing to gyrate. You're giving them assurances to where we're going to be 10 years out so they can make long term investments in our country. The budget reconciliation rules in the Senate are somewhat arcane and make it difficult to do both. If we could get the individual side permanent, we would love to do that also and we will continue to try and work to do so.
In response to a question about bipartisanship and real tax reform, Short noted, among other things
Oh, it is real reform. It's the most significant tax reform we've had since 1986.
Fast forward past the conversation about entitlements and more Trump campaign promises, which the cynic in me says will be dropped like hot potatoes once the tax plan is approved, and about the Mueller investigation, to the final round table discussion.
It's not always I find myself agreeing with George Will, but he nailed it
Well, first of all, (Short) said it's the best simplification since 1986 which is rather like being the tallest building in Topeka. The fact is, they took a 70,000 page tax code and made it more complicated. Then the question rises, "well, will the Republicans reform entitlements?" The tax code enriches the entitlement menu by doubling the child tax code and making $1400 of it refundable which means a check goes out to people who don't pay taxes.
Because, well, Republicans are the ones who think paying people to have more children is wrong. Right?
Will also called out something about the corporate tax rate that most folks don't consider - where does the money paying the taxes actually come from?
Lowering the corporate tax rate, the proper rate for corporation taxation is zero because we don't know who pays them. Economists argue about whether it comes out of employees' wages, shareholders, passed onto customers. If you don't know who's paying a tax, don't have that tax.
And finally, he said one of the things I've long maintained.
Reduce it to 21%, it's a great thing to do. But any company that was paying 35% needed to fire its lawyers and accountants. The fact is most companies are paying on average of about 28% anyway.
What a fantastic accomplishment for the GOP. and Merry Christmas to us.
See you around campus - after the New Year.
Labels: Chuck Todd, Donald Trump, Meet the Press, NBC, Sunday School, tax reform, taxes
Meanwhile Back in Albany (v13)
Nathaniel Brooks/NY Times photo
It's everywhere, the insidious scourge of sexual harassment.
Hollywood. The media. The House and Senate. State governments. Doctors offices and hospitals. Schools. Athletic institutions, including the Olympics. The music industry. The boardroom. Restaurant kitchens.
It's everywhere - including, allegedly, in the administration of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York City, Lisa Marie Cater alleges that William (call me Sam) Hoyt, who worked as head of the Empire State Development Corporation, repeatedly made unwanted advances, and further that the harassment was reported to and ignored by Cuomo's office, which is why Cuomo is a named defendant in the suit. The governor's office denies ignoring the complaints.
Meanwhile, back in Albany, the governor had the opportunity to respond to a question from Karen Dewitt, a reporter for New York Public Radio, on this issue, and it's safe to say that it didn't go well for the Sonofa Gov.
Dewitt noted the Hoyt allegations and asked Cuomo what he could do differently, and here's how he responded.
You have it going on in journalism. What are you going to do differently?
OK - sure, that's true, but this is a reporter talking to a governor who is a defendant in a sexual harassment case involving an appointee of the governor. There was some exchange after that comment, including a different reporter pointing out that the question was about state government. That didn't sit well.
No, it's about you and journalism (pointing his finger at the other reporter). And it's about you and journalism (turning to Dewitt and pointing again). And it's about state government. And it's about carpentry and it's about training forces... (Note: that last one may not be accurate, it was hard to understand what he said.)
Again, Dewitt asked if there was something that Cuomo could do differently. Apparently, his only option on that was to lecture Dewitt, using his best professorial intonation, especially at the end of this exchange.
We will have policies in state government, obviously, that affect state government, but I think you miss the point. When you "it's state government" you do a disservice to women, with all due respect, even though you're a woman.
Um... what the hell is that?
Asking the gov about what his administration will do about sexual harassment is doing a disservice to women, "with all due respect?" I don't know about you, but most of the time when someone drops those four words, 'all due respect' is the furthest thing from the speaker's mind.
It's about as condescending a thing he could have said, other than maybe pointing out that the reporter was a woman. Oh wait -- he did that too.
He went on with the lecture, with a heavy emphasis added on journalists and the journalism profession.
It's not government. It's society. It was Harvey Weinstein in the arts industry. It's comedians. It's politicians. It's chefs, right? It's systemic. It's societal. It's not one person in one area. It's not just Charlie Rose, right? It's not just Matt Lauer. It's not just journalists. It's societal.
Finally, slowing down the pace of his answer to something slower than a school closing chyron, hie finished his lecture.
Understand. The. Breadth. Of. The. Problem.
Which, frankly, is exactly what Dewitt and the other reporters were hoping Cuomo would do, specifically as it relates to him, not as it relates to anyone else. To her credit, Dewitt tried one last time to get him to name one thing he'd do to make things different in his administration. In a classic deflection, he changed the subject.
No! It's called the State of the State. Come and cover it...
I swear, you could almost hear his feet stamping.
Boy, I miss his father.
Labels: Andrew Cuomo, Harvey Weinstein, Mario Cuomo, MBIA, Meanwhile Back in Albany, media, sexual harassment
OrangeVerse XXIV: Tell it to the Marines
Every once in awhile, the president leaves Washington and goes out among the people. Or, 'his' people - you know, the ones in the states that voted for him; he rarely goes anywhere he lost, as we know. When he's out and about, he 'tells it on the mountain' about how great he is. In this case, he told it to the Marines.
So they gave me this hat.
It says
Presidential Helicopter Squadron.
Would you wear it?
No, no other president would do this
But I will because
I'm proud of you.
Oh you are nice..
You are - you mean
so you're the ones
taking care of my helicopter right?
I better be nice to you
I better be nice to you.
I'm Very Spoiled
I 've had many helicopters
you know I'm very spoiled
I've had helicopters.
And we ordered a couple
of big beautiful new ones
You know about that right?
They paid a lot more
than I would have paid
and I would have had them
even better but
we won't talk about that.
They paid a lot of money.
My Own Private Marine
Well it is great to be here
surrounded the by the Marines.
You know I have a
four-star Marine.
We just had to get it right
so I picked a four star Marine.
Could have picked a lot of people
Everybody wants to be chief of staff right
But I had to go to the Marines.
Where's Kelly?
Come on over here Kelly.
Come here.
Say hello.
There's Another One
In fact, I've been listening
and I have to tell you
it's true with General Kelly
but I have a lot of Marines...
Another one is a man named
Mad Dog Mattis, right?
They like him.
I love that name
I don't know if he likes it
actually. I've never
figured out if he likes
but he really deserves
the name.
I let the do their job.
And I let the colonels and
the majors and the
all of them - the captains
that's what they do.
They graduate,
they're smart they're tough
and they do their job...
Afghanistan is a tough place to win.
But we're winning. We just started winning.
And I just want to thank
Secretary Mattis and I really
want to thank the
United States Marines - really special people.
So you're fantastic people.
Dinner and a Movie?
We're working every day on your behalf
and together we are going to
make America stronger than ever before.
You know, I ran a campaign
and it was a very successful campaign
you might have heard about it - and
we won very easily. We won by -
we had 306 Electoral College votes
to 223 or something like that.
Remember they used to say
There is no way for Trump
to get to 270.
Remember? Over and over again.
That's called voter suppression.
If you believe that you might say
I love Trump but
I'm not going to waste my time
let's go see a movie
and we'll come home and
watch the results tonight.
But everybody said
No I'm not going to a movie
we're going to vote
and they voted.
And we didn't get to 270
we got 306.
That's even better right?
So we had an amazing time
But I had an expression
that I think goes down
as the best of all time.
It was very simple.
Make America Great Again.
And that's what
we're doing we're
Making America Great Again.
And it's people like yourselves
that are doing it.
I am so impressed.
A Big Beautiful Kiss
So, again
I want to thank you all.
Say hello to you families.
Tell them the respect
I have for them because they have to
put up with everything
so this can all happen.
They don't get
the credit they should get
you know, they don't get the -
the families
never ever get the credit.
But they have done
an incredible job in
this kind of - when they
produce people like you.
So you go home
and you give your
families a big
beautiful kiss from the
because we're
proud of them and we're
really, really
proud of you.
Labels: Donald Trump, Elections, General Kelly, General Mattis, Marines, OrangeVerse, Poetry, Quantico
Yeah, that's all I've got.
Labels: TGIF
Let's get right to it, shall we?
Since the president doesn't watch television, I wonder who had the unpleasant task of informing Donald Trump that, thanks to young people, African Americans, women and write-in voters, he was a two-time loser in the Alabama Senate race?
And, like practically everyone (and by everyone I mean all of the real human beings) who follows the president on Twitter, I wonder who it was that wrote the initial tweet sent on the @realDonaldTrump page congratulating Doug Jones? Clearly these are not the words of the president:
Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people are Alabama are great and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!
Nah - we had to wait until the morning before the real @aRealDonaldTrump put out his own words:
The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!
Of course, we don't know why Trump originally endorsed Big Luther, because he deleted most of those tweets as soon as Strange lost, and became a stranger to Trump.
I wonder, also, why Trump spent so much time talking about Nancy Pelosi in his comments about Doug Jones. As we learned back in 2010, Nancy is quite athletic, but I don't think that she wields power over both the House and the Senate at the same time, does she?
Switching gears, we're told via #FakeNews that the House and Senate conference group working on reconciling the tax reform bill have come to terms, which include implementing the new 21% corporate tax rate next year.
That's a tick up from the 20% the House wanted, but it goes into effect a year sooner than the Senate would have done in their version, so it's a win for corporations who will be bringing jobs and billions back to America.
But I have to wonder, are the reports even true, given the source?
Labels: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Roy Moore, tax reform, taxes, television, Wondering on Wednesday
Trump in Transition (v26)
He's a mean one, Mr. Trump. A jerk, a slime, a pig! Oh -- sorry. I must have been typing out loud again.
