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JESSICA PRESSLER
The Hustlers at Scores
June 6, 2018 by Jessica Pressler
In another life, Roselyn Keo might have liked to work on Wall Street. “I’m smart enough, I know,” she told me, sitting in the immaculate white kitchen of her suburban home. She’s organized, she pointed out, and good at math, and there is little doubt she has an entrepreneurial streak. As a kid, she said, she used to buy candy in bulk and sell it at school for a profit, which I later remembered is the same story hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson tells about himself. But John Paulson was born into his body and Roselyn Keo was born into hers, which happens to be a rather more overtly sexy shape, with the sort of waist-to-hip ratio scientists have concluded affects men like a drug. It’s the kind of body that, as they used to say, could get a girl in trouble, though getting into trouble was something Rosie was plenty capable of all by herself.
Growing up here in Rockland County, Rosie, as she likes to be called, was a wild child. She ran with a tough crowd, had bad boyfriends, got into fights at school. Now 31, she has since made some inquiries into the field of psychology and concluded that this behavior was likely the result of her parents’ having taken off to Atlantic City when she was young and leaving her and her brother behind with elderly grandparents.
According to Rosie, her parents were Cambodian refugees who came to America hoping for a better life and “got caught up with the, you know, material crap, and the nice cars, and the nightlife,” she said. “And just somewhere, they went wrong.”
(I say “according to Rosie” because her family did not respond to interview requests, and because Rosie is an admitted liar with multiple pending felony charges. Still, she is occasionally prone to offering up indisputable truths. “American culture is a little fucked up,” she mused. “You know?”)
Anyway, according to Rosie, this was what eventually led to her going wrong — to her dropping out of school and, at 17, taking a job at the New City Diner, a greasy spoon off the main drag in Nanuet, in order to supplement her grandparents’ meager income. Late at night and early in the morning, she poured coffee and took orders from customers, many of whom were employees from Lace, the nearby gentlemen’s club. One night, one of Lace’s managers dropped a $20 tip on a $20 check, gave her uniform a long up-and-down look, and suggested she come by if she was interested in making more money.
This was back in the early aughts, when the industry was enjoying a cultural moment. Improbably, the values of third-wave feminism had aligned with those of Howard Stern, ushering in an era in which taking off one’s clothes in front of an audience was no longer degrading but sexually liberating and financially empowering. New York City clubs like Scores, with their bright lights and bottle service, had successfully marketed themselves as a naughty-but-harmless night out for men and women, and celebrities and athletes were all too happy to be photographed with dancers who looked as wholesome as topless cheerleaders.
Rosie had seen the HBO show G String Divas and observed the huge wads of cash the dancers peeled off their ankles at the end of the night. She went to Lace the next day, lied about her age, and landed a job making, by her recollection, $500 to $1,000 a night. But the real money, she knew, was in Manhattan. Soon, she started driving her used Honda into the city, to Flash Dancers in Times Square and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club. Which is where she met Samantha Foxx.
Samantha, born Samantha Barbash, was one of Hustler’s top moneymakers. A single mother from the Bronx, she’d started dancing at 19, and, like an ornamental plant purposefully stunted to conform to a certain ideal, she’d been shaped by the industry in which she grew up. Her body was Jessica Rabbit curvy, her lips Angelina Jolie puffy; her hair, which concealed tattoos of a cascade of stars running down her neck, was Cleopatra black. Buried within this ultrafeminine package was a mercenary streak worthy of Gordon Gekko.
By the time Rosie met her, Samantha was in her 30s — ancient by stripper standards — but she’d maintained her supremacy in part by cultivating younger dancers. While evolutionary theory and The Bachelor would suggest that a room full of women hoping to attract the attention of a few men would be cutthroat-competitive, it’s actually better for strippers to work together, because while most men might be able keep their wits, and their wallets, around one scantily clad, sweet-smelling sylph, they tend to lose their grip around three or four. Which is why at Hustler, as elsewhere, the dancers worked in groups. “And everyone wanted to work with Samantha,” Rosie recalled. “Because she had a lot of clients and she knew how to work well.”
Samantha took Rosie under her wing, introducing her, in her throaty, Mae West voice, to some of her regular customers. “Mostly Wall Street guys,” Samantha told me, in a tone that suggested a more populist outlook than I had anticipated, “who want to have fun and get drunk and party with girls.”
At this point, it was 2007. Strip clubs weren’t as popular as they had been — a series of mob-related arrests at Scores had taken away some of the gloss — but they were as good a place as any to blow off steam after a day pushing around billions of millions. Better, really, since strip clubs were one of the few places outside Wall Street where large sums of money could be treated just as cavalierly. “It was like la-la land in there,” Rosie recalled of Hustler. “We had a guy who was — is — at Guggenheim Partners. He spent 300 grand in one week. He came in three times, 100 grand every time he walked in the room. Everyone made $10,000 every time he came in.”
“That’s nothing to them,” Samantha told me in a separate conversation. “Noth-ing.”
The men were mostly assholes. Even when they didn’t start out that way, they’d get drunk and say things like, “Did your father abuse you? Is that why you do this?,” which was unnerving even when it wasn’t true. The majority were married, though that didn’t stop them from asking for things like blow jobs or sex or to be penetrated with a Champagne bottle, a request that they were shocked came from a clean-cut family man.
In the beginning, after work, Rosie would pick fights with her boyfriend, accusing him of cheating. “It fucked me up in the head a little,” she said of the window her job gave her into the male psyche. “The girls develop a terrible contempt,” one former Scores manager told me. “They stop believing men are real. They think: They are there for me to manipulate and take money from.”
And when it came to that, they all preferred the assholes. There’s something extra-satisfying about persuading a man who thinks you’re trash to spend his time and money on you. Preferably so much that in the end, they hate themselves. It’s like, Who doesn’t have any self-respect now, motherfucker?
At least they were worthy opponents. Not like the sad-sack losers who came in just to talk. “Like,” Rosie said, “I want you to look at me like I’m not one of those scumbag perverts.” Those guys had their uses, since you could string them along forever and extract payments for “rent” or “school.” But their weakness was pathetic. “I had so many damsel-in-distress stories,” Rosie said with a sigh. “Don’t tell me you love me. That means I know I can milk you for everything, and then some.”
Rosie has an open face, with a wide-eyed innocence she enhances through eyelash extensions, and in time she attracted a lot of these types of men. One of them was — is — a white-collar professional we’ll call Brian, who would sit at the bar and watch Rosie study. “It was just unbelievable how organized she was,” he told me. “Her penmanship was perfect.”
A lot of girls claimed to be students, but Rosie really was taking classes, at Berkeley College in New Jersey. With the help of Introduction to Psychology, she’d studied the dynamics of the club and found its long-term prospects unappealing. “The reason why Wall Street guys party so hard is because they’re not happy with their jobs,” she explained to me. “You make money, but you’re not happy, so you go out and splurge on strip clubs and drinking and drugs, then the money depletes and you have to make it again. The dancers are the same way. You make money, but then you’re depressed, so you end up shopping or going on vacation, and the money depletes, so you go back …”
This was not a pattern Rosie intended to get stuck in. Not like Samantha, whom she’d come to view as a cautionary tale. She would talk about the classes she took at F.I.T. and the swimsuit line she was starting, but the idea of her getting a straight job seemed about as likely as a vampire becoming a lifeguard. Rosie had ambition. Despite everyone who had indicated to her otherwise — her parents, her boyfriends, the guys who kicked her out of the Champagne Room because they “weren’t feeling her” — Rosie knew she was special.
On this point, she and Brian were in agreement, which is why she tolerated him and why he thought they had, in his words, “a connection.” So much of one that when his fiancée’s visa ran out, he let her return to Kazakhstan because he thought Rosie was finally going to give him a chance. “I felt in my heart,” he said, “that she liked me.”
So he was surprised when, instead, Rosie disappeared. He didn’t hear from her until nearly two years later, when she called from Arizona. She’d moved out there with a friend, and she wanted to come back. Could he help her pay for a moving truck?
“I could hear a baby crying in the background,” Brian told me. “She was like, ‘It’s my friend’s, I’m watching it.’ ”
“I told him I was in Arizona,” Rosie said later.
In reality, she had never left New York. She’d gotten pregnant with and engaged to her on-again-off-again boyfriend. But the couple had hit a rough patch, and Rosie was looking to assert financial independence for herself and her newborn daughter. She had started by calling the names on what she called her “Get Money” list.
Sadly for her, the Kazakh had come back, and Brian was now married, and when none of her other leads panned out to her satisfaction, Rosie drove back into the city, to Hustler. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” she said, sighing.
In the time she’d been gone, things had drastically changed. The market collapse in 2008 had left half of Wall Street unemployed, and the mood was such that the other half was staying as far from the Champagne Room as possible. The dancers, too, were all new, she found when she got on the floor. “There were all these Russian girls and Colombian girls, and they were giving blow jobs for $300,” Rosie said. “And they were good-looking. I was like, I can’t compete with this shit!”
Then she saw a familiar face. Samantha Foxx wasn’t dancing anymore, but she was still at the clubs every night, running a crew of dark-haired minions who would pick men up and bring them into the clubs. Samantha called this, rather grandly, “marketing,” although it is generally known as “fishing” and not seen as something one could make a career out of. But Samantha seemed to be doing extraordinarily well, Rosie observed, as she watched them clicking in and out of the Champagne Room, red soles flashing. “I started noticing, these bitches make a lot of money, and they don’t even really work,” she said. “Samantha had found some kind of loophole, where ‘I can get paid and not have to actually have sex.’ ”
Whenever the door to the rooms opened, Rosie would peer in, trying to figure out what they were up to. It didn’t take her long to figure out what was going on. “Like I said, I’m smart,” she said. “I would see the guy laid out, chillin’, and I would be like, Hmmm.”
As long as Samantha had been in the business, it had been structured in a way that was disadvantageous to dancers. The girls were the main draw; this was as plain as the neon lights outside every strip club in America. Yet traditionally, instead of the clubs paying the dancers, the dancers pay the clubs for the privilege of working there. Not only that, they’re expected to tip out the bartender, the hosts, the DJ, and the house mom, as well as pay assorted other fees — like on the “funny money” Scores sells to customers in lieu of having an ATM, taking 20 percent on each side of the transaction.
Since the recession, however, Samantha had found that the tables had turned. The clubs needed customers, and she had the ability to bring them in. Rosie wasn’t the only one with a “Get Money” list.
At night, Samantha would go down the list of client phone numbers she’d accrued over the years. “You know, like a telemarketer would do,” she told me. Often, she couldn’t remember having met the guys, and sometimes the guys didn’t remember her either. But she’d send them a sexy text and a photograph and see if they were up for a night out.
Truth be told, Samantha didn’t always send her own picture. Recognizing that she may have crossed a plastic-surgery Rubicon and could scare off those unaccustomed to creatures of the night, she sometimes sent a picture of one of the girls in her crew. Like Karina Pascucci, the sister of one of her dancer friends. Dark-haired and sloe-eyed, Karina had had her lips injected — an asshole boyfriend had called her unadulterated ones “disgusting” — but she was still natural-looking, enough that people often pointed out that she looked like a younger Samantha. They also said that about Marsi Rosen, another beauty in Samantha’s stable. Marsi, who lived near Samantha in Bayside, had been an easy recruit: Her boyfriend, a convicted drug dealer everyone called the Pimp, was apparently all too happy to have her provide another revenue stream.
“It sounds so bad to say that we were, like, drugging people.”
If the client Samantha reached out to expressed interest, she’d have Marsi or Karina meet him out. They’d wine and dine him, then the others would show up, and then, when he was drunk on alcohol and feminine attention, they’d steer him toward one of the clubs from which they had negotiated a lucrative percentage of his spending. Then they would proceed to run up his credit card as far as they could push it.
Of course, it didn’t always work. Sometimes they’d go through the whole performance and the guy would be too tired to go out; they would offer him drugs for extra energy, but he would be too lame to take them. In the face of such situations, Samantha had come up with the innovation that was making her rich: a special drink spiked with MDMA and ketamine.
“Just a sprinkle,” Rosie recalled, as she maneuvered her SUV out of her driveway and toward her daughter’s preschool. “Like a pinch of salt.” This was the key to the scenes she had observed in the Champagne Room, with Samantha’s clients “laid out,” and once she realized what was going on, she told Samantha she wanted in. She had no qualms about their methods — working at a strip club, she’d already crossed a lot of lines. “It sounds so bad to say that we were, like, drugging people,” she said. “But it was, like, normal.”
The guys they were targeting were wealthy, she pointed out. “What’s an extra $20,000 to them?” And they weren’t exactly upstanding citizens. “It wasn’t like we pulled them off the street,” she said. “They had history. They’d been to Hustler, they’d been to Rick’s, they’d been to Scores. They all walked in ready to party. And yeah, we slipped an extra one that they didn’t know about. But all of it goes hand in hand — sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You know?”
The MDMA made the guys happy, the ketamine screwed with their memory, and they often ended up blacking out. When, in the days or weeks after the event, a guy would call and complain about the size of his bill, Samantha would remind him what a good time he had, according to Rosie, who would sometimes listen in. “You were so happy, don’t you remember?” she would say. “You were tipping everyone.”
Rosie had to hand it to Samantha: She was convincing. “She’s ruthless,” she said with admiration. “She belongs on Wall Street.” Even if the guy wasn’t buying it, once he had weighed the cost of filing a formal complaint, of telling his wife and the police what he actually had done, he’d conclude it was too steep. “That’s why this worked so well,” said Rosie, fluttering her hand out the window. “They would just let it go.”
Rosie, with her legendary organizational skills, streamlined the operation. She drew up a schedule and kept notes on each client, with their personal details and how much had been charged to each of their cards. “I treated it like a real business,” she told me.
She introduced the other girls to Carmine Vitolo, a former bartender from Lace who managed the Roadhouse, a strip club in Queens. And she urged them to cultivate a higher level of clientele. Before, whenever Samantha or Karina or Marsi had gone out fishing, they’d targeted bars like TGI Friday’s in the Financial District. Rosie preferred upscale places, the kind frequented by rich guys with everything to lose. “My big advantage over the other girls is I don’t look like a stripper,” she said, gesturing to the Lululemon sexy-suburban-mom ensemble she was wearing. “I look like any girl who could be getting off work, relaxing after a long day by having a glass of wine.”
Once situated, she’d look around for a worthy target — check out the shoes, check out the watch, look for the wedding ring — and pounce. “I used to send a group of guys shots from across the room, see which one would come to me,” she said. Sometimes, she’d tell them she worked at Guggenheim Partners. A few drinks in, she’d make her proposition: “I know! Let’s go to a strip club! Yeah!”
The nights fell into a pattern. At some point, the guys would want sex. Marsi and Karina would only go so far, and prostitution was what Rosie and Samantha had joined the business to avoid. “I have my dignity,” Samantha told me. At first, they tried cutting in dancers, the ones giving $300 blow jobs, but Rosie was annoyed by their lack of enthusiasm. “If you are going to spend 30, 40, 50 thousand dollars a night,” she told me, back at home, “I want to know that you had a good time, and even if the bill was a little high or whatever, that, you know, the bang was worth the buck.”
So they decided to outsource to prostitutes they found from Backpage and Craigslist. Rosie eased into her role as a modern-day Heidi Fleiss with enthusiasm. If the girls were a little scruffy, she’d take them shopping for new clothes and makeup. She trained them in etiquette and laid down the law: no drinking, no drugs. “I taught them fake drinking and fake sniffing,” she said, leaning over and blowing an imaginary line off her hand. “Once the signatures are done,” she would tell them, “you can party your head out.”