The president continues his backsliding, hateful transition to the oafish NYC real estate developer he was before, well, before that fateful escalator ride.
He's a pig, for sure -- by his own admission. He's rude - countless examples, not the least of which was his Megyn Kelly 'blood coming out of her...wherever' which, as he told us, meant her eyes (yeah, right) or his comment about Carly Fiorina's face. Or Rosie O'Donnell. Or flatchested women the world over.
So who is the latest victim of this delightful man and his petty attacks? That would Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of course. And what did she do to Trump? Well, let's take a look at her tweets from earlier today.
When it comes to sexual assault, harassment and the general mistreatment of women, we must be able to call out anyone, Democrat or Republican.
As elected leaders, let's rise to the occasion and not shrink away from it. That is what the larger #MeToo movement is all about. Let's send a clear message none of this is okay.
That means Farenthold should step aside. Moore should never set foot in the Senate, and president Trump should be held accountable.
The accusations against more are disgusting. And president Trump has admitted on tape to how he treats women. His campaigning for Moore isn't leadership, it's shameful.
We are in a moment of reckoning - and the silence from Republicans is deafening. It is long past time for them to join Democrats in holding members of their own party accountable.
President Trump should resign. But, of course, he won't hold himself accountable. Therefore, Congress should investigate the multiple sexual harassment and assault allegations against him.
Now, I appreciate there are some very strong feelings about Gillibrand's position. She led the charge against Al Franken with her zero tolerance position, which endeared her to many and blew any chance she had of becoming president, according to others. Heck -- some commenters want her primaried for what she did to Franken; they, and others, feel she was both late to the game on calling out Trump, and wrong to call for an investigation of the creep-in-chief but not allowing Franken the same courtesy. It's a mixed bag, for sure.
And after all of this, there was the Trump response, which was bigly presidential as you might imagine.
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office "begging" for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill and Crooked - USED!
Garbled message aside ("begging"? Disloyal to Bill and Crooked? USED! -- #WhatTheSniff), it's hard not to notice the (and would do anything for them) comment nestled in there, isn't it? What do you think he meant?
a. This is simply talking about a rigged system that we have that is broken, in which special interests control our government.
b. This is a (fill in the blank) shooting off his mouth because, well, because he's a (fill in the blank) who frequently acts like a (fill in the blank), in the most presidential way possible.
c. This was an attempt to bully, intimidate and slut-shame Senator Gillibrand.
d. This was a statement by a misogynist, compulsive liar, and admitted sexual predator and a bully from whom no one is safe.
Yeah - no matter which response you pick, the guy's a pig, a jerk, and a slime.
And no, I won't respect the office if the person occupying it doesn't have the sense to. And he's still #notmypresident.
Labels: Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump, Kirsten Gillibrand, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, sexism, Trump in Transition
OrangeVerse XXIII: Congratulations
Last Friday, the president spoke at the swearing in ceremony for his new Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen. She was previously chief of staff at DHS under then Secretary General John Kelly, who left that department to become Trump's chief of staff. Here's how the verse went down.
Well, this
is an honor.
You've been with us
so long now.
Anyway, I have no doubt.
And it's going to be incredible
what takes place.
I want to start
by thanking Elaine.
You've done so well
and we really appreciate it.
And I know
you'll e here
for a long while and
but this
is a very special occasion
because this
is an issue I ran on --
it's borders, it's
homeland security.
And it's one of the
certainly important things.
I can't ever say
anything is the most important
because our military
is the most important
and lots of
But this is right here.
This is one of the
real big issues.
And I just want to
congratulate you on
such an important
day for our country.
The numbers have been
so incredible,
they're up to 78 percent.
if they used to have
a 1 percent or 2 percent number
they used to celebrate.
we're at 78 percent.
And it went down
a little bit because
a lot of people
aren't trying
to come in so much
because they know
it's not easy.
But you're going to
take it to new levels.
We're going to
get the wall.
I know you want
the wall.
If we don't
get the wall,
then I got a lot
of very unhappy people
starting with me.
We're going
to get the wall.
And we need it.
We need it
for the drug flow,
coming into our country.
And we want
to have great people
We want to have
a merit-based system.
We have to get
rid of chain
migration --
all of these things
we've been talking about.
And in addition
to the wall, we
have to toughen
up the borders
even more. And we
up air travel too.
It's not
just walls;
it's lots of people
fly in and
they come in through
other means.
But I have
absolutely no doubt
you're going to be
so outstanding
And I'd like to
congratulate you
and I wanted to
be here
for the big moment.
Labels: Donald Trump, Homeland Security, immigration, OrangeVerse, Poetry, southern border, The Wall
Reactions to the Franken Statement
OrangeVerse XXII: A Present, Accounted For
The Speaker Speaks to NPR (Pt two)
The Speaker Speaks to NPR (Pt one)
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What kind of week did you have?
Was it better than, say, Paul Manafort? I'd say probably. Manafort got himself in to a little hot water with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, will lose his plea deal, and may face new charges and another trial. And, at the same time he was lying and violating his deal with Mueller's team, Manafort's lawyer was sharing information with the president's legal team - pretty ballsy, for sure. For more information on the trials and tribulations and twists and turns of the Manafort saga, check out this link to stories he's mentioned in from The Guardian.
Was your week better than, say, Michael Cohen's? We now know that he's admitted lying to Congress, which is a bad thing, but he's definitely living up to his 'putting family and country first' mantra much more so now than his old "I'd take a bullet for Donald Trump' mantra of the past - and for that, I like the new Cohen more than the old one. And shame on the GOP for coming to a quick conclusion that there was no 'there' there in their House investigation. You know, the "we love you, man!" probe that was full of nonsense and Nunes...
The president himself, well, he's not had the best week ever, with these new issues coming out of Mueller's camp. And while 'he' did 'win' the Mississippi Senate runoff between the 'front row seat the the hanging' Republican and 'the guy with the same name as those TV awards' Democrat, Trump and his family (Eric, Donny Jr, and Ivanka) and even Mike Pence all 'lost' the race for the NY House seat, as Claudia Tenney finally conceded to Dem Anthony Brindisi. But, silly me, those House races don't matter, the president doesn't care about them, I forgot.
But there were folks who had really good weeks. Like Riley Morrison, the 9-year-old girl - or should I say, the 9-year-old basketball player - who was disappointed in NBA star Steph Curry, and let him know about it. She wrote him to complain that his signature shoes were only sold under the Boys section of the Under Armour website. Here's an excerpt from Riley's letter to Curry:
I know you support girl athletes because you have two daughters and you host an all-girls basketball camp. I hope you can work with Under Armour to change this, because girls want to rock the Curry 5s, too.
That oversight was quickly corrected - you'll find the Curry 5s under both the Boys and Girls sections of the UA website now. And there's more, as you can see from Curry's response to Morrison. After letting her know the website issue was being corrected, he added:
I want to make sure you can wear my kicks proudly -so I am going to send you a pair of Curry 5s now and you'll be one of the first kids to get the Curry 6. Lastly, we have something special in the works for International Women's Day on March 8, and I want you to celebrate with me! More to come on that, but plan to be in Oakland that night!
And finally, there's a group of people who had also had a really good week. Over 100 NICU nurses at Mercy Children's Hospital in St Louis won $10,000 on the Mega Millions, and promptly donated the money to two coworkers. One had lost her son to suicide, the other's husband is battling cancer. They needed the money more than the winners, and the winners needed to help others more than they needed their post-tax $50 each.
These last two stories made my week a little better; I hope they do the same for you.
Labels: Claudia Tenney, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Michael Cohen, Mike Pence, Paul Manafort, Robert Mueller, TGIF
Grains of Salt (v39): Innovation Station
Grains of Salt
What's a city to do when there are more services needed than it can possibly provide?
Try something completely different, that's what. And that's what Syracuse is looking to do, by joining the Startup in Residence (STiR) program.
STiR works with city and state government partners to formalize 'challenges' that startups from around the world can apply - think of kind of a matching program. A scope of work is developed and then over a sixteen week residency, the government and startup collaborate on researching, designing, building and testing solutions. If, at the end of the residency, the agreed-upon scope of work and requirements are met and a good relationship has been developed, the government secures the services of the startup to implement the solution. Sounds like a really cool program and one of those 'win-win' situations we hear about so often:
governments get innovative solutions to problems, as well as a partner to implement them;
startups get access to customers that are looking for what they have to offer, vs. having to generically pitch their ideas
and citizens get proven solutions to problems that may otherwise go unsolved.
Syracuse put five challenges out for consideration:
Autonomous snow clearing technology for sidewalks. We have miles of them, and many of them are not the perfectly smooth concrete that we see around office buildings or shopping mall. Instead, they're busted concrete, or asphalt on top of concrete, or full of roots and dirt and what not. Bottom line? We need something that's going take a beating and keep clearing the snow. This one's important, not only because we get a lot of snow, but because uncleared sidewalks put residents on the street - school kids, the disabled, and the elderly among them.
Crowdsourcing platform for low-income renters to obtain loans for their security deposits. This one's interesting - come up with a way to connect people who are willing to do short-term small dollar loans for folks who need help pulling together the deposits for apartments. This can be overwhelming for people, particularly those who are forced to move for reasons outside their control (landlord issues, code violations, 'included' utilities not being paid, and so on). Sadly, Syracuse has a high percentage of residents who are 'housing unstable' who could be helped by this type of program. The solution being looked for would be similar to Kiva.org, a global platform that connects lenders and small business owners.( Here's a glimpse into US lending opportunities, in case you're unfamiliar with this program - I was.).
Data analytics platform for waste management. While there are some rules and regulations governing how much and what kinds of trash can be put put for pickup by the Syracuse DPW, we're data-challenged and can't track who might be violating the rules. In addition, without good data, it's hard to optimize the routes and pickup schedules, increase productivity, help us with sustainability, and, frankly, help generate revenue by being able to provide who's violating the rules and collecting fines when they do. It's also a good thing for neighborhoods as a whole, and particularly for folks who live near the ones who break the rules.
A permit-management platform. This challenge seeks a way to centralize and track all transactions related to the permitting process for the city. The current process is outdated and cannot accommodate the reality: multiple departments being involved in the review and approval process, frequently working concurrently on the same application. It's a cumbersome process for the city, and an annoying one for applicants, who may be asked to provide the same information multiple times. The ideal solution would provide transparency for the city and for applicants, establish a solid workflow for applications, and track and archive all of the comments, decisions, questions and so on. And, of course, there's money to be saved if this one comes to fruition - increased productivity and better instructions for applicants are just a couple of opportunities on that front. Customer satisfaction is also an almost guaranteed outcome.
Citizen engagement tool for the Trauma Response Team (TRT). I have to confess I was no aware we had a TRT in Syracuse. The TRT is currently dispatched, along with police and EMS, when a trauma occurs in the community, and members act as moderators between citizens and law enforcement. Without an effective messaging and engagement platform, they're left relying on word of mouth and social media to reach out with ongoing communications, which is hardly ideal. Engaging stakeholders and increasing trust may help lead to a reduction in violence, too.
I'm intrigued by the whole STiR program, by the challenges Syracuse has put on the table, and by the continued outreach to any willing partner to help find solutions to problems. I'm looking forward to following these projects as they progress.
Labels: community, Grains of Salt, innovation, neighborhoods, STiR, Syracuse, technology
Welcome, friends, to our regular wondering and wandering through the news. Here's a snipped of what's on my wondering mind.
Facebook is under fire again, this time facing grilling from an international panel that's frustrated with the social media behemoth for a host of reasons, including privacy issues, not being able to control misinformation and propaganda, and worse. CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not attend, which did not endear his company to the inquisitors - no wondering there.
But what I do wonder about is this: if you think Facebook has an obligation to protect us from ourselves and our inability to discern what's real from what's fake, what's intentional misinformation from what's an accidental share of something outdated, or from the general threat of interference in elections, who else should ace the same solution, whatever that might be? Would be be everyone below or to the left or right of the green box on the Media Bias Chart 4.0? Or would the yellow box get to stay too, as long as it was heavily disclaimed?
And, as I've wondered before, who's more dangerous, a 400-pound guy in a basement, the Russian intelligence machine, the Chinese government picking pro-Trump industries for tariffs, or the president himself? For example, here's just one of the president's many actions on Twitter today:
That's right - the president of the United States retweeted this picture today. #MAGAMA, if you know what I mean.
Also today, NPR reported that enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans is down some 400,000 people in the first 17 days this year compared to last year. Also down this year? Spending by the feds on support for enrollees in the plans. In 2016, $63 million was spent on funding for navigators, the people who help others, in person, find a plan and get enrolled. Last year, it was $36M, and this year? $10M.
Now, we can somewhat logically guess that some of the decrease in enrollment is because of the lower unemployment rate; after all, most of us get our insurance through our employers not through healthcare.gov, the federal exchange. But it's hard not wondering how much further the Trump administration will go to 'repeal' the ACA by continually drying up the funding. You know, like they might do with the Mueller investigation...
Finally today, I can't help wondering whether the speech by Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, was driven at least in part by the president's treatment of Powell and not only by the collective thinking of the central bankers. From this article on The Street,
Prior to Powell's appearance, Donald Trump criticized him and the Fed in an interview with the Washington Post in which he accused the central bank of pushing US stocks lower and triggering a decision by General Motors Co. to shutter five plants in North America and two additional plants outside North America, and cut 15% of its salaried workforce.
Trump told the Post in an interview that he wasn't "even a little bit happy with my selection" of Powell to head the Federal Reserve, adding that the Fed's current stance on interest rates was "way off base." Trump's remarks followed a similar interview with The Wall Street Journal in which he accused the central bank of being a "bigger problem than China."
Now, maybe Powell is another Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a guy who will continue to do his thing in spite of the obvious attempts at interference from his boss. But at the end of September, Powell suggested our low interest rates was no longer necessary, suggesting that rates would continue to rise in the near future. I don't pretend to understand this stuff, but the timing of this change, which delighted the market today, is interesting.
And one thing we won't have to wonder about much is how soon the president will being tweeting about the stock market again.
There's more out there we could focus on -- what's on your list, I wonder?
Labels: #MAGA, Donald Trump, Facebook, fake news, investments, stock market, Twitter, Wondering on Wednesday
OrangeVerse XXXVII: Giving Thanks
As he did last year, the president spent some quality time on the phone with members of the various branches of the military for Thanksgiving.
And as I did last year, I found poetry in his words, although in the spirit of the season, I'm offering only one excerpt this time around.
Perhaps the rest of it will pop up in a different poetry reading; we'll see.
What are you most thankful, Mr. president?
For having a great family
and for having made
a tremendous difference in this country.
I've made a tremendous difference
in the country.
This country is so much stronger now
than it was when I took office,
wouldn't
believe it.
And - I mean,
you see it,
but so much stronger
that people can't
even believe it.
When I see foreign leaders
they say,
"we cannot believe
the difference in strength
between the United States
now and the
two years ago.
of progress.
Labels: Donald Trump, military, OrangeVerse, Poetry, Thanksgiving
I spent some time with the gang on Face the Nation this morning.
Joining Margaret Brennan were lame duck House Benghazi Hunter Troy Gowdy (R-SC), Maine's Independent Senator Angus King, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-D-DS-S-OS). Here's what was on their minds.
Gowdy spoke about the subpoena issued to former FBI Director James Comey inviting him to a closed-door session and Comey's objection to that, due to the selective leaking that occurs. Gowdy himself had previously noted that Congressional investigations "leak like the Gossip Girls" and Brennan wanted to know whether Comey was right to object to the closed-door hearing.
You know, Margaret, I don't get a chance to say this very often, but I do think Jim Comey is right. Leaks are counter productive whether Jim Comey is doing it, the FBI is doing it or Congress is doing it...
But the remedy is not a public hearing, Gowdy said; it's videotaping closed door hearings and releasing the video and transcript to the public after removing anything classified. He also noted that
...people act differently where there aren't cameras in the room. Trust me when I say that.
To which I say, by all means, trust him when he says that. I mean, really - trust him when he says that.
He also talked about Ivanka's emails (we need to ensure the Presidential Records Act is being followed) and about the politicization of the judiciary. I do have to agree with him that politicians, pundits and the media in general label the SCOTUS justices, either on ideology or on who appointed them and that
I wish everyone would stop, including the media, referring to judges based on who put them in office.
King was there to talk about the military being on the border, what they can and can't do because of posse comitatus restrictions on soldiers acting in a law enforcement role, and that the Armed Services Committee would like to get some questions answered. And, he talked about the administration's response to the CIA's report on murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Well, my first response to that is the CIA doesn't do 'feelings.' They do assessments and they do assessments based on intelligence from all sources... I cannot talk about what happened in (the CIA) briefing... And you know we're not going to find an email that says "don't forget the bone saw" but it was pretty clear...
To everyone but the president, I guess.
Sanders was there, ostensibly to talk about his book, but Brennan asked about other things, including the post-Thanksgiving Friday afternoon drop of the administration's dire climate change report. Sanders noted how Americans need to come together and move away from fossil fuels towards sustainable and renewable energy sources That would drive jobs, he says, and show leadership to the world, as well as leaving a healthier planet for future generations.
Brennan also questioned him about his call for Dems "to launch a kind of new contract with America" but with left-leaning provisions. She wondered whether it was a legislative agenda or a platform for his presidential run in 2020.
It's a legislative agenda, Margaret...back in 1994 Newt Gingrich, who I disagree with on everything, really had a bold right wing agenda, and I think we should learn from that. This is what the American people want. And we should do it.
What we want, he said, is a living wage (he thinks fifteen bucks an hour), pay equity for women; Medicare for all; tuition free public colleges and universities; and dealing with climate change, our broken criminal justice system and immigration reform.
And the question is whether Congress has the guts to stand up to the big money interests who want more tax breaks for the rich, who want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Or we stand up for the shrinking middle class and we demand a government that represents all of us and legislation which represents the working families of this country.
Brennan's pundit panel was unanimous that while Sanders says this is a legislative agenda, he's definitely running in 2020. They also agreed that his path to victory will be difficult, even if they didn't fully agree on the reasons why.
Labels: 2020 Vote, Angus King, Bernie Sanders, CBS, Congress, Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, Politics, Sunday School, Trey Gowdy
What's a Charitable Heart to Do?
I have found that, among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
~Maya Angelou
Lots of folks give generously of their time or money throughout the year, but this is the particular 'season of giving' that inspires many folks to dig even more deeply and help others.
Truth be told, it's almost impossible not to hear opportunity knocking, whether it's something you get in the mail, a personal appeal such as the Salvation Army bell ringers, or an 'add this coupon' solicitations as the grocery store checkout. And don't forget television commercials, and newspaper ads (yes, I still read the newspaper).But the hardest to avoid are the multitude of opportunities that present themselves on social media.
You know the ones: fundraising for national events such as hurricanes and wildfires, which are sadly all too frequent lately; or medical charities like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, dozens of cancer-related organizations, Planned Parenthood, and the like; animal rescue groups; and of course, many groups that devote their time and resources to active duty military and veterans. There is literally a charity for every cause imaginable, and for some that are unimaginable.