Then, while they took care of their business, she took care of hers. “I was on the phone with American Express half the time verifying his last four digits of Social, his mother’s maiden name, his last purchases, and their name, and their location, and how much was being charged,” she said. Getting this kind of information from a guy high off his face with a prostitute draped over his legs wasn’t very difficult. “I did it right in front of them,” she said. “I would ask them really quickly, ‘What’s your mother’s maiden name? What’s your Social Security number?’ ”
At the end of the night, she calculated the breakdown. “I could do all the math in my head. Like, if you told me the bill was $40,000, I knew exactly what cut went to what.”
According to Rosie, she and Samantha got the largest cut, with the minor players getting increasingly minor sums. It’s unclear how much the clubs profited (Scores declined to comment on any aspect of this story). No one employed by a club has been charged, other than Carmine Vitolo at the Roadhouse, who pleaded guilty this year to unlawfully charging the credit cards of two customers. And although Rosie maintains that the group would occasionally swipe credit cards through Scores’ funny-money machine, she rejects the suggestion, made by some, that anyone at Scores was the driving force behind the scheme. “Nobody put us up to anything!” she snapped at me when I suggested it. “We are strong women who don’t fucking take shit from nobody.”
Rosie believed the hosts and managers appreciated her work. “There were nights and weeks where I brought in the club 100 grand. Without me making the effort to go out and market and promote, they wouldn’t have business.” She was no longer just a disposable dancer; she was the CFO of her own corporation. “It was like I moved up on the totem pole,” she said.
With Rosie’s business savvy and Samantha’s people skills, business boomed. That first Christmas, they bought their favorite prostitute her first pair of Louboutins. “We were like Kobe and Shaq,” said Rosie. “That’s what I always said to Samantha. We were untouchable.”
“How much are we going to make tonight?”
Rosie looked over at Samantha, whose face was illuminated by the iPad she was using to look at a pair of shoes on Gucci.com. It was fall 2013, and they were sitting outside a hotel on the Upper East Side in Rosie’s Escalade, waiting for one of the girls to come downstairs with the client’s credit card so they could run it over to the Roadhouse to swipe.
This was a new innovation. Their success hadn’t gone unnoticed by other dancers, and the market had gotten crowded enough with copycats that they’d decided to switch things up. Guys wanted to be around strippers, Rosie had observed, but they didn’t always want to go to the clubs — especially in Queens. “I saw there was a market for in-between,” Rosie told me. “You bring the strippers to the guy. It was good, and we had a monopoly on it for a while.”
The gang was doing well, as evidenced by the several luxury vehicles Rosie had in rotation. All of their closets were lined with Gucci and Chanel, and ordinarily, Rosie wouldn’t have blinked at spending a thousand dollars on shoes. “That was like a night for me,” she said. “Or like an hour.”
Still, something about seeing Samantha shopping in the car had irritated Rosie. “I think I’m just going to buy these tonight,” her partner said, swiping a finger across the screen.
In retrospect, Rosie recognizes this was the moment when she felt things were getting out of control. Running a team of hookers, strippers, and thieves was complicated. The prostitutes were unreliable. “They wouldn’t show up for work, they would be intoxicated, they would get beat up by their boyfriends and had to be in the hospital or had asthma,” Rosie said. And her attempts at being a den mother had been met with indifference. “You have opportunities,” she’d told one girl in frustration. “You just don’t take advantage of them.”
The other girls weren’t much help. Marsi and Karina would sometimes get grossed out and disappear for weeks, and whenever that happened, tensions between Rosie and Samantha flared. “Samantha would get upset and start looking for other resources, for other girls,” Rosie said. Samantha had a soft spot for ex-strippers with problems — not the kind of girls Rosie trusted. “When I’m doing business with somebody, I want stand-up people, not junkies and criminals,” she told me. “People that have morals and principles.”
“If we’re a team and we’re making money and winning games, are you going to start trading players and bringing in new people?” she would argue with Samantha.
Samantha had zero business sense, was the problem. Look what happened with Rick, a banker they’d met. “He was good-looking, had money, was nice, and not a pervert,” Rosie said. Paraphrasing Warren Buffett’s long-term-greed philosophy, she’d suggested the gang would be better served by padding out Rick’s bills over time, rather than “banging him out” all at once. But after Samantha found out Rick had a credit limit of $50,000, that was that. Rick was predictably furious and never returned a text again. “That’s the problem with these girls,” Rosie told me of her cohort, shaking her head. “I see the forest. They just wanted a $50,000 tree.”
“That’s the problem with these girls. I see the forest. They just wanted a $50,000 tree.”
As a result of these kinds of practices, they’d burned through their base of regular clients and were now dealing mostly with strangers, whose behavior could be unpredictable. One hedge-fund manager had gotten so wasted he’d bumped his head in his pool and suffered a concussion. One of the girls had ended a night covered with bite marks. Often, Rosie didn’t get home until after 5 a.m., barely in time to get her daughter to school.
It was exhausting. “That’s why I think we got greedy,” Rosie said. “Because of the amount of stress we had to endure. We’re just like, You know what, these people are fucking pissing me off. Just for that, I’m going to max out his credit card, like a penalty. You’re going to be left with a zero balance. Zero credit line. Just for being annoying. We needed to make it worth it.”
Rosie kept telling herself that as soon as she had enough money in the bank, she was going to quit. “I would say to myself, Okay, I’m going to make 100 grand and leave,” she said. “Then I’d make 100 grand. Then, I’m going to make another hundred grand. I’m going to get to half a million and leave. No, now I want to make a million and leave. It was just never enough.”
So they kept going, becoming increasingly reckless and increasingly cruel. One night, she and Samantha drove out to an upscale Japanese restaurant in Manhasset to meet a finance guy in his early 40s we’ll call Fred, who had met Samantha one night at Hustler. He’d ended up there after a friend took him out to blow off some steam after a devastating series of events that included his house being leveled by a hurricane and separating from the mother of his autistic son.
Rosie got him a drink from the bar. “He talked about how his wife left; I don’t think she could handle it, because having an autistic child is a lot of work,” she said. She talked to him about her daughter. “We had like regular human conversations. Like a heart-to-heart.”
It was all very nice, at least up until they piled into Rosie’s car and took him to the Roadhouse. “I couldn’t tell you about what the place looked like or anything,” Fred told me. “The room was … square? There was a … table?” He does have a vague memory of overhearing the girls talking about a friend who’d been gang-raped. “It was horrible,” he recalled. “But I was so messed up, I couldn’t even make an angry face.”
“We cleaned him out completely,” said Rosie. “He pleaded, ‘Can you guys please credit back my debit card? My mortgage payment is on there.’ ” Rosie told me this was the first time in a long time she’d felt a pang about what they’d done. “But Samantha’s like, ‘You can’t feel bad!’ ” she said. “ ‘If we don’t do it, someone else is going to do it!’ ”
Rosie paused. “I can tell you exactly how much it was,” she said. Seventeen thousand dollars. “Five thousand on his Chase debit card, and then he had an airlines card. It wasn’t much. But to him it was a lot.”
If the guy at the precinct who answered the phone had a dollar for every time he’d heard a caller say he’d been drugged and his credit card run up at a strip club, he’d be retired already. Over the years, the New York City Police Department has received countless versions of those calls, and their unofficial position has always been that the callers are full of shit. So when this particular caller said he had evidence, they were skeptical.
Nonetheless, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s tactical-diversion squad were dispatched to his house, where he played for them a recording of a conversation between himself and the perpetrator. “I just want to know what happened to me,” the guy begged, until the woman on the other end of the line finally gave in and told him what had happened: He’d been fleeced by a gang of ex-strippers who had spiked his drink with narcotics. Just a sprinkle.
“It was very weird,” said one of the cops later. “If it wasn’t for the tape,” said another, “I would have been like, ‘Dude, I think you are fucking full of shit.’ ”
But they had the tape. And soon they picked up the girl on the tape, who confessed immediately. Although the police won’t reveal the identity of their informant, the women are pretty certain that it was one of Samantha’s charity cases, an ex-stripper we’ll call Marjorie, who already had trouble with the law and as a result was easily pressed into helping with a sting operation one night. As Rosie and Karina tell it, as soon as they entered the room at the Gansevoort Hotel, where Samantha had summoned them to help Marjorie with a client, they knew something was off. Marjorie was acting weird — she kept urging them to give the guy drugs, which made them suspicious, and when they held back, she became frustrated, grabbed the bag, and threw the entire contents into the man’s drink herself. He passed out not long after, and almost immediately came a knock on the door from two men claiming to be hotel security, who asked to search their belongings. Fortunately, they were too polite or squeamish to fully inspect the bottle of Midol Rosie kept inside her purse — but speeding down the West Side Highway afterward, Rosie swore they were being followed.
“I told her she was being paranoid,” Samantha told me.
“She said I was going crazy,” Rosie said. “Right there and then, she should have said, ‘Rosie has instincts. She’s perceptive.’ If she had just listened to me, the investigation would have gone cold.”
The DEA did not confirm or deny having run a failed sting operation, but it’s true that at that point, they weren’t having a lot of luck getting the victims they found to press charges. “The amount of people willing to talk to us was so small it was absurd,” one of the cops said bluntly. “Men don’t want to admit to being victimized by women.”
This was understandable, given the way victims in these scenarios had been treated in the past, when reports from men claiming to have been swindled and drugged by strippers had made their way to the New York tabloids. The stock line for the stories of the news anchor, or the CEO, or the banker who alleged Hustler charged him $28,000 for “a night of pleasure he couldn’t even remember,” was usually some variation of “what a boob!”
There it was again, when the cops opened the Post in April 2014, applied to Zyad Younan, a New Jersey cardiologist who Scores alleged had failed to pay a $135,000 bill he’d racked up during four visits to the club. “If he was drugged the first time, I guess he liked it,” a Scores spokesman quipped.
The doctor became a laughingstock, but the cops recognized the M.O. right away. “When you look at it out of context, it seems like he’s making it up,” one of the detectives told me. “But the dates were so tight together he didn’t know about the charges until it was over. It was sad — he actually thought he was dating the girl.”
Younan told the cops he’d met Karina Pascucci at a restaurant on Park Avenue. She said she was a nursing student and introduced him to her relatives, Samantha and Marsi. Their dates had ended a little fuzzily, he said, but it wasn’t until he got a phone call from American Express alerting him to $135,000 in charges made at Scores that he realized something was seriously wrong. After the story broke, one of the cops who’d interviewed him ran into a colleague.
“That guy’s full of shit,” the guy said.
“No,” protested the cop. “It really happened.”
Young men themselves, the cop and his colleagues were getting kind of spooked. “I’m paranoid,” one told me. “I know this job. You come here, you say this happened to me. Who’s going to believe me? Your gun is missing, your badge is missing, you blacked out, they have video of you at a go-go bar …”
At first, according to Rosie, Samantha was happy about the attention the doctor was getting in the tabloids. “She was like, ‘Good, now he’ll pay his bill.’ ” But Rosie had a bad feeling about it. Like she said, she’s perceptive.
On June 9, 2014, the cops cornered Samantha at an ATM in her neighborhood. “They were like, ‘Get in the car! You’re under arrest!’ ” she recalled. “The neighbors were staring. I’m having like a panic attack.” Karina was picked up next, then Marsi.
Rosie was last. In the car on the way to central booking, she and the cop bantered. “He was basically like, ‘How did you get wrapped up in this?’ ” Rosie told me. “ ‘You’re smart, you’re pretty.’ ”
“Maybe when all this is said and done, I’ll take you out for a drink,” Rosie said offhandedly.
In the rearview mirror, his face changed. “I ain’t never taking a drink from you,” he said tersely.
Rosie laughed. “Don’t worry, hon,” she said. “You don’t have no money for me to take.”
In addition to Younan, the cops had persuaded three other victims to testify, all professionals petrified of their names getting out. In interrogation sessions, the cops laid out the charges filed against the women — forgery, conspiracy, grand larceny, and assault — and explained to them how each of the men had been affected by what they’d done. One was Fred, the father with the autistic son. As it turned out, one of the credit cards they’d maxed out was corporate. His company had launched an internal investigation, and Fred had been fired. Later, after starting a new job, he was informed his name had been reported to an agency that tracks white-collar crime, and he was fired again. Since then, he’s been fortunate enough to find a consulting job, but he lives in fear of being found out by his current employer. “I wake up in the morning thinking about it,” Fred told me. “Every day, once or twice a day, I feel the barrel of the gun against my head.”
The women were unmoved. As they saw it, they should be considered the aggrieved parties. The cops were going after them, four hardworking women from difficult backgrounds, all because a “prominent doctor,” as Samantha put it, had complained that he’d been taken advantage of. Which they all maintained was bunk: Samantha had met Younan back at Hustler, they said; he was a regular. (Younan’s lawyers deny this.) “He’s a scumbag like the rest of them,” Samantha told me. “These guys are all over these girls,” she said of her clientele. “They get fucked up, they know what the hell they’re doing.”
If they’d done anything wrong — and she didn’t think they had — it was nothing compared to the stuff men got away with on a regular basis. And yet they were looking at three years in jail? It was outrageous. “What about the things the guys did?” Samantha fumed. “What about Bill Cosby?”
To add insult to injury, the tabloids reporting on their arrest kept referring to them as “strippers,” a descriptor they’d worked hard to transcend. “None of us are strippers,” Samantha insisted. This was a distinction lost on the men who arrested them. “I liked the part when one girl I was interviewing had a derogatory comment about the prostitutes they called in,” one of the cops said to his colleague. “Like, ‘I don’t do that.’ ”
The other guy laughed. “You think that drugging people without their consent is okay, but a prostitute is derogatory? They’re warped.”
Afterward, they were trucked out to Rikers, where they were reunited in a cell the following day. Samantha attempted to rally the troops. “Samantha was like, ‘Let’s all hold hands and fight this together!’ ” said Rosie. “ ‘It’s us against them. We didn’t do anything! We’re innocent!’ ”
Rosie looked at Samantha, who resembled a deranged Rosie the Riveter in the leopard hair wrap she was arrested in. “I’m thinking in my head, This is dumb,” she told me. “I said, ‘Yeah, we’re innocent. We’re all fuckin’ angels. You are delusional. Like, come on! Everything has already unraveled! Put your big-girl panties on. Just be truthful for one thing in life.’ ”
“Rosie basically had a breakdown,” Samantha said.
The correction officers eyed them with amusement. Even without their hair and makeup, they were a sight to behold, four exotic birds chirping in a cage. “Which one of you is the ringleader?” one asked.
“Samantha pointed to me,” Rosie said. “I pointed to her.”
“Keo talked,” said Carmine Vitolo, brushing past Samantha Barbash outside Manhattan Criminal Court one morning in November 2014. Samantha, teetering on the steps in Gucci heels, paled visibly beneath her tan.
That afternoon, I drove to Nanuet to see Rosie. She opened the door looking wary. Samantha had already texted. We heard you took a deal. Good luck.
“At first I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to be a rat,’ ” Rosie told me, sitting on her couch, wrapped in a Gucci throw, while her daughter played with Barbies on the snow-white carpet. “But then I thought about it, and I’m, like, the only one of those girls that’s normal, with a brain on my head, with a child and a future.”