And what could be wrong with these? A couple of things come to mind, first and foremost being the possibility that what we're seeing may be a scam. We've seen the headlines, right? Below are just a couple, one national, one from my neck of the woods:
GoFundMe scam leads to charges against Philadelphia homeless man, couple
Police: Parents faked son's cancer to get donations
Some people will do anything to help themselves; other people will do anything to help others, including accidentally sharing old and outdated information on social media, with the best of intentions. One share becomes five, becomes twenty, becomes fifty - and that's just the start of it. The outcome can be that people possessing a charitable heart end up doing something that won't fulfill their intentions - and that stinks.
So what's a person to do? How do you know if your desire to do good will result in good being done? Here are some quick options that might cost a bit of time, but will save in the end:
Fact-check the information. Snopes.com and similar sites are not perfect, but if you enter a few keywords, you're apt to get a sense as to whether something is on the up and up, or if it's outdated information, which is more often the case.
Look up the sponsoring charity on Facebook; often they'll have information about fundraising or other campaigns they are doing, as well as explanations for why they're not doing something you might see on social media. Check their other social media sites as well.
Use one of the charity rating sites (CharityWatch, Charity Navigator and similar) to learn more about the charity; be sure to check for any donor alerts or articles about the charity.
It's hard to escape Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with all of the fanfare, news stories, projections and all of that. And of course there's Small Business Saturday, too, designed to get people into the web and bricks-and-mortar doors of small companies.
Maybe a little less popular is Giving Tuesday, but it's a great opportunity to make a difference.
On the website, you can for local or national charities, pick a favorite, and make your donation.
In some cases, donations might be matched, so keep your eyes peeled.
A few years back, I made the decision to support local charities instead of national organizations; keeping my charitable dollars local just makes more sense to me, especially when the national charities have so much already, have celebrity support, telethons and infomercials, etc. Meanwhile, local nonprofits sometimes struggle to keep critical programs alive - not just now, but throughout the year.
If you want to optimize your giving to your desired charity, whether it's local or national, here's some additional things you might consider:
If you're a PayPal user, consider the PayPal Giving Fund, which allows you to donate from your PayPal account directly to your favorite charity's PayPal account, without any fees occurring. This is available year-round. On Giving Tuesday, PayPal is matching donations up to $500,000.
If you're an Amazon shopper, go through Amazon Smile and every time you make a purchase, you'll be helping a charity of your choice. Amazon Prime benefits apply here just as they do on regular Amazon.
Reach out to charities in your own backyard to find out what they need, if they're running any campaigns, and so on. If you're not familiar with local organizations, try your United Way website, or go to Great Nonprofits to find some; you can filter by location, issue/cause, and rating.
Consider adding 3% to donations you make online to charities (some will ask you if you want to do this), which allows you to pay the fees and your charity to get the full value of your donation.
If your charity offers a thank you gift in return for your donation, look for the option to refuse it. This may seem like a small thing, but if everyone did that, the charity might be able to reduce their fundraising costs and use more of your money for the programs you want to support.
So, back to our central question, what's a charitable heart to do? Liberate your soul.
Give freely to organizations and causes that matter to you, using trusted donation mechanisms. Be wary of people who are up to no good. Trust but verify, as Ronald Reagan used to say.
Do as much good as you can, because all donations matter - large or small, ongoing or one-time, local or national - they all matter.
Labels: #givingtuesday, Amazon, Charity, holidays, nonprofits, PayPal, Thanksgiving, United Way
Sunday School 11/18/18 (pt 4)
In the final part of the president's interview with Chris Wallace, we learn about his toughest decision, his relationship with the military, and how he ranks his own performance, which I'm saving for last. The first three parts of the interview are available here, here and here.
Wallace asked Trump about term limits. The question is a piece of work:
Can you envision a situation - you talk about six more years. Can you envision a situation well into your second term where you think you're so good for the country and so essential to the progress of the country that you would try and amend the Constitution so you could serve a third time?
Fortunately, Trump didn't take the bait.
No, no. .. Just won't happen, it's not -- I think the eight-year limit is a good thing, not a bad thing.
On the Veterans Day weekend debacles, including Trump's insistence that it was the Secret Service that prevented him from going to the first cemetery, not the weather, which came up previously in the interview as well.
Wallace did not ask why Trump did not join his fellow world leaders for the trip to the Arc de Triomphe; he and Putin both arrived separately. It reminded me of the time Trump rode behind as the other leaders walked, together, at the G7 summit in Italy. He did ask why Trump failed to go to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day.
I should have done that, I was extremely busy on calls for the country. We did a lot of calling as you know...I probably - you know, in retrospect, I should have and I did last year and I will virtually every year.
He did not do it last year either - he was out of the country, but what's another lie?
But we had come in very late at night and I had just left, literally, the American Cemetery in Paris and I probably assumed that was fine and I was extremely busy because of affairs of state - doing other things. But I would have - I would have done it.
OK, sure. Calls and affairs of state and other things. Notably, there are no readouts of any Veterans Day calls on the White House website, for what it's worth.
On why he hasn't visited our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Well, I think you will see that happen. There are things that are being planned. We don't want to talk about it because of - obviously because of security reasons and everything else. But there are things that are being planned. As you know I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq. I think it was a tremendous mistake, should have never happened.
I don't think anybody's been more with the military than I have, as a president. In terms of funding, in terms of all of the things I've been able to get them, including the vets. I don't think anybody's done more than me.
I've had an unbelievably busy schedule and I will be doing it. On top of which you have these phony witch hunts. On top of which - I mean, we've just been very busy. But I will be doing that. '
What an incredibly insensitive thing for the Commander-in-Chief to say, don't you think? Especially when one looks at his unbelievably busy schedule aligned with his own words to us before he was elected.
I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to play golf. (Trump statement, August 2016)
Trump Has Spent 150 Days, or 25% of His Presidency at Trump Golf Clubs (August 2018 Newsweek headline)
Trump has visited a Trump property or held a rally on more than half of the days in the past three months (September 2018 Washington Post article)
Why I would have loved for a follow up question - you know a, "what, do you think I'm stupid?" or something, but instead Wallace switched gears, telling Trump that Republicans who like what he's doing but dislike that he's so divisive.
I think if I was a, you know, more modified, more moderate in that sense, I don't think I would have done half of the things that I was able to get completed. With that being said, other than you have to have a certain ability to fight back and as you know, people have - you know, they take strong stance on me both ways, you know, love and hate. I'd like to see it a little bit, maybe, right down the middle.
But tone is something that is important to me. But a lot of times you can't practice tone because you have people coming at you so hard that if you don't fight back in a somewhat vigorous way, you're not going to win. And we have to win. This country has to win.
We have a lot of victories coming and I think if I - if I go too low-key, we're not going to have those victories.
Now, mind you, Wallace posed his question after talking about Trump's negative comments about Mia Love, April Ryan, Yamiche Alcindor and Abby Phillip. I wasn't sure that being victorious over a Republican Senator and three reporters, all women of color, was so important to our country, were you?
Wallace also asked Trump about his toughest decision as president; Trump said North Korea, and that he's got a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, even though, Wallace asked, that they might still be working on nukes?
Yes, Maybe they are. Maybe they're not. I don't believe that, I don't. And you know, could. And which is - if it - if that's the way it goes, that's the way it goes. You know, I go with the way we have to go. But so far, it's been good. We have a good relationship. We made, I think, some great decisions for the - for the people of this country.
And I do, you know, I put America first and other countries should put themselves first. It's not like we're - we should put - and everybody else should be second to us. No, other countries are proud of their countries and their leaders should put their countries first. But we were putting our country in many cases last. We were more worried about the world that we were worried about the United States. That's not going to happen with me.
Note again his disregard for the United States intelligence community: maybe it was Russia, maybe it was somebody else. Maybe they are testing nukes, maybe they aren't. Maybe it was the Crown Prince, maybe it wasn't.
Maybe he believes the experts, maybe he doesn't.
Maybe he understands that disagreeing with the sum total of our best and brightest intelligence folks shows us as untrustworthy to our allies, maybe he doesn't.
The final exchange we'll look at between the two of them is this one:
CW: Where do you rank yourself in the pantheon of great Presidents? There is Lincoln and Washington, there's FDR and Reagan. Do you make the top 10?
Trump: I think I'm doing a great job. We have the best economy we've ever had.
CW: So, where do you rank yourself?
Trump: ... I would give myself, I would - look I hate to do it but I will do it. I would give myself an A+ - is that enough? Can I go higher than that?
See you around campus, where we grade on a more realistic curve.
Labels: Chris Wallace, Donald Trump, Fox News Sunday, Kim Jong Un, military, North Korea, Sunday School, term limits, veterans
More of the president's interview with Chris Wallace; here are links to part one, with updates on the current state of the White House and the Russia investigation, and part two, discussing the midterms and the murder of WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In this session, Trump shares his thoughts on the media. Oh, yeah - and attacks a Navy Seal, but we'll hit that separately.
The medial first. Wallace asked about CNN's Jim Acosta, who had his pass temporarily restored, and what Trump thought about that.
But I will say this, look, nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do and if I think somebody's acting out of sorts, I will leave, I will say thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming and I'll leave. And those reporters will not be too friendly to whoever it is that's acting up.
Of course, that belief in the First Amendment doesn't extend to protesters, or authors.
On why he bothers to call on Acosta:
Actually I like to do it but in many cases I don't. He'll stand up. He's unbelievably rude to Sarah Huckabee who's a wonderful woman, unbelievably rude. And I see that and I actually ask here the same. Why do you call on these people who are so nasty?
Because he likes to fuel the fire, of course. He also offered a solution:
I think one of the things we'll do is maybe turn the camera off that faces them because then they don't have any air time, although I'll probably be sued for that and maybe win or lose it, who knows? I mean, with this stuff, you never know what's going to happen.
In general, Wallace did his best to get Trump to understand that no presidents 'like' the media, but none have had the visceral reaction to them that Trump exhibits. Let's start with the fake news being the enemy of the people. Here are his answers strung together.