She wasn’t worried about her former colleagues, especially Samantha. “She’ll have a crew in jail,” she cracked. “I was watching Orange Is the New Black. She’ll be like Red. She’ll be like V.”
Over the next year, I talked to Rosie many times. At first they were proper interviews, but then she’d call at random and we would just talk. She’d want to complain about Samantha and how she’d “fucked up my aspirations.” Or she’d return to her goals for the future and her struggles with anger and depression. “I know why we did it,” she told me at one point. “Hurt people hurt people.” Despite her obvious flaws, it was easy to understand why clients found her charming. She was funny and strange and oddly philosophical, especially on the subjects of greed and materialism. “I need to decipher the difference between what I want and what I need,” she said at one point while telling me about paring down her handbag collection. “Because the want of wanting is what’s killing me.”
In February, we met for lunch before her appearance in criminal court. When we got there, the judge was still hearing the previous case, about a shooting incident, and the prosecutor was showing a video of the defendant giving an interview to police in which he thoroughly incriminated himself. It was painful.
“Idiot,” muttered a guy in the front row. It turned out to be Rosie’s lawyer, who had not been returning my calls.
I began to feel nervous for Rosie, who’d been evasive about the terms of the deal she was expecting to get. But she hadn’t seemed at all concerned. “I mean, it’s white-collar crime,” she’d said at one point. As the defendant in front of us hung his head in regret, she nudged me and held up her phone, which displayed an array of caviar dishes on Yelp. “Do you like foie gras?” she whispered. “I love foie gras.”
All the women were desperate to avoid jail time, and their plea negotiations dragged the case into November, when Karina and Marsi pleaded guilty to conspiracy, assault, and grand larceny. A few weeks later, Samantha Barbash pleaded to the same charges. Their sentencings are scheduled for early in the New Year. In the meantime, Karina has a new retail job; Samantha is still working on her swimsuit line.
Rosie’s court date is scheduled for February. Throughout the ordeal, she has appeared mostly upbeat about the idea of sharing her story; she told me she was thinking of becoming a motivational speaker like Jordan Belfort, the banker made famous by The Wolf of Wall Street. But then later, when a fact-checker at this magazine called to confirm details, she declared she had made everything up. When she and I spoke, I told her this was impossible — her story is corroborated by multiple indictments and many interviews — and she seemed to acknowledge this. “Right now, I am telling you everything is fictional,” she said after I asked her about her Jordan Belfort plan and she paused for a long while. “If you want to write the fictional story I told you, you can.” Then she said something we both knew was true: “I am saving myself,” she said. “I am out for myself.”
Still, I like her. We’ve stayed in touch. Not long ago, when we spoke, she said she was living in California. I have no idea if this was true, but if it was, I will say she seemed happy. She and her fiancé were on the rocks again, but she’d been making new friends, she said. There was a man who was helping her get a job in pharmaceutical sales, and she was learning how to trade stocks. “Guys out here all want to bang me. They’re all like, ‘I’ll take you on my private jet. We’ll go to Tampa, we’ll go to Vegas.’ ” She hadn’t said yes to anyone, but she was thinking about it. “I mean, I have all their numbers.”
*This article appears in the December 28, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
Filed Under: Articles, Featured, News, Top
Jessica Pressler is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is the the former editor of the magazine’s news blog, Daily Intelligencer, and a regular contributor to GQ and Elle. In 2015, Pressler was nominated for the National Magazine Award.
JESSICA PRESSLER is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is the the former editor of the magazine’s news blog, Daily Intelligencer, and a regular contributor to GQ and Elle. In 2015, Pressler was nominated for the National Magazine Award. Read More...
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You are here: GKD | News | Solar protection façade: Ener …
Solar protection façade: Energy efficiency and sustainability
The new King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh is a symbol of Saudi Arabia's modernization and consists of some 34 skyscrapers that are connected via skywalks. The Gem Building plays a special role here. For its crystal-shaped façade, Henning Larsen Architects selected Omega 1520 metal mesh from GKD – GEBR. KUFFERATH AG. The mesh construction employed in cladding the faceted building impresses as sustainable solar protection.
As one of the largest economic centers in the world, the King Abdullah Financial District is of major significance for the Near East. Over an area of 1.6 million square meters, the new skyscrapers provide offices, stores, and mosques as well as apartments for 12,000 people. A green promenade, the Wadi Hanifa river bed, and five striking buildings in the center form the heart of the district. The Gem Building designed by Henning Larsen Architects from Scandinavia in the form of a rock crystal consists of several towers that are used as residential and office blocks. The multi-edged glass façade was clad in 9,500 square meters of shimmering Omega 1520 metal mesh from GKD, thus further highlighting the crystal character of the building. The transparency that is typical of the mesh creates a pleasant, daylight-bathed atmosphere within the structure. The entire complex, which is LEED-certified, sets exacting requirements for energy efficiency and sustainability. The Gem Building meets these requirements among other things through the use of the metal mesh, which absorbs the sunlight and thus prevents the building from heating up. The weather resistance, durability, and recyclability of the GKD mesh were also a deciding factor for the architects. The mesh panels, each consisting of three-meter-wide and 8.40-meter-high sections, were wrapped horizontally around the façade for tensioning top and bottom. The faceted building form posed a major challenge, which the specialists from GKD successfully mastered in their accustomed manner as full service provider.
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News » Crime
Expert: Comatose Woman May Not Have Shown Pregnancy Signs
by Terry Tang .
Friday Jan 11, 2019
A doctor examined an Arizona woman in a vegetative state nearly nine months before she gave birth but did not find that she was pregnant, and medical experts said Thursday that it's possible she displayed no outward signs that workers who cared for her every day would have noticed either.
Police are looking for her rapist and say it appears none of the staff members at a Phoenix long-term care facility knew about the pregnancy until the baby was born Dec. 29, a notion that has drawn skepticism. But the 29-year-old woman, who is described in a medical report as having tubes to feed her and help her breathe, may not have had a swollen belly, according to a doctor of fetal medicine.
While factors remain unknown, such as how far along she was, someone who is fed the same amount from a tube every day might not show any dramatic changes that would be noticed, especially by staffers who don't work with pregnant patients, said Dr. C. Kevin Huls, a clinical assistant professor and maternal-fetal medicine fellowship director at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.
The mother could actually lose weight in other places like her face or arms if a fetus is consuming nutrients, Huls added.
"A good way to understand it is that really, the baby's going to continue to grow even at the expense of the mom's nutrition," Huls said. "So, her weight may not change because she's not taking in additional calories. There may be changes to her body that are going to go undetected in a chronic care condition or at a facility like this."
The revelation that an incapacitated woman was sexually assaulted inside a care facility has horrified advocates for people with disabilities and the community at large. The provider's CEO resigned this week, and the state said the center has made safety changes.
A doctor examined the woman on April 16 and found "no change" in her health, writing that the exam was external only, according to Maricopa County Superior Court documents. Her mother submitted the results of the physical as part of an annual report that state law requires of legal guardians.
Court documents indicate the woman had been living at the facility since she was 3 years old, local media outlets reported.
Phoenix police learned of the pregnancy situation when they received a call on Dec. 29 about a newborn in distress at the Hacienda HealthCare facility. Officers launched a sex crime investigation when it was determined the mother was in a vegetative state, police spokesman Tommy Thompson said.
"She was not in a position to give consent to any of this," Thompson said.
The baby and the woman are recovering at an area hospital, and their conditions were not released.
It's possible the woman won't have any additional long-term complications from giving birth. Women in a vegetative state after accidents or strokes have successfully delivered babies, Huls said.
Her family, who are members of the San Carlos Apache tribe in southeastern Arizona, said in a statement through their attorney that they will care for the baby boy.
Phoenix police, meanwhile, have not ruled out any suspects in the sexual assault. They are gathering DNA samples from the facility's male staffers and have appealed to the public for any information.
It remains unclear to investigators if the woman was raped more than once.
"I know at least once she was sexually assaulted, which is way too many times," Thompson said.
The Hacienda intermediate care facility specializes in providing around-the-clock care for infants, children and young adults with developmental disabilities or who are "medically fragile."
Since the birth came to light, Hacienda HealthCare has implemented increased safety measures, including more than one staff member being present during patient interactions and more scrutiny of visitors.
The company has said it welcomes DNA testing of its male staffers and is cooperating in the investigation.
Paramount Home Media FATHER'S DAY Prize Package!
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Church of England facts for kids
(Redirected from Anglican Church)
Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury
The Church of England is the leading Christian church in England.
It is the church established by law, with its formal head being the English monarch (Elizabeth II). It is the mother church of the Anglican Communion.
The Church of England understands itself to be both Catholic and Reformed:
Catholic in that it views itself as a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ in unbroken continuity with the early apostolic church. This is expressed in its emphasis on the teachings of the early Church Fathers, as formalised in the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and Athanasian Creed.
Reformed in that it has been shaped by the doctrinal principles of the 16th century Protestant Reformation, in particular in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer.
There are other Protestant churches in England which are not part of the Anglican Communion.
The Church of England was created by King Henry VIII in 1534. Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon, but asked the Pope to annul the marriage (say that there was a mistake and that Henry and Catherine were never really married). He had wanted to annul the marriage because he wanted a male heir to his throne and Catherine could not produce one.
When the annulment was refused, Henry VIII used his position as King to break away from the Roman Catholic Church, and establish the Church of England, sometimes called the Anglican (English) Church. Methodism broke away from the church in the 18th century. The Oxford Movement brought Catholic beliefs back into the church in the 19th century.
Under his son, King Edward VI, more Protestant forms of worship were adopted. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer started more changes. A new pattern of worship was set out in the Book of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552). These were based on the older liturgy but influenced by Protestant principles.
Thomas Cranmer
Images for kids
Richard Hooker (1554–1600), one of the most influential figures in shaping Anglican theology and self-identity
Canterbury Cathedral houses the cathedra or episcopal chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury and is the cathedral of the Diocese of Canterbury and the mother church of the Church of England as well as a focus for the Anglican Communion
The parish church of St Lawrence in Toot Baldon is typical of many small English village churches
Map showing the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe with the archdeaconries colour-coded
Hereford is one of the church's 43 cathedrals; many have histories stretching back centuries
Stained glass window in Rochester Cathedral, Kent
Captain John Smith's 1624 map of Bermuda, showing St Peter's at centre, left
Church of England Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
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The character and characters of a lakeside village
and Books
March 28, 2019 by kihm
Love the man in the shade of the tree, thinking of crossing the road.
Posted in Borodino, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
December 22, 2018 by kihm
Wonderful story about Marshal Larrabee here, with thanks to Dave Pecota, Bill Hecht and Laurie Winship.
West Lake in Sepia
West Lake Street seen from Genesee Street, with what is today The Lady of the Lake B&B on the right. Love the hitching posts and stepping stones along the edge of the street.
Posted in Architecture, Skaneateles, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
November 14, 2018 by kihm
Aspinwall’s Brook
Just behind a white picket fence on West Lake Street one can glimpse a tree-shaded stream which ducks beneath the street and then passes through a stone-walled channel into the lake. It is a small brook with a long history.
Before it was anything else, it was one of many streams that fed Skaneateles Lake. Native Americans followed its flow, and a path alongside the brook became a Cayuga-Onondaga foot trail, leading from Owasco Lake to Skaneateles Lake. Emerging from the woods, the trail continued across the lake’s original shoreline and went uphill, passing by the spot where St. James’ church stands today. (When a dam was built in 1797, the level of the lake rose and the shoreline portion of the path disappeared.)
In 1876, writing for the Skaneateles Democrat, the Rev. William M. Beauchamp recalled the native’s path as it was in his boyhood and noted:
“The trail came from the west along what was called Aspinwall’s brook… The brook was a resort for minnows for bait, and I caught many there.”
The brook was named for John Myer Aspinwall (1792-1844), who came to the village from New York City, where he had investments in shipping, banking and insurance. He lived in a house near the brook with his wife Charlotte and daughter Francis, two servants and a former slave (who had been freed by New York State law in 1827.)
John Aspinwall was elected to the Vestry of St. James’ in 1830 and was a supporter of the Skaneateles Mechanics Literary Association, a library for working men. William Beauchamp’s sister, Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp, recalled:
“The Aspinwalls were as refined a family as ever settled in Skaneateles, and not only refined in manners, but remarkably so in tastes, having that keen appreciation of natural beauties which is an inexhaustible source of enjoyment to its fortunate possessors.”
The Aspinwalls sold their house and land in 1835, preparing to return to New York City, advertising in the Skaneateles Columbian:
VALUABLE PROPERTY In the Village of Skaneateles
The subscriber will sell at AUCTION, at the house of I. W. Perry*, in the village of Skaneateles, on Thursday, the 30th of April, at ten o’clock A.M., the following Real Estate, containing thirteen and a half acres of land, beautifully situated on the Western bank of Skaneateles Lake, and within the bounds of the Village incorporation.
No. 1 — The DWELLING HOUSE, out-houses and Grounds now occupied by the subscriber and lying on the western side of the highway. The garden is well supplied with strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, currants, and asparagus beds. The orchard contains every variety of grafted fruit trees in full bearing. The well of water is of the best quality. The back fields have streams of water running through them.
No. 2, Also so much of the PIECE OF LAND situate on the opposite side of the highway, as is parallel to the dwelling house lot, being the Bank of the Lake and covered with a grove of locust trees. The piece of land may be annexed to the purchase of the first described at No. 1 at the price of $500, if so required by the purchaser.
No. 3 — Also A FURTHER PIECE OF LAND being the bank of the lake, north of and adjoining the last described land, and running about 200 feet along the lake, subject to an agreement restricting the erection of buildings, etc., thereon for 15 years. Also the benefit of the same restriction upon the piece of land adjoining to and extending along the lake about 200 feet north of this. These 200 feet may be annexed, at the option of the purchaser of the two first described pieces of land, to his purchase at $300.
Two-thirds of the purchase money may remain upon bond and mortgage for a term of years, at the option of the purchaser.
J.M. Aspinwall, Skaneateles, April 9, 1835
* Isaac W. Perry’s “house” was the Indian Queen hotel, at the corner of Genesee and Jordan Streets.
The grove of locust trees, a haven of dappled sunlight, became known as Furman’s Grove and was an ideal site for picnics. (A few locust trees remain on the site, but given the life span of a locust tree, they are, at best, offspring of the originals.)
I do not know what became of the “dwelling house” described in Aspinwall’s auction advertisement, but Leslie’s history of 1902 notes that Caleb Wells Allis built a house next to the brook. Allis was a Quaker and a prosperous merchant.
In 1852, the house was occupied by his sister, Mary Louisa Hall, her husband, David Hall II, and their two sons, Tom and John. David was the eldest son of Captain James Hall, and a bookkeeper in the employ of C. W. Allis & Co., and might have remained there had it not been for a discovery on the other side of the world.
In May of 1851, gold was found in Australia and the rush brought a huge influx of people from overseas, including 18,000 from the United States. David Hall, living in his brother-in-law’s house and working for his brother-in-law’s company, was inspired to seek his own fortune. He left Mary and the boys on Christmas day, 1852. He promised to strike it rich in the gold fields and then return home to share the wealth. He was in the company of several men, including Massilon Fay, the landlord of the Lake House; A. D. Bodine, a woodworker for John Legg; J. V. Tilton, a miller and speculator in patent rights; and Eliphalet Hall.