That's true. 100 percent. Not the media, I'm glad you're finally calling it correctly because they like to leave the 'fake news' -
So, the people that are supporting me in particular, they're very smart people. They're hard working, brilliant, great people. They know when the news is fake and they get angry when they see all of the fakeness that I - frankly - Chris, I'm calling the fake news is the enemy - it's fake, it's phony.
On being "seen around the world as a beacon for repression" by authoritarian leaders (many of whom Trump admires),
I can't talk for other people, I can only talk for me. I will tell you - Chris I'm not talking about you - but you sometimes maybe. But I'm not talking about you. The news about me is largely phony. It's false. Even sometimes they'll say, "Sources say." There is no source, in many cases - in cases there is. But (the news about me) ninety-four percent negative.
The last word from him on this:
I am calling fake news, fake reporting, is what's tearing this country apart because people know, people like things that are happening and they're not hearing about it.
Labels: Chris Wallace, Donald Trump, Fox News Sunday, media, Sunday School
In part one of the president's guest lecture facilitated by Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, the president was just getting warmed up, talking about how fabulous things are at the White House, and about the Mueller investigation, among other things.
Let's pick up after that, when the president talked about the horrific murder of WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi killers. Trump said he has not listened to the tape that we received from the Turkish government. There's no reason, he said, because it's a 'suffering' tape and he's been fully briefed.
Asked about his conversations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and whether MBS lied to him Trump's answer was, well, honestly, coming from a deal maker and an incredibly proficient liar himself, seemed pretty weak.
I don't -- I don't know. You know, who can really know? But I can say this, he's got many people now that say he had no knowledge..
Yes, he told me that he had nothing to do with it, he told me that -- I would say maybe five times at different points... as recently as a few days ago.
Wallace asked if Trump just lives with it because he needs MBS.
Well, will anybody really know? All right, will anybody really know? But he did have certainly people that were reasonable close to him and close to him that were probably involved. You saw me put on very heavy sanctions, massive sanctions on a large group of people from Saudi Arabia. But at the same time we do have an ally and I want to stick with an ally that in many ways has been very good.
Not, apparently, allies like the ones we have in Europe or North America, because those, we've been told, have been very bad, and Trump insults them and threatens them almost daily.
On the loss of 35-40 seats in the house, and Trump's reaction the day after the election that it was "almost a complete victory," Wallace was trying to get his questions answered and Trump wasn't having it.
I won the Senate, you don't mention that...
Excuse me - I won the Senate - I think they said 88 years...
Are you ready? I won the Senate and that's historic too because if you look at presidents in the White House, it's almost never happened where you wont a seat. We won -- we now have 53 as opposed to 51 and we have 53 great Senators in the US Senate. We won. That's a tremendous victory. Nobody talks about that. That's a far greater victory that it is for the other side. Number two, I wasn't on the ballot. I wasn't - No, I said, look at me --
But I had people and you see the polls how good they are, I had people that won't vote unless I'm on the ballot, OK? And I wasn't on the ballot. And almost everybody that I won --I think they said it was 10 out of 11. And I won against President Obama and Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama in a great state called Georgia for the governor. And it was all stacked against Brian and I was the one that went for Brian and Brian won.
Look at Florida. I went down to Florida. Rick Scott won and he won by a lot. I don't know what happened to all those votes that disappeared at the very end. And if I didn't put a spotlight on that election before it got down to 12,500 votes, he would have lost that election, OK? In my opinion he would have lost. They would have taken that election away from him. Rick Scott won Florida...
He continued, mentioning Ron DeSantis (Florida Governor), "a wonderful man named DeWine" (Ohio governor). And then
I didn't run. I wasn't running. My name wasn't on the ballot. There are many people that think I don't like Congress, that like me a lot. I get it all the time, "Sir, I will never vote unless you were on the ballot". I get it all the time. People are saying "Sir, I will never vote unless you're on the ballot." I say "No, no, go and vote". "Well, what do you mean?" as much as I try and convince people to go vote, I'm not on the ballot.
Except we all saw the clips a vote for (her) is a vote for me, a vote for (him) is a vote for me, a vote for (everyone) is a vote for me, lather rinse repeat.
But what's especially important? Beating Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and Oprah in those Senate and gubernatorial races, and of course, pretending that losing the House was meaningless. Had he won the house and lost the Senate, you can be sure he would have been doing the same thing.
And all of those people who turned on him, the ones Wallace mentioned?
You lost in traditionally Republican suburbs, not only around liberal cities like Philadelphia and DC but also red-state big cities like Houston and Oklahoma City. You lost among suburban women. You lost among independents, and in three key states that I think you remember pretty well - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan - you lost both governor seats and the Senate seats.
They don't matter either, I guess, because he beat Obama.
Labels: Barack Obama, Chris Wallace, Donald Trump, Fox News Sunday, Sunday School
Today our focus is on the guest lecturer in chief, the president of the United States and his interview with Chris Wallace, which aired this morning on Fox News Sunday.
There was SO much going on in this one, it's hard to do it justice but I'll give it my darnedest.
On the state of the White House:
And I will tell you I'm extremely upbeat, the White House is running like a well-oiled machine, it's doing really well, I have great people. I will make some changes but not very many. I'm very happy with my cabinet, other than, you know, a couple of exceptions and even then I'm not unhappy. And I will tell you that it's so wrong, the reporting about me is so wrong. I'm loving what I'm doing. I did well in France, I did have a problem where I wasn't able to go to a cemetery because the Secret Service would not let me do it...
About the appearance that the First Lady fired one of his advisers:
Well, I didn't know the adviser well, really, and I know they had a lot of problems. My wife did a great job in Africa an she was not treated properly by the press. She really worked so hard. They came to me. They wanted to go a little bit public because that's the way they felt and I thought it was fine.
The advisor, the Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, will move to another position in the Administration and Trump noted, without irony, that she was not very diplomatic.
But, frankly, she is not -- she'll never be put in the United Nations, let me put it that way.
On General John Kelly remaining as Chief of Staff through 2020:
We -- I wouldn't -- look, we get along well. There are certain things I love what he does. And there are certain things that I don't like that he does - that aren't his strength. It's not that he doesn't do -- you know, he works so hard. He's doing an excellent job in so many ways. There are a couple of things where it's just not his strength. It's not his fault it's not his strength.
Like being hungry at a meetings, I'm sure.
But I haven't even thought about John in terms of this. But John, at some point, it going to want to move on. John will move on.
Perhaps as Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III did.
About Robert Mueller and his gang of Democratic thugs, there was much discussion, including the written questions he's answering, without his team's help.
No, no no not my team. I'm preparing written answers. My - I -- I'm the one that does the answering.
I've completed them. And it wasn't a big deal - by the way it wasn't a big deal. The answers -- the questions were asked and answered. It wasn't a big deal. You know, they make it like I had meetings for many, many hours - -I got the questions, I responded, we read them out, I read them once, I read them a second time, we made some changes. That's it. They were very simple.
On whether it was his final position, that there won't be a sit-down interview with Mueller or anything on obstruction of justice:
I would say probably. Probably. I mean, I can change my mind, but probably. I think we've -- I think we've wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is probably, we're finished.
Asked about the odds of that:
I don't do odds. We would -- I gave very -- (Wallace commented that Trump ran a casino - ed. note) You're right, and very successfully actually. We gave very, very complete answers to a lot of questions that I shouldn't have even been asked and I think that should solve the problem. I hope it solves the problem. If it doesn't, you know, I'll be told and we'll make a decision at that time. But probably this is the end.
Hmm... "very successfully actually" is likely in the mind of the beholder, as is pretty much everything else the president says.
We'll pick this up in a bit; see you around campus.
(Probably. I mean, I can change my mind, but probably I'll see you around campus.)
Labels: Chris Wallace, Donald Trump, Fox News Sunday, Robert Mueller, Sunday School, White House
Knock Knock. Who's There? Sore Winners
Sore winners who?
Sore winners who apparently take offense to people who don't toe the line.
For most of us here in NY, the election season is over. The ads are gone (and good riddance to them); the debates are over; even most of the campaign signs have been picked up and set aside perhaps for another campaign, or maybe for a bonfire.
Many folks are probably celebrating the victory of New York's Sonofa Gov, Andrew Cuomo, who won re-election by a comfortable margin over his Republican challenger, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro.
But Cuomo's victory was not enough for some, including Dani Lever, his campaign's Communications Director. She apparently is not happy with media outlets like my local paper, The Post-Standard and its web outlet, Syracuse.com, which failed to hop on board the Third Term Express.
The Editorial Board did not to endorse Cuomo this time, for a number of reasons. Take a look:
Cuomo is polished and forceful, a builder and a doer. He's in the conversation as a presidential contender. But under his leadership, New York's progress has been uneven.
A million New Yorkers have left the state since 2010. Upstate's economic recovery from the 2009 recession has lagged behind the nation's, and Central New York's recovery has lagged behind even more. Some of those billions the state spent on economic development went to poorly planned, corrupt or underperforming projects. While property taxes haven't gone up dramatically from year to year, they certainly haven't gone down, and New York's taxation ranking against other states has barely budged. Cuomo's fight for ethics reform has been half-hearted, at best, obstructionist, at worst. He's blind to corruption right under his nose.
If Cuomo really wanted it, New York already would have comprehensive ethics reform and real property tax relief. He won't take that on. So elect someone who will.
And (emphasis added),
We endorsed Cuomo in 2010 to clean up Albany, and again in 2014 despite his failure to do so. Not again. Not this time. Change in Albany starts at the top.
While Cuomo has been good for New York, many New Yorkers in Upstate aren't feeling it. New York can do better. Molinaro deserves a chance to try.
You're reading that correctly: the paper endorsed the Republican gubernatorial candidate, noting among other things.