On October 14, 1853, the Skaneateles Democrat reported “Letters were received in town last week, bearing date Melbourne, June 21, 1853, from several of our Australian boys, the purport of which is that they had just arrived at that place, in just four months and four days from Staten Island, N. Y. They were to start on foot the next day for the mines, with their packs on their backs, which were distant about one hundred and twenty miles. The prospect for gold gathering was excellent, and considered very favorable.”
Over the next three years, Mary Louisa had 12 letters from her husband. After his letter of Feb. 10, 1855, she never heard from him again. He had not found riches, nor even enough to afford return passage.
According to Allis family records “Mrs. Hall bravely took in sewing,” but was unable to provide for her sons. She sent John to live with Caleb, her brother, at his house at 62 W. Genesee St., known as The Pines. Thomas went to live with his aunt and uncle, Electra and George Bentley, on their farm about three miles south of the village. (The farm’s current owner is Tim Green.) And Mary Louisa was taken in by William and Eliza Marvin, living in the Jewett Mansion (today’s Masonic Temple).
(It wasn’t until recently that descendants of David Hall II learned what had become of him. Too broke to return and perhaps too ashamed to write, he lived 34 more years, working as a laborer, dying in Heathcote, Australia. He was buried in a pauper’s grave, unmarked by any stone. But a church record, an obituary and a death certificate were found by his great-grandchildren, and they placed a plaque on his grave in 1992.)
But back to the house by the brook.
Sweet’s map of 1874 showed the home’s owner as John M. Nye; he was once “the prince of landlords” at the Mottville Hotel and later a principal of the Hart Lot Paper Company. On the same map, Julia Furman was shown as the owner of “Furman’s Grove,” although she built no house there.
In July of 1885, Benjamin Franklin Stiles, a farmer, land owner and banker, purchased the John Nye place on West Lake, with its 7 acres, and in August had made “extensive and thorough improvements in the interior” prior to moving in. But Stiles was a mercurial figure. He was born in Skaneateles, but lived in Troy, N.Y., where he was the keeper of the Troy House hotel, and then in Orange Park, Florida, his winter home, where he was the third “settler,” the owner of an orange grove, the Mayor, and perhaps the village of Skaneateles’ first “snowbird.” He went bankrupt in 1899, and ended up as a poultry farmer in Sand Lake, N.Y., outside of Saratoga Springs. He died in 1913 at his home in Sand Lake and was buried in Lake View Cemetery.
The Native Americans, the Aspinwalls, the Furmans and many others have come and gone, but the brook, it streams on.
“Our Australian Friends,” Skaneateles Democrat, October 14, 1853
Atlas of Onondaga County, New York (1874) by Homer D. L. Sweet
“Notes of Other Days” by the Rev. William M. Beauchamp, printed in the Skaneateles Democrat in 1876.
“Recollections of the Parish of St. James, Skaneateles” by Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp, written in 1897, reprinted by her nephew, Frederick Humphryes in the Skaneateles Press in 1938, and included in its entirety in Skaneateles and St. James’ by Kihm Winship in 2014.
“An Expedition to Australia in 1852 in Search of Gold” in Skaneateles, History of its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times (1902) by Edmund Norman Leslie, pp. 216-217
“Notes from My Scrapbook” by Fred J. Humphryes, Skaneateles Press, October 2, 1938, quoting Skaneateles, History of its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times (1902) by Edmund Norman Leslie, p. 11
“History of Transportation in the Skaneateles Area” by Sedgwick Smith in the Skaneateles Press, October 6, 1966
“David Hall II’s Mysterious Disappearance Resolved” by Philip W. Hall Jr., Skaneateles Press/Marcellus Observer, February 12, 1997
August 8, 2018 by kihm
7 Miles East
Advertised as in Skaneateles, these cabins were actually seven miles east on Rt. 20.
June 4, 2018 by kihm
The Other Hero
Born in Skaneateles, Ben Porter was a young man whose heroism in the service of the Union was proved many times during the Civil War before his death on the field of battle. Ben’s brother Stanley, a Corporal in the army, also gave his life for the Union cause.
And then there was their eldest brother, Seth Grosvenor “Grove” Porter, whose service for the Confederate cause underscored the fact that the Civil War divided not just a nation, but families as well.
Ben, Stanley and Grove Porter were sons of James Gurdon Porter (1808-1885) of Skaneateles and Lockport, N.Y., and Sarah Grosvenor (1811-1882), daughter of Capt. George H. Grosvenor of Natchitoches (“Naka-dish”), Louisiana. In 1829, James and Sarah were married by the Rev. Cyrus Mason, in New York City. From the first, they had family and sympathies both in the North and South.
For a time, the couple lived in Skaneateles, where their eldest daughter, Laura, was born in 1833. In 1854, Laura Porter married Cornelius van Schaak Roosevelt, Jr., of New York City. One of her husband’s brothers was Theodore Roosevelt Sr., who in 1853 had married Martha “Mittie” Bulloch of Roswell, Georgia.
Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt had a half-brother, James Dunwoody Bulloch, a Georgia-born sea captain whose ships traveled a circuit between New York City and New Orleans. When in port, he made his home in New York with his wife, the former Harriott Cross, and was a part of the large Roosevelt family circle, which included Laura Porter Roosevelt.
James Bulloch
In 1856, Bulloch’s path would converge with that of Grove Porter, Laura’s brother. Porter was born in 1835, in New Orleans. In 1854, at the age of 19, he went to sea, sailing out of New York City, and served as a midshipman on the Baltic, the Pacific, and the Celestial.
In 1856, Porter shipped as a mate on the S.S. Cahawba, a side-wheel steamer. Once a month, the Cahawba carried mail, cargo and passengers from New York City to Havana and New Orleans, and then back to New York, a circuit of about 23 days. The Cahawba’s captain was James Bulloch, and for the next two years, James and Grove would be shipmates.
In January of 1859, Grove Porter became the Master of his own ship, the W.H. Webb, sailing out of New Orleans. James Bulloch, in 1860, was given command of the newly built S.S. Bienville, whose owners were in New York City.
The lives of the two men, linked by ties of family, occupation and friendship, might have sailed smoothly along, but history intervened.
The state of South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 24, 1860. Bulloch and the Bienville left New York City on a scheduled voyage to Havana on January 2, 1861. On February 8th, the Confederacy was founded. When Bulloch and the Bienville arrived in New Orleans, the port was literally in a foreign country, the Confederate States of America.
Upon returning to New York City, the Bienville was seized for having “improper” customs declarations from New Orleans, i.e., the declarations were not Federal documents and came from a nation the Union did not recognize.
The Bienville was eventually released from New York, but on its next trip was detained in New Orleans, where local authorities wanted to buy the ship for the Confederacy. However, as the ship was privately owned, more highly placed officials decided they could not force Bulloch to hand it over.
In New Orleans, on April 13th, Bulloch heard the news of the Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor the previous day. The Civil War had begun. Bulloch immediately wrote a letter to Judah P. Benjamin, the new Attorney General of the Confederacy, offering his services. However, a man of honor, he first had to return the Bienville to its owners in New York City, and he instructed Benjamin to reply via the shipping company there.
On April 19, 1861, while Bulloch was en route to New York, President Abraham Lincoln declared a blockade of the 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline. Bulloch delivered the Bienville to its owners on April 22nd, and at the shipping company found a reply to his letter, saying “Come at once to Montgomery.” (Montgomery, Alabama, was the Confederacy’s capital from February through May of 1861.)
Bulloch destroyed the letter, and, acting in haste but with as much discretion as he could muster, placed his property in his wife’s name, entrusted his family to the Roosevelts, and set out to slip through the border of the two warring nations: From New York City, he caught a train to Philadelphia, then a train to Pittsburgh, where he boarded a steamboat to Louisville, where he caught the next train to Nashville. He spent the night there, then took a train to Montgomery, where he met with the Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory. The Confederacy needed a navy, and Liverpool, England, was the place to build it. Mallory said, “I want you to go to Europe. When can you start?”
Bulloch took the next train to Louisville, changed for Detroit, crossed the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, took a train to Montreal, and made his way by ship to Liverpool, England.
Birkenhead shipyard in Liverpool, 1862
Grove Porter joined Bulloch in Liverpool—probably traveling by an easier route such as New Orleans to Havana to Bermuda to Liverpool—to work with him on buying and outfitting ships.
Their efforts were necessary because the Confederacy, the South, was woefully ill-equipped for warfare and had little manufacturing capacity to produce what it needed. In addition to ships, other supplies would have to come from England, the South’s major trading partner. England wanted the South’s cotton for its textile mills; the British Navy needed resin, pitch and turpentine from the pine forests of North Carolina. The South wanted guns, gunpowder and fabric for its uniforms.
But hampering the exchange of goods was the Union blockade of Southern ports. The solution was two-fold.
In Liverpool, in the summer of 1861, Bulloch commissioned the building of commerce raiders to be used in the Atlantic to draw U.S. Navy ships away from the blockade.
The CSS Florida sinking the Jacob Bell
Between 1862 and 1864, the CSS Florida, commanded by John Newland Maffitt, captured and burned 37 merchant ships that were headed to or from the Union, always taking their crews and passengers safely to neutral ports. (Reading of Maffitt’s exploits, some in Skaneateles may have recalled his visit here in the 1850s and his host, Erastus Mills Beach of Charleston, S.C., whose summer home at the top of Leitch Avenue still stands.) Between 1862 and 1864, the CSS Alabama was even more successful, burning 65 Union merchant ships.
The Advance, a typical blockade runner
The other part of the solution was to run the blockade with ships designed for the task. The ideal blockade runner had a shallow draft to clear the sand bars of coastal waters. It was built long and narrow for speed. To make it more difficult for blockaders to see, a blockade runner had a low profile, was painted a dull gray, and burned hard coal, which produced less smoke. On a moonless night, such ships were virtually invisible. They were the cigarette boats of the 19th century.
But even on the best of nights, speed, skill and stealth were the blockade runners’ only weapons. In his book Never Caught, “Captain Roberts” a.k.a. Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden, wrote:
“It must be borne in mind that the excitement of fighting, which some men (inexplicable, I confess, to me) really love, did not exist. One was always either running away, or being deliberately pitched into by the broadsides of the American cruisers, the slightest resistance to which would have constituted piracy.”
St. George’s harbor, circa 1864
For blockade runners, the island port of St. George, Bermuda, was a major hub and coaling station (the other being Nassau, in the Bahamas). Bermuda was British, and thus neutral territory. It was also farther than Nassau from the Union naval base at Key West, Florida, and thus there were fewer blockading ships to contend with.
Shortly after the Alabama was launched, Bulloch sent Grove Porter to St. George as an Ordnance Bureau official and, when called upon, as captain of Bureau ships running the blockade between St. George and Wilmington, North Carolina.
Wilmington was the ideal port. The river’s entrance was shielded by a long cape, and the guns of Fort Fisher kept the Union blockaders, the prudent ones at any rate, far from shore and out of the cannons’ range.
But the Confederate Ordnance Bureau was not the only group running the blockade. If fact, anyone could and did buy and build ships for that purpose: cotton sellers in the Confederacy, cotton buyers in England, the Confederate Navy, Southern states and cities, and investors from anywhere, even from the North. Yes, the North. Because if anything was more motivating than patriotism, it was money. And there were enormous amounts of money to be made. In Hamilton Cochran’s Blockade Runners of the Confederacy (1958), he notes:
“Cotton, which could be bought anywhere in the South for 6 cents a pound, brought from 56 cents to 66 cents a pound [when] laid down in England… A steamer with an average capacity of 800 bales often earned $420,000 on a successful round trip. It was a common saying among the blockade-running fraternity that a ship owner could shrug off the loss of his vessel after two safe round-trips through the blockade.”
While the Ordnance Bureau brought only war supplies — cannon, shot, shell, lead and saltpeter — from England, other blockade runners were free to bring in whatever would reap the greatest profit. In Rogues & Runners: Bermuda and the American Civil War (2003), Catherine Lynch Deichmann notes:
“The cargo manifest of the Minho, which departed Bermuda in September 1862, illustrates the amount of space private shippers reserved for non-essential goods. Along with gunpowder and cases of ‘hardware’ and ‘merchandise,’ the Minho carried whiskey, candles, thread, tea, stationery, sugar, sardines, mustard, starch, cigars, brandy and almost 1,000 cases of wine.”
Also in Blockade Runners of the Confederacy, Cochran writes:
“On one occasion a captain arrived in Wilmington with his cabin crammed with boxes of shoe thread. One Southern speculator promptly bought up the entire lot, paying $3.00 a pound. The captain cleared $8,000 in a matter of minutes.”
The military of the Confederacy clearly could not count on the selfless patriotism of private shippers. The Ordnance Bureau, which Bulloch and Porter served, bought its own ships in Liverpool and had more built.
The Cornubia was purchased in England in November of 1861. The Cornubia avoided and outran Union forces on 22 trips. The local St. George newspaper kept track of her comings and goings, noting on one occasion, “The British neutral blockade runner Cornubia arrived at St. Georges from Wilmington, N.C., on the 22d of March, with a cargo of 314 bales of cotton, 29 casks of tobacco and two casks of turpentine.” But on November 8, 1863, outside of Wilmington, she was pursued by the S.S. Niphon and forced to run up onto the beach.
The Eugenie, an iron-hulled sidewheeler, went 10 for 10 running the blockade between May and September of 1863, but was badly damaged when running into a sandbar on her last attempt. In April of 1864, Porter took her from Bermuda to England for repairs.
The Merrimac, “an extremely fast sidewheeler,” was purchased by the Confederacy in St. George, with its cargo, which included 1,100 barrels of gunpowder and three 8-inch Blakely rifled cannon. Capt. Porter ran the Merrimac through the blockade into Wilmington on April 13, 1863. The Merrimac was sold to private interests and captured by the Magnolia at the entrance to the Cape Fear River, July 24, 1863, while bound for Bermuda.
The Phantom, a single-screw steel steamship, was purpose-built to run the blockade, for Fraser, Trenholm & Company of Charleston, and sold to the Confederacy in the summer of 1863. She ran the blockade four times successfully, at least twice under Porter’s command. But on the morning of September 23, 1863, as Porter attempted to take her into Wilmington through a ring of blockaders, she was run aground by the S.S. Connecticut. Porter and crew set fire to the vessel, took to the lifeboats and escaped to the mainland.
Capt. Porter’s activities did not go unnoticed by Union officials. In March of 1863, the U.S. Consul in St. George, Charles Maxwell Allen, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, “The steamer Merrimac has been thoroughly overhauled, her masts taken out, except the foremast, bottom cleaned and hull and upper works painted lead color. She is in charge of a person by the name of Porter said to belong to New York and formerly an officer in the U.S. Navy… report says he is the person who took the Alabama from Liverpool to Fayal.”
Blockade runners rarely carried passengers; they took up space that could be used for more lucrative cargo. But on one occasion, Capt. Porter had a very special passenger aboard the Phantom.
Rose O’Neal Greenhow of Washington, D.C., was a passionate secessionist and something of a charmer. She beguiled senior Union officers and officials, encouraged pillow talk, and eventually smuggled a message to Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard which led to his victory at the First Battle of Bull Run. When her role as a spy was discovered, she was imprisoned. Too influential to be executed, Greenhow was released from Federal custody with her daughter on May 31, 1862, on the condition they leave the Union and stay in the Confederacy. In Richmond, Greenhow was welcomed by President Jefferson Davis, who later enlisted her as a courier and an informal ambassador to Europe. All she had to do was get to Europe, which meant running the blockade.