Voters have four alternatives: Republican Marc Molinaro, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, independent candidate Stephanie Miner and Libertarian Larry Sharpe. We endorse Molinaro to refocus state government's attention from the national stage - the Trump resistance, Puerto Rico hurricane relief -- to the places we live, work and go to school.
Enter the response from one of the sore loses affiliated with Cuomo's campaign:
Your Editorial Board was a steadfast supporter of Mayor Stephanie Miner throughout her term and supported Marc Molinaro against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The election results for the city of Syracuse, the heart of your circulation area, had Cuomo winning with close to 67 percent, Marc Molinaro at 21.9 percent, Howie Hawkins at 5.3 percent and Stephanie Miner at 3.8 percent. There is clearly a significant disconnect between the positions of the editorial board and those of your readers, and considering these different realities, perhaps the Board needs to gain a better perspective. We believe performance matters in government and citizens value results and progress.
Dani Lever, Former Communications Director, Cuomo 2018
I'm not sure how much time Lever has spent here in my neck of the woods, but I wonder if she's aware of how things work around here?
There are over 287,261 registered voters in Onondaga County, but only 108,079, or around 37%, are Democrats.
Syracuse residents opted for an Independent mayor last year, rejecting both the major parties and going our own way.
Onondaga County has always had a Republican County Executive, and the Legislature has always had a Republican majority.
Cuomo may have won 67% of the vote within the city limits, but he only won Onondaga County by about 8,500 votes, and he lost all of the surrounding counties save one, Tompkins County - demonstrating that the endorsement of Molinaro was pretty much in line with what the voters in the paper's subscription area felt.
Perhaps Lever (and her boss) are the ones in need of a better perspective?
Labels: Andrew Cuomo, Democrats, endorsements, Onondaga County, Politics, Post-Standard, Republicans, Syracuse NY
Better than the president's maybe? He failed to go to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, with no explanation offered. Until today, that is, when an explanation materialized: he was busy doing the country's work, making lots of phone calls and other stuff, and besides, he just visited a cemetery in another country (after not visiting one as scheduled), and doesn't that count?
And then there was the Mueller tweet storm, and how Trump's "easily" finished his written questions, without the help of his lawyers, we're told, even as Rudy Giuliani,one of those lawyers, is expressing concern that there could be 'traps' in the questions. With no timetable from Mueller, it's hard to know when we'll find out if in fact traps were laid and bait taken, or whatever the appropriate metaphor would be.
And finally, there was the order by one of his own judges that people's enemy #1, CNN's Jim Acosta, must have his White House access restored temporarily pending further discussions (or dismissal of the whole thing). Trump said it was no big deal, while at the same time suggesting that he'll implement rules and regulations for press conferences. Oh, the irony of the anti-regulation president needing to have protective regulations to talk with the press..
You probably had a better week than Britain's PM Theresa May, too. Her Brexit deal gives everyone something to hate, caused bombshell resignations and was reported as chaotic uncertainty. Not bad for someone trying to do something that's almost impossible.
Who actually had a good week? Brian Kemp, the vote-suppressing former Georgia Secretary of State who will be the state's next governor, now that Stacy Abrams has determined she cannot win.
But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in the state baldly pin his hopes for election on suppression of the people's democratic right to vote has been truly appalling.
This is not a speech of concession. Because concessions means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.
So did the First Lady; she who rules the East Wing got a key West Wing person fired.
And so did Elvis Presley, who along with Babe Ruth, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, Minnesota Vikings star Alan Page and others, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president Trump. The president noted Presley's military service, movie career, award nominations and wins, and "record breaking" crowds.
TGIF, everyone.
Labels: Brexit, CNN, Donald Trump, Elvis, media, Robert Mueller, Rudy Giuliani, TGIF, Theresa May, veterans
Lies, Damn Lies, and Facebook
Back in July, when we were talking about Facebook and fake accounts and deleting pages and all that jazz, I asked this question:
Is it worse that we have fake accounts on social media promoting 'malign' influence' and divisiveness or that the American president does exactly the same thing on a daily basis?
In my mind, it's still valid. And we have some additional data to back it up. Check out this headline:
That's right: the folks at the Toronto Star have laboriously studied the words the president has tweeted, uttered and muttered, and has determined that, as of July, 5.1% of the time he talks, he lies. Seriously.
Here are some of the key points the study found:
That's a lot of dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of July 1, 5.1% were part of a false claim. Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.
Trump's dishonesty density is increasing: The issue isn't just that he's talking more these days. It's that what he's saying is less truthful.
Word count aside, his raw number of false claims has spiked: Trump made 2.9 false claims per day in 2017. He's made 5.1 false claims per day in 2018.
He is talking 20% more than he used to: Thought it's not the whole issue, some of the 2018 increase in false claims is indeed happening because Trump is speaking more.
It's a fun read, for sure; they include their methodology, sources and cool charts that show Trump ramping up the lying as time goes by.
Still, the Star's lie count is lower than some others. For example, the Washington Post's Fact Checker count is over 6,000 - through October 30, 2018.
I have no idea what the number would be now, given that we have the whole explosion of lies surrounding the mid-terms.
And Veterans Day, and the weather in Paris.
And his attacks on French President Macron.
And his attacks on Robert Mueller.
And of course his ridiculous lies about not knowing Mark Whitaker, the man he just appointed as the acting AG after Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was forced to resign.
And his attack on California as an entire town was destroyed by fire.
And -- well, you get the drift, right?
So, I ask again, what's worse? Facebook not protecting people from themselves, and folks at the company acting badly towards each other as the news about fake news broke, or the lying, rude, belligerent, childish person who was elected president of the US?
If we are going to demand that tech companies do everything in their power to keep us from being exposed to fake news and influence and lies, we simply cannot allow the president to continue having unfettered access to the airwaves.
Can we?
Labels: Donald Trump, Facebook, fake news, lies, media, random, social media
Mandel Ngan / AFP- Getty Images
Let's dive right in to the wonderful, shall we?
For starters, here's the picture of the members-elect of the House, none of whom were giving a Nazi salute, and it made me wonder what their photographer said to them that the photographer at Baraboo High School didn't say to the guys attending the prom, who do in fact appear to be giving said salute?
It was reported the yesterday that the First Lady was unhappy with a particular employee of the West Wing. Actually, what was reported was a statement from the First Lady's office stating that the employee in question "no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House" and after a mistaken report that the employee, Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, had been walked out of the White House, today the official statement came that Ricardel would in fact be leaving to take another position in the administration.
I wondered about a couple of things here -- first of all, whoa! That's a pretty bold thing for the FLOTUS to do. And then, I thought about her interview with Tom Llamas on ABC,the part about having told POTUS that there were people working for him she didn't trust, and they there were still people working there that he shouldn't trust. So I wonder, can we expect more personnel statements from her as we move into the traditional post-midterm period of churn? Shall we we have an office pool on who's going to be next to go? And finally, is this Melania doing her best to #BeBest?
Votes are still being counted around the country, trying to determine who will go to Washington to represent their constituents in January. We're familiar with the shenanigans going on in Florida and Georgia and even here in the NY-22, but one race I hadn't been paying that much attention to was for the Utah seat currently held by Mia Love. Love is behind her opponent, Ben McAdams, by around 900 votes or so after the latest count. In addition to her fame as the first female black Republican ever elected to Congress, she's also known for the special recognition she got from the president the day after the midterms.
Speaking about Republicans who failed to properly embrace him, Trump said
On the other hand, yo had some that decided to "let's stay away." "Let's stay away." They did very poorly, I'm not sure that I should be happy or sad, but I feel just fine about it.
Carlos Curbelo; Mike Coffman -- too bad, Mike: Mia Love. I saw Mia Love. She'd call me all the time to help her with a hostage situation. Being held hostage in Venezuela. But Mia Love gave me no long, and she lost. Too bad. Mia.
If the ballot counting ends up going in her favor, I wonder what Trump will say then? Anyone else willing to bet he'll take the credit?
Finally, there's a whole lot of wondering going on about the Amazon 2HQ2 announcement, not the least of which is why a trillion dollar company needs to get a couple of billion bucks in economic development deals and job credits and incentives from NY and Virginia taxpayers for the privilege of having them locate their new digs in Long Island City and Crystal City, respectively.
I think, from the outside looking in, one could be forgiven for wondering if we've lost our ever-loving minds.
Labels: 2018 vote, Amazon, bullying, Congress, economic development, House of Representatives, Melania Trump, Wondering on Wednesday
Grains of Salt (v38): A Personal Touch
Question: If you received a letter from your local government, and the envelope included a personal note, would it inspire you to open the letter?
And if, instead of the garden-variety form letter, you had a personal note from the mayor, would you maybe pay your past-due taxes?
Seems that's exactly what happened right here in Syracuse when Mayor Ben Walsh and others staffers sent handwritten notes to folks with outstanding taxes -- which brought in $1.47M over a four month period, according to this article.
The idea to send the notes came from the folks at the X Lab, a think tank at SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The guys from the X Lab worked with the city on how to reduce foreclosures and increase tax collections, and came up with the idea trying a personal note after doing some research into how people respond to different types of communication.
Here's how it worked: around 1900 people got the standard government issue form letter, but another 3800 or so got a handwritten letter, some of which also included a note on the envelope. The purpose of the letters was the same: notify the property owner of the delinquency and try to get them to pay up. The personal letters went further, explaining that if they didn't pay up they'd lose their homes, but the city didn't want that to happen. The letters also explained some of the city services that the taxes support.
The results were pretty impressive: people who received the note on the envelope paid 88% more than the control group, the ones who just got the form letter. Even the folks who got the letter without the note on the envelope paid 50% more than the control group.