On August 4, 1863, Greenhow wrote to President Davis from Wilmington:
“In a few hours I shall be aboard the Phantom, the tide now being favorable. Tonight Captain Porter intends to make the attempt to get out. The Yankees are reported as being unusually vigilant, a double line of blockaders bars the way.”
In her diary, Greenhow wrote of her trip through the blockade:
“At twelve o’clock in the morning of 5th August [1863], I left Wilmington to go on board the Phantom, one of the vessels of the Confederate States successfully engaged in running the blockade between this port and the island of Bermuda. Capt. Porter of the Phantom and Mr. [James M.] Seixas, our polite and gentlemanly [Ordnance Bureau] agent at Wilmington, escorted us aboard. Soon after, we dropped down the river to be in readiness for the tide and the friendly screen of night to get over the bar and through the blockading squadron out at sea, when we should consider ourselves fairly launched upon our voyage.
“During the day, all was preparation in the little vessel. She had been but recently transferred to the Confederate service, having been built and owned by one of our merchant marines, Mr. [George Alfred] Trenholm of Charleston, Capt. Porter being in command for the first time. I was his only passenger, including my little girl. The Captain took me to my stateroom where everything good taste could suggest was provided for my comfort…
“The Elizabeth and Hebe lay near, being in the same perilous venture. The port officers came on board and went through the usual ceremonies of mustering the crew and fumigating the ship in order to be certain that no one was concealed on board who was not authorized to be here. This done, all the officers departed. We were in eager expectation of the momentous moment… The Elizabeth and Hebe steamed out ahead of us… Capt. Porter said, in rather a piteous voice, ‘There they go ahead of me.’ To which I replied ‘O, never mind, Wait ‘til full tide is in.’ He sat with his watch in his hand watching the moments, which seemed to move on leaden wings. At last the time was pointed 9 o’clock, and the order to swing the ship was given…
“Under a full head of steam, we got under weigh. We passed the Elizabeth and the Hebe, who had each got aground, but our anxiety was too great on our own account to bestow much thought upon our friends.
“At this moment the Yankees threw up rockets, which revealed to us the fact that we were in the midst of five of her ‘blockaders,’ but right gallantly we went through them at the rate of sixteen knots. The nearest three of them followed in pursuit, which we distanced, and finally lost sight of them…
“Capt. Porter had a mattress spread on deck, upon which I lay by turn watching the moon, which had risen and was shining gloriously high in the Heavens, and pitying myself as the victim of that most unfortunate infirmity of seasickness…
“I was arisen about daylight by the ship being again put under a full head of steam and her course changed. Capt. Porter shortly after came to tell me that we were again chased by a Yankee cruiser… We soon, however, left our dangerous neighbors far out of sight. But a sharp lookout was kept all the time by Capt. Porter, for eternal vigilance is the price of freedom in a blockade runner…
“Our cargo was very valuable, being some flour, medicine and fifty bales of cotton, besides turpentine. The return cargo would pay for the ship, which has admirable qualities for the trade. She is steel-clad, short, point narrow like a needle, of light draft and great speed, and Capt. Porter proud of her as if she were his lady love.
“On Saturday evening, the fourth day out, we hoped to reach the Island, but alas, a cruiser fell on our track and we were again forced to change our course and so ran four hours out of our course to get rid of her. This brought us [to the port] in the night, and as the harbor is difficult, we did not venture in without a pilot… At daylight, the pilot got aboard and at 6 o’clock, much to my joy, we anchored in the harbor of St. George… Here the port officer came on board and was introduced to me and kindly offered the civilities of the place. Capt. Porter went ashore to secure accommodations for me at Mrs. Haywood’s, a sort of lodging house or hotel, and the only one which the place afforded.”
Here she parted from Porter, but her story merits a conclusion: In London, she wrote a memoir, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington. It sold well and she turned $2,000 of the profits into gold for the Confederacy. She set out for Wilmington aboard the Condor, a British blockade runner. On September 30, 1864, pursued by the USS Niphon, the Condor ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Fearing capture, Greenhow insisted upon going ashore by rowboat, despite heavy seas. The boat capsized; Greenhow, weighed down by the gold coins sewn into her clothing and hung in a bag around her neck, sank and drowned.
One of Porter’s trips in particular underscored the nature of the Civil War. On April 13, 1863, Capt. Porter ran the blockade into Wilmington with 1,100 barrels of gunpowder and an 8-inch Blakely rifled cannon for the defense of Fort Fisher. On January 15, 1865, his youngest brother, Lt. Ben Porter, U.S.N., died in the Union assault on Fort Fisher.
The fall of Fort Fisher and the loss of the Confederacy’s last open port, Wilmington, was the death knell for the Confederacy and for blockade running.
Following the end of Civil War hostilities in 1865, there were many in the North, including President Andrew Johnson, who wanted civil and military officials of the Confederacy to stand trial for treason. Even after a general amnesty was declared, it excluded Confederate civilians or military officers who served outside the Confederacy, who were thought to be “the most treasonous.”
So, discretion being the better part of valor, Capt. Porter went to England, and in 1865 was recognized as a Master in the Merchant Service by the Privy Council of Trade.
James Bulloch remained in Liverpool, and eventually became a British citizen. He was close to the Roosevelt family all his life, and was the favorite uncle of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., with whom he discussed naval history and tactics during family visits to England and through the mail. Bulloch instilled in young Teddy Roosevelt a nation’s need for a strong navy, lessons he carried into the Presidency in 1901.
In Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (1916), the former President wrote of his Bulloch uncles:
“My mother’s two brothers, James Dunwoodie Bulloch and Irvine Bulloch, came to visit us shortly after the close of the war. Both came under assumed names, as they were among the Confederates who were at that time exempted from the amnesty. ‘Uncle Jimmy’ Bulloch was a dear old retired sea-captain, utterly unable to ‘get on’ in the worldly sense of that phrase, as valiant and simple and upright a soul as ever lived.”
In 1866, Grove Porter married Annette Cross, the sister of James Bulloch’s wife, Harriott. They had a son, Grosvenor A. Porter, born in Maryland, but Annette died in 1868 and was buried in a cemetery near New York.
In January of 1893, an article in the New York Times described Porter’s post-war life:
“On the close of the struggle Capt. Porter went to England, and for a number of years ran English steamers under English certificates. He finally worked back to America, and entered the service of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. While with the Pacific Mail he commanded alternately for a number of years the Colon and the Acapulco. He ran at various times nearly all the steamers of the Pacific Mail doing service on the Atlantic side.”
From other sources we know that, in 1871, he captained the Morro Castle sailing from New York to Nassau and Havana. In 1875, he was commanding the Andes of the Atlas Line, running between New York and South America.
In August of 1875, Porter visited Skaneateles. The Skaneateles Democrat noted:
“Capt. S.G. Porter, of New York city, has been spending a few days in town during the past week. Captain Porter is a son of James G. Porter, esq., a former resident of this place. A quarter of a century ago, he was known among us as Grove Porter, but he has been absent from Skaneateles many years. He commands the steamship Andes, of the South American line from New York, and ranks among first-class ocean commanders. We are happy to welcome him to his boyhood’s home.”
In 1876 and 1877, Porter captained the Republic for the White Star Line, running between Liverpool and New York. When in port, he lived with his sister, Laura Porter Roosevelt and her husband, Cornelius V.S. Roosevelt Jr. in New York. The Social Register listed them in New York City during the winter, and at Roosevelt’s Maplewood, N.J., estate, “The Hickories,” during the summer.
Late in life, Sarah Grosvenor Porter, the mother of Laura and Seth Grosvenor, also lived at the Roosevelt home in New York City, “where all that wealth and affection could furnish or suggest.” She had long been an invalid, and her death on April 2, 1882, was mourned but not unexpected. Her remains were taken by train to Skaneateles where the funeral would be held; her husband, James Gurdon Porter, came from Lockport to met the train in Syracuse.
Marie Mensing, the youngest Porter daughter, who had married Adolf Mensing, a German naval officer, was also at the Roosevelt home in New York, with her children. Five days after Sarah’s death, on April 7th, Marie’s 5-year-old daughter Marie Elizabeth Niobe Mensing died. Her name would be added to Sarah Porter’s gravestone. Six days later, on April 13th, Marie’s 1-year-old son, Frederic Franz Adolf Mensing, died, of scarlet fever. He was buried next his grandmother and sister, with his own gravestone. The Lockport Daily Journal noted, “These two deaths, together with that of Mrs. James G. Porter, also very recent, causes grief to a very large circle of devoted relatives and friends.”
That same month, the remains of Annette Cross Porter, Grove Porter’s wife, were moved from a cemetery near New York City to the Porter family plot in Lakeview Cemetery, a small piece of ground that was filling rapidly with stories of love and loss.
But life went on. That summer, Grove Porter was amusing himself with sailing canoes in the waters off Oyster Bay. At the end of one race, sailing Roosevelt Schuyler’s Lilly, he misjudged the wind direction and “came to all standing, and speedily found himself astride his canoe, which lay upset beneath him.”
On the second day of 1885, James Gurdon Porter died, having endured the loss of his wife, six children and two grandchildren.
In 1887, Grove Porter was a member of the Corinthian Yacht Club and had a racing cutter, the Circe, brought over from England. In 1892, he was again sailing the Circe, recently refreshed after a two-year rest, with new decks, larger spars and larger sails from the boat yard of Henry Piepgrass.
The 1893 New York Times article gives us a fuller image of Porter:
“For the information of those who believe Grosvenor Porter to be dead, it can be said that he is not only living, but living in luxury that becomes a blockade runner who made seventeen successful round trips. In personal appearance Capt. Porter is slightly below the medium in height, with a well-knit figure that seems to be made up of a bundle of nerves. He has a finely-chiseled face, set off by a deep bronze which could only be acquired by long years spent at sea. When it is known that Porter was only twenty-two years of age at the time he commanded the Phantom, in 1864, it is seen that he to-day is not over fifty years old.
“Although Capt. Porter has spent at least thirty years of his life in the hardest kind of sea service, he strikes one more as a man who has lived mostly among the clubs… Capt. Porter has given up going to sea, and is now enjoying life at his ease. He occasionally amuses himself in yachting. He is in every respect a man still in the prime of life, and doubtless would be one of the first to seek hazardous employment again if there was any surety of finding it without too much hunting.”
In 1900, Grove’s sister Laura died; they had lived together for 25 years. Her death prompted the dissolution of her late husband’s estate and real estate holdings, which included the family’s home at 13 E. 48th Street.
In 1901, Porter received a $1,000 annuity from the estate of his sister’s husband, and in December, he sailed to Bremen, Germany. In October of 1910, Seth Grosvenor Porter died in Stuttgart, at the age of 76, having survived a war, his parents and all but one of his siblings.
Never Caught: Personal Adventures Connected with Twelve Successful Trips in Blockade-Running During the American Civil War, 1863-64 (1867) by “Captain Roberts” (Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden)
The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner (1877) by John Wilkinson
“Death of Mrs. James G. Porter,” Lockport Daily Journal, April 3, 1882
The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe or, How the Confederate Cruisers Were Equipped (1883) by James D. Bulloch
Echoes from Niagara: Historical, Political, Personal (1890) by Mrs. Richard Crowley
“Under the Stars and Bars: Four English Officers Who Ran Blockades: Capt. Grosvenor Porter, Himself a Famous Blockade Runner, Contributes a Chapter to History,” New York Times, January 8, 1893
Running the Blockade: A Personal Narrative of Adventures, Risks and Escapes during the American Civil War (1896) by Thomas E. Taylor
Blockade Runners of the Confederacy (1958) by Hamilton Cochran
Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War (1988) by Stephen R. Wise
Rose O’Neale Greenhow and the Blockade Runners (1995) by George Johnson Jr.
Gray Phantoms of the Cape Fear: Running the Civil War Blockade (1998) by Dawson Carr
Rogues & Runners: Bermuda and the American Civil War (2003) by Catherine Lynch Deichmann
Wild Rose: Rose O’Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy (2005) by Ann Blackman
Dispatches from Bermuda: The Civil War Letters of Charles Maxwell Allen, United States Consul at Bermuda, 1861-1888 (2008), edited by Glen N. Wiche
James D. Bulloch: Secret Agent and Mastermind of the Confederate Navy (2012) by Walter E. Wilson and Gary L. McKay
“Rebel Rose” O’Neale Greenhow’s European Diary & Address Book, edited by John W. O’Neal II and Beverly Ann Crowe (www.onealwebsite.com/rebelrose/rosediary/roseeuropediary.pdf)
fultonhistory.com
My thanks to W.J. Krug for the tour of Fort Fisher and all things Wilmington.
Notes on the Porters
Seth Grosvenor Porter’s obituary noted that he was survived by one son, Grosvenor Arthur Porter, born in Frederick county, Maryland, in August of 1867. His mother died just one year later; his father would have been at sea during his childhood. At the age of 10, “Grove” Porter was placed in St. Paul’s Military School in Garden City, Long Island. However, it is said he “caught the cowboy fever” as a result of the tales of adventures of Theodore Roosevelt, his uncle, and ran away to Cheyenne, Wyoming, riding the range for six years.
Later, Porter was appointed deputy marshal, and then a deputy sheriff in Laramie County, where he served for four years. He was a member of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. In the early 1900s, he served as a U.S. Marshal in Indian Territory, before it became the state of Oklahoma. Afterwards he was Chief of Police in the Panama Canal Zone, and served with the U.S. Secret Service.
Theodore Roosevelt and Grove Porter corresponded, and Roosevelt appointed Porter to government positions when he was President, but I can find no record of Grove Porter ever having spent time with his father.
In 1873, Laura Porter Roosevelt donated a stained-glass window to St. James’ Episcopal Church, Skaneateles, in memory of six deceased siblings. The monograms across the bottom memorialized:
Lucia Mary, who died in Skaneateles at the age of 3, July 29, 1834
Frederick, 12, drowned in Skaneateles Lake on May 23, 1853, when a boat he was playing in tipped over
Samuel, 22, died October 9, 1858, in Lockport, N.Y.
Henry, 22, died of typhoid while a medical student in New York City in 1861
Stanley, 20, a corporal in the 21st New York Infantry, died at the Second Battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862; his body was never recovered from the field of battle
Benjamin, 20, Lt. U.S.N., died at the storming of Fort Fisher, January 16, 1865.
Ben and Stanley, remembered on Ben’s gravestone in Lake View Cemetery.
The gravestone of Sarah Grosvenor Porter and her granddaughter, Marie Elizabeth Mensing.
The gravestone of Frederic Mensing
The last of the Porter children, Marie Mensing, died in Berlin in 1924.
January 31, 2018 by kihm | Image | Leave a comment
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Lew Raderschadt‘s entrepreneurial spirit was ignited at the young age of 10 when he figured out that dollars were necessary to buy the things he wanted. So, he set out to work and was hired by a Watertown businessman to run a firework stand. Little Lew made pretty good money! But he knew he could make even more money, and even as much as his boss, if he had his own stand.
“Lew’s” was born.
Lew’s father built a firework stand and young Lew was in business for himself the very next year. But it seemed those South Dakota winds were determined to blow his stand over every other night. So Lew’s dear father set out night after night to tip the stand right back-up so it was ready for business the very next day. Lew was in business for a few years until he took a brief hiatus with the United States Army. Upon his return from service in 1958, he managed his parents’ business, the Elco Motel (Ella and Lewis, E-L, for Elco).
But fireworks were never far from his mind and never left his heart. In 1959, twenty-one year old Lew remembered his first love (fireworks!) and built three 7 foot-wide stands while also working in hotel management. He continued to add stands every year until he had 14 stands! His company, again named “Lew’s,” was in business!
In 1961, he started selling fireworks to the wholesale market. And in 1979, he retired from hotel management and dedicated himself to fireworks fulltime. Lew was now focused on his true passion and expanded his operations to the East side of Watertown. He also started importing his products, shipping up to 40 containers to the United States each year.
But that wasn’t enough! Lew’s creative business acumen was sparked yet again, and in the mid-80’s, he began development of his own products. Lew’s Fireworks, Inc., now has over 100 signature products.
Today, Lew’s son, Dan, and his grandson, Derek, focus on the wholesale distribution facility where they specialize in product development. Currently, they have over 55,000 square footage of storage. They have 10 major retail centers and supply over 400 retailers, wholesalers and community displays. They supply retail products to a 5-state region and supply wholesale from as far west as Idaho and east to Indiana.
Lew was best known in the community for extravagant and awe-inspiring displays for celebrations and special events, large and small. The largest event in South Dakota, Lifelight Christian Music Festival, is one of Lew’s most well-known shows with over 130,000 people in attendance. Lew’s also creates the largest fireworks display in South Dakota right here in Watertown, as well as displays for events ranging from 4th of July extravaganzas to weddings and concerts. Among their extensive client list are such notable celebrities as Kenny Rogers, Martina McBride, Mannheim Steamrollers, Lee Greenwood, Oakridge Boys, Restless Heart, Casting Crowns, News Boys and Toby Mac.
Although Lew is no longer with us, his legacy and name live on. His lifeline philosophy was, “The difference between work and play is a mental attitude.” From unloading containers to negotiating prices with suppliers overseas to adding new clients – Lew continues his hands-on approach to business and customer service, infusing his incredible entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen into a business that has spanned three family generations and continues to thrive today.
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Irish Press, Vol. 2, No. 40, D...
Irish Press, Vol. 2, No. 40, December 20, 1919.
8 p. - "5 cents"
McGarrity, Joseph, 1874-1940.
Philadelphia: The Celtic Press 1919
Irish > United States > Newspapers.
Irish Americans > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia > Newspapers.
http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl%3A476897
Irish Press, Vol. 2, No. 20, August 2, 1919.
Irish Press, Vol. 2, No. 27, September 20, 1919.
Irish Press, Vol. 2, No. 38, December 6, 1919.
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Tag Archives: FSA killing refugees in Syria
Syria: Assad took in refugees from Iraq but now the FSA cleansing the Shia, Christians & refugees
Murad Makhmudov, Jibril Khoury and Lee Jay Walker
The BBC in its coverage of Syria is clearly biased against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In fairness to the BBC this organization is not alone because the endless negativity of secular Syria under the current government is blamed for every ill under the sky. However, for once this news agency reported the cleansing of the Shia in Damascus by forces of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), which in essence is a terrorist and mercenary organization.
Once more the FSA which is supported by a wide array of nations including America, the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and by others doing the bidding of the axis of America and Saudi Arabia, began cleansing Iraqi Shia Muslims in Damascus when they entered the capital city. This is clear evidence once more that Christians, Alawites, the Shia and others have much to fear from the wanton violence of the FSA.
It must be stated clearly that Iraqi refugees never fled Damascus when under the full control of the Syrian Army and the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. On the contrary, various faith groups from Iraq were given sanctuary in secular Syria. These refugees in vast numbers fled the vacuum unleashed by America in Iraq. Therefore, Syria under Bashar al-Assad took in Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Shabaks, Yazidis, and any Iraqi national fleeing the chaos of this country. Of course, the above refugees did not desire to flee to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. With regards to Turkey this applies to past history related to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Assyrian Christians and other minorities in the early part of the twentieth century.
These refuges also couldn’t flee to Saudi Arabia which is the bastion of “Sunni Islamic fundamentalism” and where women are kept in the shadows. Also, the ethnic cleansing of Orthodox Christians in Cyprus in the middle of the 1970s by Turkey is further evidence of anti-Christian hatred within the institutions of Turkey. Meanwhile turning back to Saudi Arabia it is clear that non-Muslim minorities would not flee to this nation. This applies to Saudi Arabia supporting the killing of apostates and the same nation will not allow one Christian church.
However, this reality, and the reality that the vast majority of terrorists who did September 11 emanated from Saudi Arabia, never concerns political elites in Washington, Paris and London. Not surprisingly, with nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar supporting the FSA, it is clear that this terrorist and mercenary organization would start cleansing minorities in Syria. Therefore, for once the BBC is highlighting the brute reality of outside nations spreading sectarianism, terrorism and wanton violence.
In the article by Rami Ruhayem which was published by the BBC it is stated that “One of the refugees told me he had seen leaflets in Sayyida Zainab warning Iraqis there to leave within three days.”
“Another said an entire Afghan family had been shot to death in their homes.”
“Many of these Iraqis had been in Syria for well over a decade, and others left in 2006 and 2007, as Iraq descended into its own civil war.”
“Their story, and the way they told it, captures a snapshot of a reality slowly unravelling in Syria and Iraq, almost in parallel; the passing of the era of Baathist dictatorship, and what many fear is the rise, in its place, of virulent sectarianism.”
However, you have one noticeable difference because this time it is nations like America, the United Kingdom and France which are also supporting sectarianism. This is giving the FSA carte blanche to cleanse their areas of Alawites, Christians and followers of the Shia. The only binding factor is that Saudi Arabia supported sectarianism in both Iraq and Syria. After all, the biggest numbers of terrorists who entered Iraq from outside nations came from Saudi Arabia. Yet, just like September 11 and the Saudi Arabia connection this reality didn’t mean much to America. Therefore, even when thousands of American soldiers were being killed by the ratlines linking various organizations in Saudi Arabia with terrorism in Iraq, the elites in Washington still did nothing.
Now in Syria the Obama administration under the auspices of Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice are tacitly in collusion with Sunni Islamic terrorism and spreading sectarianism. Not surprisingly and within in a short period of time the FSA once more showed its hatred towards all forms of humanity when entering Damascus. After all, it is clear that Afghan and Iraqi refugees are non-combatants in Syria but to the FSA it was a time to kill and slaughter. Yet, like usual, this will not matter one jot to political elites in Washington, Paris and London. At the same time many major media outlets will put a spin on events in order to incite hatred towards the Syrian government.
In an earlier article by Modern Tokyo Times titled Syria: Christians fleeing to government areas from Sunni Islamic terrorist networks. It was stated that “It is noticeable that Christians are fleeing to Syrian government controlled areas in order to be protected by the Syrian armed forces. Of course, this fact will not mean anything to leaders in America, the United Kingdom, and France. The same applies to the mass media, shameful human rights so-called organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and international political leaders; which are fueling sectarianism and encouraging a bombing campaign against the government of Syria.”
“All leading major religious figures in Syria have spoken out against outside meddling but their voices are being ignored. Instead, the flow of money from the proxies of America, keep on supporting all “the dark forces” in Syria. The Russian Federation is doing everything in its power to reach a peaceful solution and to reduce the bloodshed. However, given past history, then the future looks bleak for Syria unless friendly nations really support this nation politically, economically, and militarily.”
Likewise, Russia Today commented that “The Christian minority in Syria is facing a growing threat and thousands are being forced to flee their homes as they face harassment and discrimination from radical Islamist factions of the opposition.”
“At least 9,000 Christians from the western Syrian city of Qusayr were forced to seek refuge after an ultimatum from a local military chief of the armed opposition, Abdel Salam Harba, Fides News Agency, reports.”
It is noticeable that minorities did not flee areas under the control of the Syrian armed forces. On the contrary, minorities have fled the barbarity of the FSA and various other terrorist organizations which are being assisted by outside of nations. Also, the nation of Syria under Bashar al-Assad took in refugees from Iraq irrespective of the religious or ethnic persuasion of the individual. However, just like minorities in Syria, it is now clear that Iraqi and Afghan refugees in this country are also fleeing the hatred of the FSA.
In the BBC article it was stated about the FSA by one refugee fleeing that “They are not an army, they’re just gangs. There’s only one army, the Syrian Arab Army, and they have a right to protect the people and the country. They are in control in Damascus.”
Despite stating this, it is clear that refugees from other nations in Damascus fear the sectarianism of the FSA. Therefore, with the knowledge that outside nations will continue to support this terrorist organization many are fleeing once more. For Iraqi refugees in Syria they fled the violence unleashed by the vacuum created by America in Iraq – and now they are fleeing the open instigation of Washington supporting terrorism against Syria. The same refugees have also fled the sectarianism of Saudi Arabia which was unleashed in Iraq and which is now being unleashed against the people of Syria.
http://moderntokyotimes.com/2012/06/14/syria-christians-fleeing-to-government-areas-from-sunni-islamic-terrorist-networks/
Posted by leejayuk on July 24, 2012 in CIA and Islamic terrorism, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND GLOBAL NEWS, RELIGIOUS ISSUES, TERRORISM
Tags: CIA terrorism, FSA killers, FSA killing refugees in Syria, FSA terrorism, FSA terrorism and killers, FSA terrorists and killers, http://global-security-news.com, http://moderntokyotimes.com, http://thetokyotimesuk.com, Human rights, International relations, islamic jihad in Syria, Islamic terrorism, Islamist killers, Middle East, NORTH AMERICA, Radical Sunni Islam in Syria, Saudi Arabia supporting terrorism, sunni islamic zealots in syria, Syria and FSA terrorism, Syria and refugees, The Tokyo Times UK and news, Tokyo Times geopolitics, Tokyo Times News, Tokyo Times terrorism, Turkey supporting terrorism, Uncategorized and tagged CIA and FSA terrorism
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National Campaign News
CAMRA launch initiative to protect 3,000 pubs as new figures show 29 being lost every week across the UK
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is launching a new initiative to protect 3,000 pubs from demolition or conversion to other uses - as new statistics released today show 29 pubs a week are being lost across the UK.
CAMRA will be mobilising its members in England to nominate their local pub as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) and offer advice and guidance to other community groups looking to do the same. Currently pubs can be demolished or converted to other uses without planning permission, whereas pubs with ACV status are given planning protection under laws introduced in April.
With 800 pubs currently nominated, the initiative aims to raise the profile of ACVs to the pub-going public and increase the number with the status to 3,000 by the end of 2016 – an ambitious target, but one which CAMRA say is essential if England's pubs are to be properly protected.
"Holes in the current planning system allow pubs to be sold off, demolished or converted to many other uses without planning permission or the involvement of the local community. However when a pub is nominated as an Asset of Community Value it automatically receives planning protection meaning it is no longer a soft target to would-be developers looking to quickly purchase and convert or demolish the pub – which in some instances has literally happened overnight.*" Tom Stainer, CAMRA's Head of Communications.
CAMRA is inviting other local community groups to work with it in gaining this vital protection and urges community groups, or individuals, to get in touch with their local CAMRA branch to highlight valued pubs.
"Nominating a pub as an ACV is a surprisingly simple process. You can either nominate as an unincorporated group of 21 local people, as a Parish Council, or in connection with another local group including a CAMRA Branch. Some towns, such as Otley in West Yorkshire, have gone as far as nominating every pub in their area for ACV status to ensure all are protected in coming years." Tom Stainer added.
Despite the protection afforded to pubs through the ACV system CAMRA say this doesn't go far enough to curb the closure of pubs in the UK and that the next logical step is to extend the same protection to all pubs across England.
For more information about the ACV campaign, please visit www.camra.org.uk/list-your-local
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The Courtship and Marriage of the Widow Leib
By Al Bates
Last week’s Days Past told the tangled story of Charles Leib, earlier an eastern politician and later an Army contract surgeon in early Arizona Territory. This week we turn our attention to his widow and her future with a new husband.
One published version of this story has Judge Hezekiah Brooks as the star boarder at widow Mary Catherine Leib’s home; another version has them as neighbors. Most likely they were neighbors and the bachelor judge paid to have home-cooked meals at her home. Regardless, they became more than friends and married in 1867, two years after Dr. Leib’s death.
Hezekiah Brooks had arrived in the Prescott area in the latter months of 1863 with the George Lount party from San Francisco with the express intent of entering into the mining business. He invested in several mining properties but also quickly became involved in local politics, most prominently as the first Probate judge for Judicial District Three (later Yavapai County). For a time he also held the appointed post as one of three Yavapai County commissioners.
He was prominent in the birth of Prescott, serving on the three-man commission that oversaw the lot sales for the town site laid out by Robert Groom. Later he was involved in local mining and commercial businesses, including ranching. Like many another pioneer merchant, he was a partner with famed freighter Charles T. Hayden, who helped establish mercantile businesses throughout early southern and central Arizona. Active in civic affairs, Brooks was a charter member and past Master of Arizona’s first Masonic lodge.
In addition to her roles as wife and adoptive mother of an orphan Indian child, Mrs. Mary Catherine Brooks in the years to come was an active member of the early Methodist Church in Prescott. But even before that, in the absence of any church or school, Mary Catherine started classes for the children in her cabin, teaching them to read and write.
Mary Catherine, together with Chief Justice and Mrs. William Turner established a Sunday school in 1866 where Mary Catherine was a teacher. Mrs. Turner later spoke of her arrival to Prescott in 1865 saying, “a few days after our coming, a gentle little lady called, giving me a warm, loving grasp of hand and a cordial welcome to the almost unknown land…” Mrs. Turner went on to say, “The next year when we decided to have a Christmas tree, she begged the privilege of selecting and sending it to the old Council Chamber (where the Sunday school was held). The tree was the first one ever celebrated in Arizona. Not only did she provide the tree, but brought some beautiful mistletoe boughs with which to decorate the brown walls.”
When Mary Catherine died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1881, her funeral oration included these words: “It has been said that Mrs. Brooks performed more charitable deeds than any other person in Prescott, and yet she carefully avoided ostentation. Basket after Basket she packed and distributed under cover of the shadow of evening, none but the recipients of her kindness being aware of her acts of love.” She was buried in the Masonic Cemetery and her pallbearers included Judge Fleury, Bucky O’Neil and Edmund Wells.
The “gentle little lady” left a large footprint and was remembered almost a century later with “Mary Catherine Brooks Day” in 1970, sponsored by the Prescott Methodist church while celebrating their centennial; and her basket was chosen as the symbol of the celebration.
Judge Brooks survived Mary Catherine by a quarter century but was in declining health when he left Arizona to visit relatives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he died in 1907. Before he left Prescott he arranged in a kind gesture to have Dr. Leib’s remains moved to the Masonic graveyard for him to be near his widow. Unfortunately Judge Brooks left behind other important business that quickly became an issue.
You may think that the Brooks family’s story is over, but there is more. The story continues with a look back to a chance holiday encounter, the adoption of an orphan Indian toddler, and a final chapter that ends with an unfortunate ending to charitable intentions gone askew.
Next week in Days Past: The Story of Bessie Brooks, An Interracial Adoption in Arizona Territory.
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Lorna the Librarian
Rock At Research
Think Create Share Grow
Why Teach about Plagiarism in the Exploratory Research Classes?
Upon returning from the Jamestown colony to London in 1611, William Strachey went to Shakespeare’s newest play The Tempest. It didn’t take him long to realize that the play was based on his own notes of the sinking of the ship Sea Venture off the coast of Bermuda in 1609. His unpublished account of this adventure must have somehow gotten into Shakespeare’s hands.