Walsh, a Maxwell grad himself, noted
This partnership with X Lab helps both the City and our residents. It's the kind of positive outcomes that occur when you aren't afraid to innovate and try something new. By using evidence and data to improve government services, processes and initiatives, we are helping to balance the budget while at the same time improving the health and well being of our citizens.
Delinquent taxes are a long-standing problem in the city, with some $30M outstanding on over 2700 seizable properties,where the owners are more than two years behind - before this project started. And, there's another $9.6M outstanding on this year's taxes.
Also long-standing problems? Housing instability and poverty. Which is why it's great that we're seeing innovative approaches to these problems, and that we're seeing collaboration between local governments, SU and other educational institutions, and organizations like the Allyn Foundation, which provided grants for X Lab collaborations.
And honestly, this is exactly why Ben Walsh was elected mayor - to find innovative ways to improve life in the city, to find and work with any willing partners to try and solve these long-standing problems, and to get us back on track financially.
Kudos to everyone involved.
Labels: Allyn Foundation, Ben Walsh, Grains of Salt, innovation, Maxwell School, property taxes, Syracuse, Syracuse University
My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective: The NY Midterms
Lots of people are feeling emotional about the outcome of the midterms; where races have been decided, the emotions run the gamut from active joy to abject disgust, and pretty much a little of everything in between.
That's true here in New York, where we're sending our Sonofa Gov, Andrew Cuomo, back to Albany for another term. And while polls shows the gap was only 13% right before Election Day, in the end it wasn't even close - Cuomo won by 1.26M votes, taking 59% of the 5.4M votes cast, to challenger Marc Molinaro's under 37%.
Lots of folks are suggesting that the reason why Cuomo won was "because of New York City." If you just looked at the election map, you can make that case. Cuomo won all of the NYC counties, plus some of the cities elsewhere in the state.
But here's the thing: there are 26 counties (out of 62) in New York where November's active voter registration favors the Dems - yet Cuomo won only 15 of them, The other 11 blue counties ended up in Molinaro's column on the ledger.
Now, I know - as everyone running for office in NY knows - that voter registration is heavily skewed towards the Dems. Just in the NYC counties, registered Dems outnumber registered Republicans by some 2.6M; statewide, the margin is over 3.1M. Winning a statewide race as a Republican is certainly an ant/rubber tree kind of thing.
But it has been done before. George Pataki, who had been in the State Assembly and the State Senate, beat three-term governor Mario Cuomo by about 173,000 votes. Cuomo won only one county outside NYC in that race.
Which suggests to this middle-aged white lady that the issue is not only the geography and the registration numbers: it's the Republicans themselves. Remember, these are the Republicans who had to have help from a group of independent Dems to keep control of the State Senate the past few years. And this year, mind you, they lost the Senate, so now all of NY is in the hands of the Dems, with no checks and balances. (Thanks for that, by the way).
What was wrong with their message that the Rs couldn't put up a respectable fight against our ethically-challenged governor? Why were they not able to get people's attention on New York State, while the Sonofa Gov was busy running for President? Why were they not able to capitalize on spending fatigue, unfunded mandate fatigue, unbudgeted Authority fatigue? Unfair school funding fatigue? Economic development gimmick fatigue? People leaving the state fatigue?
Why doesn't a Republican ever knock on my door? I know, I'm in the city of Syracuse, and the city skews blue - so there's no need to even bother asking for my vote? Why not try some concerted outreach to moderate Dems? Cuomo won Onondaga County by less than 8,500 votes - barely 5%, whereas registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 25,000.
There's room here, red people -- there's room. I vote for the candidate I think can do the job, without regard to party label. I've voted for Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, Working Families, Conservatives -- so don't write me off without even trying.
I'm not an expert on the Dems - and I've been a registered one my entire adult life. I'm certainly not an expert on the Republicans. But I did want to share this opinion from some folks who pretend to be experts - the NY Post editorial board. Take a look at these excerpts:
Tuesday brought the state Republican Party to a new low, and the city GOP to the edge of extinction.
The biggest change has been a long time coming: Republican control of the state Senate has been at risk for decades now, preserved by extreme gerrymandering and the votes of renegade Democrats.
And while the chamber's GOP members fought off the occasional tax hike and other progressive priorities, its members have mainly focused on what bacon they could deliver for their districts or favors for special interests.
And these guys like the Republicans...
Above all, they failed to fundamentally alter New York's high-tax, high-regulation approach to... everything, which has gradually eroded the upstate economy to dust - leading to the depopulation of the state's most rock-rib-Republican areas.
They go on to note, after bashing Long Island GOP efforts, that this will be the first year since 1854 that there won't be a Republican Congressman from NYC. And they're not kind to the state GOP, either - it's pretty much across the board disgust with the entire red empire.
So where do the Rs go from here? Well, it's not all bad.
The only good news is that there's nowhere to go but up: to learn and grow enough that Republicans just might possibly be ready to lead when Democrats, now in total control, fail badly enough that voters have to turn somewhere.
If the GOP remnants look to the future, they just might be able to have one.
Maybe - although the editorial makes it sound like these guys couldn't find the future if it was right in front of them...
Look, it's undeniable that there are way more registered Democrats in NY than there are Republicans. On the other hand, there are way more major-party registrations outside NYC (4.79M) than there are in NYC (3.6M).
The Republicans need to get their boots on the ground; light a fire under the county party operatives or get rid of them (they're horrible,by the way) and spend the next two years honing a message that's meaningful to voters.
The map is the map - the message is up to them.
Labels: Albany, Andrew Cuomo, Democrats., Marc Molinaro, middle-aged white lady, New York, Politics, Republicans, voting
My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective: The NY Midt...
OrangeVerse XXXVI: Midterms (1)
Election Day 2018
The Election Eve Post - 2018 Edition
We Shall Overcome, If We Want To
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Trump's Takeover
Season 36 Episode 7 | 54m 47s
FRONTLINE tells the inside story of a president who vowed to take down the Washington establishment, and who has fought an intense war for control of the Republican Party. “Trump’s Takeover” is a window into the potential lasting impact of the Trump era on the GOP and the American political system as a whole.
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, the Park Foundation, The John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation.
Season 38 Season 37 Season 36 Season 35 Season 34 Season 33 Season 32 Season 31 Season 30 Season 29 Season 28 Season 27 Season 26 Season 25 Season 24 Season 23 Season 22 Season 21 Season 20 Season 19 Season 18 Season 17 Season 16 Season 14 Season 13 Season 3 Season 1
The Trial of Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić went on trial for some of the worst atrocities in Europe since the Holocaust.
Documenting Hate: New American Nazis
An investigation of a neo-Nazi group that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military.
Left Behind America
Intimate stories of one Rust Belt city’s struggle to recover in a post-recession economy.
Our Man in Tehran (Part Two)
A revealing series on life inside Iran, with New York Times correspondent Thomas Erdbrink.
Our Man in Tehran (Part One)
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville
FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate the resurgence of white supremacists in America.
UN Sex Abuse Scandal
An investigation into sex abuse by UN peacekeepers in the world’s conflict zones.
Blackout in Puerto Rico
An in-depth look why Puerto Rico was left struggling to survive after Hurricane Maria.
Trafficked in America
The story of Guatemalan teens trafficked to Ohio and forced to work against their will.
Inside John McCain’s complicated relationship with President Trump and his own party.
Inside President Trump's high-stakes battle for control of the Republican Party.
FRONTLINE investigates the allegations around Harvey Weinstein in an updated film.
Preview: S36 Ep7 | 31s
The Last Generation
Explore an island nation threatened by climate change through the eyes of three children who call call it home.
ExploreExplore
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Note To Bernie: Sex Workers Are Part Of The Working Class Too
For many years, my Friday night routine has included smoking weed and watching Real Time with Bill Maher. I’m a creature of habit and this is one I truly enjoy.
Last Friday, I thought I was in for a special treat because Senator Bernie Sanders was the first guest. I didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election, but I would have voted for Bernie if he had been the Democratic nominee.
I viewed him as a special, magical unicorn, far more reasonable than most other politicians. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson about putting politicians on a pedestal, but I hadn’t. No, this one WAS special and different, I just knew it! Flash forward a couple of years and I realize I’d been naive again.
Part of what sold me on Bernie from the beginning was that he seemed to really care about the working class. When I was growing up my dad worked in a factory and he made sure I knew the only reason they were paying him a livable wage was because he was a union member. Bernie seemed like the kind of guy that actually cared about people like my family. That mattered to me. That meant something to me. I fell for his talking points.
On Friday, he told Maher:
In 2016 it’s not that Trump won, it’s that Democrats lost. For too long the Democratic party has been dominated by wealthy campaign contributors. They gotta open the door to people who work with their hands, people who take showers at the end of the day, not at the beginning of the day. Open the door to young people. We have a generation out there of some of the brightest, most decent young people in the history of this country.
That sounds good, but it’s slightly infuriating to me to hear Bernie try to paint himself as the patron saint of the working class after he voted for the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which President Trump signed in April.
So Bernie supports workers’ rights as long as the workers aren’t sex workers? I thought he was supposed to be a progressive?
You can’t talk about the Democratic Party being out of touch when you’re just as out of touch as they are. Bernie, you are no better than they are. Sex workers are…workers. We have families. Why should we be treated any differently than any of the other workers you claim to support?
Why is Bernie not smart enough to know the difference between consensual sex work and trafficking? How does he not see through the bullshit, the faux moral panic regarding sex trafficking that helps conflate consensual sex work with abuse?
It infuriates me to hear Sanders discuss the need for criminal justice reform after his vote for FOSTA/SESTA. Senator, you just voted for a major crackdown on sex work, one that also impacts legal sex workers. With this vote, you put many people in an already marginalized community at risk of being jailed.
So please don’t act like you’re a champion of the people. It’s great that you’re going to Disney to stand with the workers on strike. But what about the sex workers marching around the country? We’re not merely marching against low wages. We’re marching for our lives, literally. We’re one of the most mistreated and abused groups of people in the country. Where are you when it comes to supporting us? Where are you priorities at, truly?
Did you ever notice that when it comes to the moral panic about sex work, progressives are indistinguishable from conservatives? Remember, there were only two senators smart enough to vote against FOSTA/SESTA, Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, and Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican. The sole existing area of political bipartisanship in the country is apparently dedicated to misunderstanding and actively harming one of the most marginalized groups out there.
We’re losing the culture war because both sides are growing increasingly puritanical about sex work. If I’m ever going to vote for a Democrat again, I need to see a clear distinction on this issue. This is literally a life or death issue for my community. I expect better from someone like Senator Sanders, and I’m going to keep calling him out at every turn.
Previous articleOn Porn, Guns, Masturbation And One (Especially) Stupid GOP Member Of Congress
Next articleThe Shameless, Remorseless Bill Clinton
Ken Silverstein is the CEO, editor-in-chief, lead writer and primary sleaze purveyor for Washington Babylon. He's written for dozens of publications, from VICE to Wallpaper*. He's also a big fan of Sydney Leathers, a political scandal expert, porn performer, cat-mom of two from the Midwest and Washington Babylon's Senior Contributing Writer.
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Cigarette Citadels
The Map Project
Home » Cancer
Where are all those “cancer sticks” produced? Pinpointing the factories
A research project by Stanford’s Global
Tobacco Prevention Research Initiative
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The tobacco industry produces somewhere in the range of six trillion cigarettes worldwide every year.
Yes . . . six trillion.
In some locales, you rarely see them. Elsewhere, the sight and scent of cigarettes are pervasive, even ubiquitous. Sold at convenience stores, newsstands, truck stops, bars, pharmacies, open-air markets, cigarettes are viewed by different people in different ways. Some folks see them as a valuable source of income or pleasure, whereas many others now label them a scourge. How much of a scourge? More than you might know. Cigarettes are the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today. They will kill a billion people during the 21st century if current trends continue (source: WHO).
Six trillion cigarettes every year — each ready to release smoke filled with highly addictive nicotine and powerful carcinogens. Where are they manufactured? Where are they rolled, wrapped, and boxed for shipment?
The Cigarette Citadels project was created to explore these and other questions about the tobacco industry. Its initial goal is to pinpoint all the factories in the world producing cigarettes and provide basic facts about them. Take a look at the quickly developing project map.
Click on the Map!
This map allows you to zoom in via satellite imagery on tobacco companies’ manufacturing plants. These factories, many of them each producing tens of billions of cigarettes a year, are virtually unknown to the larger world.
“Before launch of the Cigarette Citadels project in September 2010, no means existed for anyone, whether curious citizen or devoted researcher, to know about all these factories, peer into them, and begin questioning their specific effects,” notes project director Prof. Matthew Kohrman (Anthropology/FSI).
What are policy implications of this study? Until now, much global health research and intervention in the area of tobacco has focused on the consumer — addressing how one or another variable prompts people to take up or quit smoking, whether the cue for the consumer is biological, psychological, spatial, financial or symbolic. The Cigarette Citadels project pushes attention in a different direction, away from the consumer, toward the surfeit of cigarette factories in the world and the profusion of harmful products they roll out. This is a direction for study and health promotion that tobacco companies have been eager to avoid.
Our Current Progress
482 Cigarette factories pinpointed
159 Factories nearly pinpointed -- Need your help!
Like to discover stuff? Curious where cigarettes come from? We welcome your input. All information here is gathered from public sources. If you come across any helpful details, spot areas for improvement on the map, know of other cigarette factories, send us an email.
>> Click here to see the Cigarette Citadels map <<
>> Click here to send us an email <<
Watch a Stanford News report regarding the Cigarette Citadels Project
(click on the image below)
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World Health Organization source: MPower Report (2009).
Note: This project receives NO funding from the tobacco industry or any other commercial entity. Work by Stanford undergraduates on this project has been supported by Stanford University Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Departmental Grants for Undergraduate Research. This project has also received seed funding from the International Tobacco Control Research program of the American Cancer Society.
Disclaimer: This is an academic research project. It strives to achieve the highest level of accuracy possible based on credible sources, yet it cannot guarantee that all information offered here is entirely error free.
Tags: Biopolitics, Cancer, Cigarette, Cultural Geography, Death, Disease, Factory, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), GIS, Global Health, Heart Disease, Industry, Legacy Archives, Lung Cancer, Manufacturing, Map, Medical Anthropology, Morbidity, Mortality, Production, Public Health, Stanford, Thanatopolitics, Tobacco, Tobacco Atlas, World Health Organization
Posted in Research Initiative | No Comments »
Project Praises
==> “I love this website.” Jeff Koplan, Director of Emory University’s Global Health Institute and former Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
==> An "astonishing interactive resource . . . it's fascinating." Kaiser Kuo, The Sinica Podcast
==> “Marvelously innovative.” Judith Mackay, Co-author, The Tobacco Atlas
==> “Great idea and well done! Genuinely useful.” Mike Daube, President, Australian Council on Smoking or Health
==> "A hundred and fifty years after John Snow uncovered the artesian origin of a London cholera outbreak, transforming public health as we know it . . . the Cigarette Citadels project is exposing for all to see the industrial sources of today’s global tobacco epidemic. Great job!" Thomas Glynn, Director, Cancer Science and Trends, American Cancer Society
Anthropology & Participatory GIS
Cigarette Citadels Map
Scholarly Significance
Cigarette Citadels joins The Tobacco Atlas
Framework Convention Alliance
Rolled . . . then . . . Smoked: 6 Trillion and Climbing
Stanford's Gallery of Cigarette Ads
Starting to Visualize Cigarette Factories' Health Effects
Touring Factories
Manufacturers in India
TFK Industry Watch
Tobacco1.com
Zigsam
Summer 2018: A new batch of critical industry visualizations have been added, including ones on smuggling ("Through the Smokescreen: People v. British American Tobacco") and Cuba ("From Commodity to Culture: The Cuban Cigar"). More to come!
Summer 2016: New batch of critical industry visualizations have been added, including ones on organic/natural cigarettes and tobacco's environmental effects. Database cleaned up, with new factories added and closed factories deleted.
Oct. 15, 2015: An amazing set of critical industry visualizations have been added to the Cigarette Citadels site. Informed by the Cig. Citadels project, these visualizations have been created by Stanford undergraduates. Clickable thumbnails of the visualizations appear below the main project map. Check them out.
Oct. 1, 2014: We are proud to introduce Cigarette Citadels 2.0. We have created an entirely new map interface and updated much of our data. This represents the biggest change to the project since it was launched. Please take a look. Lots of new interactive functionality is now at your fingertips. Many thanks to Claudia Engel, Valerie Chen, and Kasiemobi Udo-okoye.
June 28, 2013: It has been a busy spring. Today's update pertains to factories in China, Croatia, Germany, North Korea, Nepal, India, South Africa, Andorra, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Columbia, Antilles, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Malaysia, Seychelles. Special thanks again to Mariko & Dan.
March 15, 2013: Updates today pertain to Argentina, Guatemala, Romania, Bolivia, Pakistan, China, Laos, Turkey, South Korea, Sudan, Yemen, and Ethiopia. Again, special thanks to Dan L.
Dec. 5, 2012: Special thanks to Dan L. and Jackie K. for their contributions to today's update. Countries that this update covers include China, Mexico, US, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, La Reunion, Cape Verde, Nepal, Portugal, Uruguay, Malaysia, Turkey, Greece, South Korea, North Korea, and Pakistan.
Sept. 5, 2012: Our update today covers factories in Germany, Belgium, France, Mali, Ivory Coast, Poland, USA, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Philippines, Spain, Cuba, Romania, Palestinian Authority, Russia.
June 20, 2012: Today brings an update covering factories in Canada, Austria, Croatia, and Macedonia. Special thanks to Geoffrey Lansdell in North America and our newest correspondent from Europe.
April 2, 2012: The fourth edition of the Tobacco Atlas was just released, with a new area of coverage -- cigarette factories -- drawing from our data. Without the participation of our correspondents around the world, this partnership with the Atlas could not have occurred. So, kudos to all you who have contributed.
March 4, 2012: Today's update includes information regarding factories in Italy, France, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Kenya. Special thanks to Pranay Lal and Mira Aghi for their help researching the Indian cigarette industry.
Dec. 8, 2011: Big update today involving new information for factories in Hong Kong, Italy, UAE, Romania, Chad, Antilles, Gabon, Solomon Islands, Netherlands, Germany, Mongolia, Bulgaria, S. Korea, N. Korea, China, Vietnam, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bangladesh, and Iraq.
Sept. 15, 2011: Today's update adds location information for factories in Brazil, Argentina, Andorra, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Portugal, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Aug. 12, 2011: Locations updated for factories in Egypt, Russia, South Africa, Uganda, Sudan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Andorra, UAE, Argentina, Belize, Haiti, Germany, China, and Jordan. Special thanks to colleagues in China, Haiti, Uganda, Jordan, and Latin America.
June 17, 2011: With today's update, we surpass 400 factories pinpointed. The 16 factories added by this update are in the U.S., Canada, Holland, Russia, Algeria, Guatemala, England, Ireland, and South Africa.
May 9, 2011: Today's update involves factories in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, and Taiwan. Thanks to all our correspondents!
March 8, 2011: Factories recently found in India, Libya, Algeria, and Bangladesh. A few more and we'll reach 400 pinpointed factories. Feel free to help!
Jan. 31, 2011: An important China update has been issued today. It's a big one. Over 46 fully pinpointed factories have been added to our project map, all of them in the PRC.
Cigarette Citadels is proudly powered by WordPress
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