Shakespeare was a great borrower of ideas at a time when not much was made of it. He profited from this ability. Strachey died a pauper although he has since gained recognition from scholars for his work, A True Repertory of the Wreck and Redemption…from the Islands of the Bermudas and its influence on Shakespeare.
Many others have followed or preceded Shakespeare’s footsteps as borrowers of the ideas of others over the millennia. Recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg got the concept for his now famous social network from an earlier brainchild of fellow Harvard students the Winklevoss twins; they weren’t pleased and sued in twentieth century fashion. He paid them off eventually with $65 million.
Within the last month, why did the current German Minister of Defense, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg forfeit his job? Simply, he copied large sections of his dissertation from other sources without recognizing them. It isn’t illegal to plagiarize in the strict sense of the law. You can’t go to jail for it; but you may get sued. You may lose your job.
In academic circles it is considered a moral offence. My son attended a university in Wisconsin where the students were taught to write at the bottom of every test and assignment that the work they were submitting was entirely their own under the premise that cheating actually allows the cheater to advance at the expense of fellow students. It is a fairness issue. The university felt that this honor code promoted trust and openness in the community.
AISC has an academic honesty policy that is signed every year by our students. They learn that IB candidates can lose their diploma if they plagiarize. They learn that cutting and pasting information that they find through Google searches into their essays and research assignments can be easily identified by a new program that the school now uses called Turnitin. They learn about the importance of citations.
I believe that to be able to craft your own ideas is a worthwhile pursuit even beyond the issues of morality and fairness, the pain of lawsuits and job loss. Reading about what others believe, recognizing your debt to them through citations, then thinking about what you believe and sharing these ideas with others may open collaborative pathways to innovative, even revolutionary ideas and creative works like The Tempest and Facebook. In the end, all ideas, yours and mine are just links in the chain.
Las Vegas that I remember, under the Sheepheads
From Mining Camps: A study in American Frontier Government, 1885
In a little place of angels
If I was in Ireland right now
A Fine Plain
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“INSIDE EVERY PROGRESSIVE IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT” @HOROWITZ39, DAVID HOROWITZ by Jack Kerwick
During this Lenten season when Christians are preparing themselves for Easter Sunday, those of us who are living in relative peace and affluence should remember and pray for those brothers and sisters in the faith whose circumstances are not as friendly.
To put it more accurately, Christians the world over should be mindful that at this time in our history there remain legions of Christ’s disciples who are made to endure persecution for their faith the likes of which rival that suffered by the earliest Christians.
While most of the worst environments for Christians are Islamic lands, there are non-Islamic bastions of intense Christian persecution that receive little to no coverage by the world’s media. One particularly notable example is that of India.
Of a population of 1.3 billion people, there are 64 million Christians who reside in India. Open Doors, an organization “dedicated to serving persecuted Christians worldwide,” relays the story of “Reena,” a 19 year-old girl who experienced this anti-Christian persecution directly.
“When I was a young child,” she says, “Hindu children did not want to play with me.” Eventually, “my parents were banned from using the local water supply. They had to walk many kilometers to draw water from the river.”
Things got even worse for this young woman.
When Reena went to work as a school teacher, she was initially promised a salary of 1,500 rupees ($23.13) a month. Her employers wound up welching: They paid her only 500 rupees ($7.71) for the first two months. Within six months, they stopped paying her entirely. So Reena sought work elsewhere.
Her new headmaster invited Reena to a teachers’ meeting. There he offered her and her colleagues an assortment of Indian pastries.
And it was at this time that Reena was drugged and kidnapped.
Reena doesn’t want to discuss the events that unfolded over the ten days of her captivity. She claims to have no recollection, but those in the know at Open Doors insist that it is more “likely…that what happened to her was so terrible [that] she doesn’t want to share” her experiences. After all, literally “millions of girls in India”—many of them Christians and other religious minorities—“are kidnapped and trafficked each year.”
Reena called her parents at one point and informed them that she was being retained in “a terrible place.” She also admits that when she first awoke, she was in a train car with many other teenage girls who followed her as she made her escape.
Yet Reena expresses suspicions that at least some of the girls were involved in her abduction.
Reena had been taken 14 hours away from her village.
Although she experienced depression and hopelessness for a time following her return to her home, upon attending an inspiring church service, Reena renewed her Christian faith. While her brother informs us that the headmaster in whose company Reena was drugged desires vengeance for the troubles that he now apparently endures, Reena sounds hopeful:
“My future is very bright. I will share the gospel with non-believers. I don’t expect more problems.”
But there are many problems for India’s Christians.
Over the last three years, the anti-Christian persecution in India has continued to increase. Open Doors’ World Watch List ranked India as the planet’s 25th worst persecutor of Christians in 2015. Yet in 2017 it was found to be the 15th biggest persecutor and, this year, it climbed to 11th place.
An Open Doors spokesperson informs us that before Christians face overt physical violence—in 2016, 15 Christians were murdered in India and many more beaten and threatened—“there [is] often…a long process of ‘re-converting’ them to Hinduism, during which they faced discrimination, social exclusion and other types of pressure.”
A chief cause of the oppression, according to Open Doors, is the resurrection of Hindu nationalism. The Hindu nationalist holds that only Hinduism should be observed in India. Some political leaders have even gone so far as to call for the expulsion from India of all Christians and Muslims by 2021.
In any event, although “everyone” is aware that “the churches are being attacked and demolished on almost an everyday basis in India,” as an Open Doors representative puts it, the Prime Minister of the country denies that any such persecution is occurring.
He should speak to people like Chandan Devi.
Chandan and her husband, Aadarsh, an Indian man who converted to Christianity and became a pastor who led a couple of dozen animists to Christ, have four children. The oldest, a daughter, is married, while the other three were away at boarding school when the unthinkable occurred.
Chandan and Aadarsh were home alone when they were attacked by thirty men, Maoist (communist) Naxalites all of them. As they grabbed him and proceeded to drag him outside, they were promising to murder Aadarsh. Chandan clung to her husband, begging the thugs to kill her along with her husband. Instead, though, they delivered to her a hard blow to the shoulder, dropping her to the ground.
The last thing Chandan recalls having heard is the loud sound of the door slamming shut as her husband was led off into the jungle to be killed.
Shortly afterwards, Aadarsh’s corpse was found.
None of the Christians who Aadarsh had converted attended his funeral for fear of losing their lives, and Chandan, fearing future attacks, fled her home and village with nothing but “the clothes on her back,” as Open Doors reports.
As if it wasn’t terrible enough that the Naxalites murdered Aadarsh. They subsequently threatened his brother Ajay. In fact, prior to Aadarsh’s murder, the Naxalites abducted Ajay’s son.
Of course, none of this should come as any surprise when it is considered that over the last decade, this same treacherous group, “with the help of local authorities,” has “attacked, beaten, kidnapped, raped and killed thousands of Christians in India” (italics added).
It’s worth noting that when Chandan was asked by Open Doors whether the trauma to which she and her loved ones have been subjected has provoked her to reconsider her faith and denounce Christ, she promptly responded:
“I’d rather die.”
Hindu-on-Christian persecution—not something that we hear, or are likely to hear, talked about by the Western media that has labored tirelessly to depict Christians as the planet’s only purveyors of oppression
Explosive art in Beirut explores power of cultural identity THOU SHALT INNOVATE by Joseph Puder
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Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2 results 2
Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada Only top-level descriptions
Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada fonds
Fonds consists of publications, correspondence, reports and other records of the Jewish Historical Centre of Western Canada (JHC) and its predecessor organizations. The records were created in support of the organization’s mandate to preserve and...
Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada
Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada photograph collection
[ca. 1858]-2009, Copied 1967-Copied 2010 (images 1273-2009)
Collection consists of photographs and other images acquired by the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada and its predecessors. The focus of the collection is on Jewish life in Western Canada from the earliest settlement to the 21st Century bu...
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Paying for Manhattan Tech
MATC Online
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In 1965 the Kansas State Board of Education established this institution under authority granted by Kansas Statutes Annotated 72-4412, and named it the Manhattan Area Vocational-Technical School. Educational programs were initially offered on the campus of Manhattan High School. MATC's current campus, located at 3136 Dickens Avenue in Manhattan, Kansas, was occupied in 1967.
Through the years, the increasing influence of advancing technology in business and industry, health and emergency services, and government has made strong technical skills a requirement in most professions. This evolution has made it popular to refer to vocational-technical training as, simply, technical education. In that spirit, the school was renamed as Manhattan Area Technical Center in 1992.
Legislation passed in 1994, Kansas Senate Bill 586, amended K.S.A. 72-4412 and provided the opportunity for technical schools to apply for conversion to technical colleges. In 1996, Governor Bill Graves signed into law Kansas House Bill 2606, which amended K.S.A. 72-4412, and designated the school as Manhattan Area Technical College. During its 2003 session, the Kansas Legislature passed Senate Bill 7, enabling technical colleges to move to autonomous governance, independent of the public school system. On March 17, 2004, the Kansas Board of Regents approved MATC's governance plan. On July 1, the long process of gaining autonomous governance came to fruition.
3136 Dickens Avenue, Manhattan, Kansas 66503 • Toll-Free: 800.352.7575 • Phone: 785.587.2800 • Fax: 785.587.2804 • Dental Clinic: 785.320.4532
Manhattan Area Technical College is a state-supported, locally controlled, technical college accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
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Home»Posts tagged with»Women’s World Cup
To watch more women’s football, people want to know more about the players and narratives behind the sport
By newsroom on June 28, 2019 Latest, Marketing, Media
Research from Dark Horses shows that people want a deeper emotional connection with, and more knowledge of, the stars and narratives behind women’s football, if they are going to engage with it further. The research found that 35% of people have a low or very low interest in women’s football (with a further 24% saying […]
Visa and Sky Sports team up to support the FIFA Women’s World Cup
Sky Sports and Visa proudly announce their partnership to drive fan conversation and engagement around the Women’s World Cup. From June 14, Visa and Sky Media launch the France 2019 Weekly Roundup available on demand. The show, which will be broadcast every Friday for the next four weeks, is presented by Laura Woods and features […]
Three lionesses on its store: Mobile network’s rallying roar to launch the first ever lioness emoji
By newsroom on June 4, 2019 Latest, Marketing, Mobile, PR
Three UK, one of the best network for data in the country, has unveiled the new face of its flagship London store, featuring three lioness emojis in support of the forthcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup. This follows the success of last year’s campaign, which saw selected Three’s stores have a makeover to show three lion emojis in […]
‘Three Lions’ Rewritten to ‘Three Lionesses’ Ahead of FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019
By newsroom on May 29, 2019 Advertising, Latest, Marketing, PR
England’s most famous football song, ‘Three Lions’, has been rewritten with a Lionesses twist to inspire the nation to get behind the England Women’s team ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup this summer. Lucozade Sport has reworked the original song as part of its campaign to inspire support for the Lionesses this summer. […]
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Handbook of Engaged Sustainability
Handbook of Engaged Sustainability pp 1-20 | Cite as
Gourmet Products from Food Waste
Rethinking Food Management and Social Justice
Inés Alegre
Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent
First Online: 21 December 2017
Thousands of tons of food are wasted every day. Food can be discarded because it is out of date, it has lost some properties, excessive quantities are prepared at home, restaurants, or schools, etc. These causes are easily identifiable and are typically included in studies concerning food waste. However, there is one cause frequently ignored in food waste debates: the food that is left on the fields because its aesthetics do not conform to the market specifications in terms of size, weight, or color. This food is nutritious and perfectly suitable for consumption but it is excluded from the commercialization process. Espigoladors is a Spanish social enterprise that tackles precisely this issue. It collects the fruit and vegetables that are left on the fields and transforms them into high quality juices, creams, and jams. In addition, it creates more social value by employing people at social risk. This chapter presents the case of Espigoladors as a creative example of tackling an important societal issue and compels the readers to think about food management and social justice.
Waste management Sustainable food systems Misshapen food Social enterprise Sustainability Social justice Agriculture Espigoladors
Sustainability is a broad term that, contrary to what one might expect, it is difficult to define in a single sentence. This term does not mean the same to each person. What is more, it might have different meanings depending on the context. To illustrate this point, we conducted an experiment. We wanted to know what people, aged between 18 and 24, think about sustainability. A survey was developed and responses from 112 undergraduate Business students were collected. We did not ask them for a definition, but instead, we requested them to indicate examples of sustainable habits they were already incorporating in their daily routines. Answers are shown in Table 1.
List of sustainable habits of students
1. Reduce water consumption: Turn off the tap while cleaning the teeth, soaping, or cooking; take a shower instead of a bath; do not use the dishwasher and the washing machine until they are at their full capacity.
2. Reduce electricity consumption: Turn off the lights when leaving, take advantage of sunlight, turn off electronic devices when not used, make responsible use of air conditioning/heating, use led or low consumption bulbs.
3. Avoid the use of private transportation. Instead, walk to places, use public transport, or use alternative means of transportation that cause less pollution (e.g., bicycle), share vehicles, etc.
4. Do not throw food: Reuse it for another meal, give it another use (e.g., fertilizer).
5. Do not buy products that have contaminating containers (e.g., sprays, plastic bags) that cannot or are not that easy of being recycled.
6. Separate waste to be recycled.
7. Recycle: Give another use to old things, use paper on both sides.
8. Buy ecofriendly products.
9. Do not use fertilizers.
10. Do not smoke.
11. Do not soil the forest.
12. Do not cut trees.
Results speak for themselves. Sustainability means reducing the consumption of resources, but it also refers to reutilizing things, or avoiding the use of harmful products or raw materials that pollute and contaminate. But it is not that simple. Sustainability embraces different facets that need to be simultaneously considered in order to have the full picture of what it really means. Thus, following the well-accepted “three pillar interpretation” or the “triple bottom line,” we can define sustainability as the simultaneous pursuit of environmental quality , social equity, and economic prosperity (Klöpffer and Ciroth 2011; Balakrishnan et al. 2003). That is, sustainability encompasses ecological, personal, and economic interests, which, taken together, contribute to improving the planet.
The terms sustainability and sustainable development were first coined in 1983. It was not until 1987 when the Brundtland Report (Brundtland Commission 1987) settled the fundamentals and defined it as “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” According to this definition, the essence of sustainable development is pleasing fundamental human needs while preserving the life-support systems of planet. This principle implies using resources at rates that do not exceed the Earth’s capacity to replace them (Godfray et al. 2010).
Recently, sustainability has also been considered as a form of innovation (e.g., Boons and Lüdeke-Freund 2013; Schaltegger et al. 2012; Schaltegger and Wagner 2011). Increasingly, firms are introducing practices in which waste is used as a raw material for new products or applications (Mirabella et al. 2014), leading to the emergence of concepts such as “cradle to cradle, ” “circular economy, ” and “zero waste economy. ” Sustainable resource management is thus grounded on the notion that “waste” can be turned out into a “resource.” However, despite several initiatives and policies have been implemented, both academics and practitioners lament the fact that companies are introducing sustainability practices as a way to cut operating costs, rather than for a deeper commitment to the environment.
In this book chapter, we explore sustainability in the food industry. We first have an overview of all the actors that play a role in the food supply chain with a special focus on food waste, then we present initiatives that have taken place around the world to fight against food waste. Finally, we present the case of Espigoladors, a company that reduces food waste in an innovative and interesting manner. At the end of the chapter, several reflection questions and practical exercises are proposed.
Sustainability in the Food Industry
Food waste is generated throughout all the stages of production and consumption. About 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-consumption-production/). At the same time, almost 1 billion people go undernourished, and another 1 billion is starving. This is the era of paradoxes: while a growing number of countries are dealing with overconsumption of food, a significant proportion of the world’s population is suffering from food scarcity. In this context, a key question emerges: How can food waste/surplus be managed more sustainably?
According to the report published by the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute (Stenmarck et al. 2016), countries in the EU-28 generate 88 million tons of food waste each year. This amount equates to 173 kilograms of food waste per person, being the household the sector that contributes the most to food waste (circa 50%). Said differently, food management has implications alongside the entire supply chain, starting with the farmer, moving through the food processing, and finishing with the final consumer (Papargyropoulou et al. 2014; Parfitt et al. 2010).
In order to better understand how food is managed, it is necessary to examine the different steps and stakeholders involved in the food supply chain and understand its main challenges and opportunities. Let’s start analyzing the farmer, that is, the agricultural sector. Here, the main challenge lies on how to produce more food without damaging the environment. Indeed, the projected global food demand by 2050 is expected to increase by 70% (Godfray et al. 2010). In order to meet demand, food supply has to increase. Three strategies can help increase food supply: (i) either more food is produced in the same area of land, making the land more productive; (ii) same food is produced per area, but less energy is consumed to produce it; and (iii) less food is wasted at this stage.
To produce more food from the same area of land, alternative farming methods have to be developed. The new techniques can focus on the way fields are cultivated and propose new methods of organizing the crops or retaining and improving the soil; or can focus on the seeds, trying to develop high-production seeds, sometimes through natural methods, others through genetic modifications, a technique that has been largely criticized.
To produce the same with a lower energy consumption is another alternative to increase food supply, assuming that the energy saved is used to grow more food in other fields. Energy includes electricity and fuel but mainly water, which is the most prominent resource used in agriculture. Sustainable agriculture practices are being developed, most of them based on the use of renewable energy sources. In this respect, new policies and incentive schemes are required if we are to meet the demands without compromising environmental integrity or public health (Tilman et al. 2002).
Finally, reducing food waste at this stage is also a way to increase food supply; the objective would be 100% harvesting efficiency. This means that no edible food is left on the fields after harvesting, something that does not occur nowadays. In fields that are manually harvested, a relevant amount of food is currently left on the fields due to aesthetic reasons, the food is perfectly suitable for consumption but is misshapen and does not conform to market specifications in terms of size, color, or weight. In fields that are harvested with machines, a significant portion of food is left on the fields due to not having the appropriate technologies to harvest to the full potential. Technical developments can improve the latter, but not the former, which is precisely what the business case presented in this chapter is concerned with.
Sustainable and at the same time efficient agricultural techniques receive public institutional support in some countries, that put high taxes on inefficient food production and no taxes on efficient and sustainable food production (Goodland 1997).
From the side of food processing companies, that is, the intermediary between the farmer and the shops, two challenges arise. One is internal as is common in all industries: efficiency. That is, reducing costs, including food waste and energy consumption, while increasing production maintaining quality and ensuring safety. The other is external and comes from a societal claim: transparency. Food processing companies are more and more under the scrutiny of society that demands more information on the food they consume. Information about the ingredient, but also about the origin of the food and properties such as the pesticides used in its farming are expected to be clearly communicated. To that end, food processing companies might benefit from better labeling each type of product, including livestock, to reflect all its characteristics (Tilman et al. 2002). This way consumers would have available relevant information that would allow them choosing between alternative food products.
Food processing companies supply and distribute their products to grocery stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and other type of catering services like schools or hospitals. These organizations have the challenge to correctly predict demand in order to adapt their orders and avoid buying more food than necessary. And have also a tremendous responsibility of avoiding food waste. A recent study has shown that food waste in UK restaurants approximately costs 23% of their turnover (Papargyropoulou et al. 2014). In addition, this food surplus is left in landfills. Due to the natural decomposition process, methane and carbon dioxide are produced. Both gases contribute to climate change. It is estimated that in Europe, the food sector is causing approximately 22% of the global warming problem.
At the end of the food supply chain are consumers. Individual consumers have many responsibilities concerning food sustainability and in particular on reducing food waste. First, consumers are continuously taking decisions about what food to buy and to which supplier. By taking conscious decisions, consumers can influence the way food processing companies act. Second, consumers are responsible for what they buy, and they should buy only what is necessary and is going to be consumed. If not consuming it, consumers should find alternative ways of reusing surpluses. Tons of foods are thrown away because they are no longer wanted or have passed its best. This is avoidable food waste . Finally, another path to follow in order to be more protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems is one of sustainable diets . According to Alsaffar (2016), sustainable diets promote a healthy life for present and future generations. They contribute to food and nutrition security while having a low environmental impact. The Mediterranean diet is an example of this. It has a high intake of plant-derived foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, and cereals. On the contrary, meat consumption is reduced. Plant- or grain-based diets are more sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are less taxing on the environment (Sabaté and Soret 2014).
An effective implementation of all these practices will require coordination among federal agencies, ministries, local administrations, and businesses, which often tend to have different objectives. “The goal is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, environmental, and social justice outcomes” (Godfray et al. 2010: 817). Indeed, food management is a complex process that has to be viewed in an integrated manner, taking into account all actors at all levels of the food supply chain. As we have outlined above, each of these stakeholders has its own interests and challenges derived from their distinct business activity; however, there is something in common to all of them, the ability to reduce food waste. Reducing food waste has enormous potential, not only because we are minimizing the resources employed to produce the food we eat and lower the environmental impact, but also because by being more efficient we can also save money. Being respectful with the environment is not detrimental to individual interests. Food waste is a poor use of current resources and is socially, ethically, economically, and environmentally detrimental.
Analyzing The Food Supply Chain: Where Is Food Wasted?
Quantifying global food waste is challenging. Information is scarce and reports assessing food waste have to rely on limited datasets obtained across different stages of the food value chain, and later, extrapolated to the larger picture (Parfitt et al. 2010). Despite these limitations, several estimates have been made. According to Grandhi and Singh (2016), approximately 1.3 billion tons of the total food produced for human consumption never reaches the human stomach. Where is thus all this amount of food lost?
Avoidable food waste takes place at the different stages of the food value chain (Bagherzadeh et al. 2014): during production or immediately after harvesting on the farm; after produce leaves the farm for handling, storage, and transport; during industrial or domestic processing and/or packaging; during distribution to markets, including losses at wholesale and retail markets; and finally at consumption, including the home or business of the consumer (including restaurants, caterers, etc.). Table 2 shows some examples of how food loss and waste can occur at each of these stages.
Examples of food loss and waste at the different stages of the food value chain (Adapted from Lipinski et al. (2013))
Handling and storage
Processing and packaging
Distribution and market
Fruits bruised during picking or threshing
Crops sorted out post-harvest for not meeting quality standards
Crops left behind in fields due to poor mechanical harvesting or sharp drops in prices
Fruit that is uneconomical to harvest
Fish discarded during fishing operations
Leave food in the field in response to either market forces or weather/pest-related damage
Edible food eaten by pests
Edible produce degraded by fungus or disease
Livestock death during transport to slaughter or not accepted for slaughter
Fish that are spilled or degraded after landing
Milk spilled during pasteurization and processing
Edible fruit or grains sorted out as not suitable for processing
Livestock trimming during slaughtering and industrial processing
Poor order forecasting and inefficient factory processes
Fish spilled or damaged during canning/smoking
Edible produce sorted out due to quality (non-compliant with aesthetic)
Edible products expired before being purchased (“best before” and “use-by” dates)
Edible products spilled or damaged in market
Edible products sorted out due to quality
Food purchased but not eaten
Food cocked but not eaten
There are several sources of inefficiency conducive to food waste. These sources are mainly due to financial, managerial, and technical limitations in harvesting techniques, storage, and cooling facilities. Indeed, the lack of financial resources has been signaled as one of the main reasons leading to significant inefficiencies in food management and treatment. From the viewpoint of the stakeholders involved in the early stages of the food value chain, financial resources are critical in the sense that, in case of being limited, the logistics and infrastructures needed to preserve and transport the raw material without altering the original attributes becomes difficult to manage.
There are, however, other sources of inefficiency. One of these relates to information asymmetries (Kouwenhoven et al. 2012). A fragmented supply base, the absence of proper communication channels among the different stakeholders and a misalignment of incentives, conduces to reactive value chains that, far from identifying common areas for improvement in order to develop a more sustainable food system, seek for individual benefits that very frequently end up in system inefficiencies. Another critical factor is the fast-changing consumption patterns. Producers and suppliers have little time to adjust their production to the demand. This higher demand uncertainty requires flexibility and innovation in the food value chain.
From farm to fork, almost one-third of all the food produced is lost (Göbel et al. 2015). Although the percentages might vary across countries, there is a common pattern. In developed countries, 24% of global food loss and waste occurs at the production, another 24% during handling and storage, and the largest percentage, approximately 35%, takes place at the final consumer level (Lipinski et al. 2013). These figures mean that approximately 35–40% of the food that arrives at the consumption stage is thrown away (Nahman and de Lange 2013). Consumers seem, however, not to be completely aware of this situation. In a consumer-driven society with increased households and an illusion of abundance, buying decisions are influenced by aggressive discounts and special offers, which result in consumers’ tendency to overbuy (Stuart 2009). Food is thrown away in small quantities, and there is a widespread sentiment that wastage is an inevitable part of consumption. In this respect, consumer education is essential to address this issue. Unfortunately, there are few opportunities for exactly knowing how much food is wasted and its associated cost. According to a study conducted by Gunders (2012), American families throw out 25% of the food and beverages they buy, with an estimated cost for an average family of four that ranges from $1,365 to $2,275 annually.
Implications of food waste are not only at the household level. From a social and environmental perspective, food waste has devastating consequences. First, all the edible food discarded signals that if properly managed it could have been used to feed those in need. Second, organic decomposition at landfills or incineration originates smokes and substances that pollute the planet. Third, efforts employed to produce, manipulate, and distribute the food that ends up going to waste, entails the consumption of natural resources (e.g., land, energy, water, etc.). Furthermore, a recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO 2013) reported that all the food that is produced but not eaten is responsible for adding 3.3 billion tons of unnecessary greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere.
According to the OECD report (Bagherzadeh et al. 2014), practices to minimize food waste in developing countries should be directed toward improving the initial stages of the value chain, while in most developed regions or urban areas the strategy should be focused on stages “close to the fork.”
In this setting, policymakers and nongovernmental agents should adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and, in order to minimize food waste, convert an altruistic effort into a profitable business (Grandhi and Singh 2016). Indeed entrepreneurs play a key role in this process (Kouwenhoven et al. 2012), bringing new inventions that fight against value chain inefficiencies, increase food availability, and alleviate poverty. Table 3 suggests some possible approaches for reducing food waste.
Approaches for reducing food waste at the different stages of the food value chain. Adapted from Lipinski et al. (2013)
Facilitate donation of unmarketable crops
Improve access to low-cost handling and storage technologies
Re-engineer manufacturing processes
Facilitate increased donation of unsold goods
Facilitate increased donation of unsold goods from restaurants and caterers
Improve availability of agricultural extension services
Improve ethylene and microbial management of food in store
Improve supply chain management
Change food date labeling practices
Conduct consumer education campaigns
Improve market access
Introduce low-carbon refrigeration
Improve packaging to keep food fresher for longer
Change in-store promotions
Improve harvesting techniques
Improve infrastructure
Packaging food into small packs and loose items wherever possible
Follow the recommendations on how to store fresh food
Next section describes some entrepreneurial initiatives that illustrate how to overcome some situations leading to food waste.
Worldwide Initiatives That Fight against Food Waste
Following the interest and concerns of the last decade about sustainability, initiatives to improve food management sustainability, and in particular, to reduce food waste, have flourished all around the world. Below we describe several innovative actions taken by different actors in the food supply chain and in different countries, all with the same objective of reducing food waste, therefore, improving food management efficiency.
People tend to leave food when they eat out. Hotels, restaurants, pubs, and bars generate thousands of tons of food waste per year. This food waste is made up of things like peelings and inedible by-products (e.g., bones, coffee grounds, tea leaves) but the majority is perfectly good food. Waste is also generated due to kitchen errors, or because of spoiled or out-of-date food. Likewise, when eating more than one course, the likelihood of leaving part of the main dish is high, as people also want to eat a starter or a dessert. Plate fillers like salads, vegetables, or chips are the most likely to remain uneaten.
What can be done to reduce food waste while keeping customers satisfied? Several initiatives include menus with greater flexibility and personalization. That is, menus with different portions sizes (consumers pay according to the size) or menus where customers can choose the plate filler they prefer. It is important being flexible on customers’ request concerning some ingredients so that restaurants ensure consumers do not receive food they would not finish. Doggy bags are another alternative. Increasingly, restaurants are offering the possibility to ask for a container to take leftovers home. This is already quite common in some countries, but very rare and not culturally acceptable in others. By taking action in some of these directions, we can contribute to reduce food waste and have clean plates at the end of a meal out.
Action is well underway in the food and hospitality sector. Some organizations, such as Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) in the UK, have led successful initiatives by involving several societal actors including institutions, city authorities, and businesses. In particular, dozens of organizations signed up WRAP’s voluntary agreement on food waste reduction in 2015. In 2017, a follow-up evaluation was done showing that, among the different actions undertaken, 555,000 tons of CO2e have been saved from food and packaging waste. Another outstanding achievement is the one arising from the Hospitality and Food Service agreement, which has reported business savings of £67 million.
Similarly, large companies such as Unilever are also committed to reduce food waste. In this respect, Unilever launched an app that helps businesses operating in the food sector to track food waste generation (https://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/reducing-environmental-impact/waste-and-packaging/reducing-food-waste/). By identifying what kinds of food are being wasted, companies are more likely to introduce mechanisms to reduce this waste. Information is a key point here as many hotels and restaurants do not really know how much food are they wasting and what is the real cost of that. This is the objective of some new companies that have developed applications to solve that issue. One example of this is Winnow (www.winnowsolutions.com/), a firm created in 2013 in the UK that uses cutting-edge technology to monitor and record exactly how food is being wasted. The technology consists of a smart meter technology attached to the food waste bin. Staff use a touchscreen that records all the steps. In just a few seconds it is possible to identify the type of food thrown away and at what stage. Daily reports are sent pinpointing key opportunities to cut waste, benchmark multiple sites, and track performance. Based on the statistics Winnow has recorded, customers can save up to 3–8% of their costs using this system, which translates in an expected ROI that ranges between to 2x to 10x. In 2015, Winnow opened a regional office in Singapore to lead the food waste revolution in the Asia Pacific region. A similar system is the one developed by MintScraps (www.mintscraps.com/). Starting at NYC’s BigApps 2013 competition, MintScraps is an American firm that uses an online platform to empower restaurants to track and reduce their waste. As it is advertised in the website, “by implementing new waste management solutions, restaurants and food service businesses can have a better understanding of their waste, uncover cost savings, and support sustainability initiatives.” Relying on analytics and online technologies the system developed by MintScraps graphically illustrates what is being wasted and the associated cost in a quick and easy manner. Thus, while getting an idea of how much money restaurants are losing MintScraps contributes to change bad business practices and increase productivity. This technology identifies and prevents avoidable food waste.
Although the two aforementioned examples help reduce food waste in hotels and restaurants, consumer leftovers are difficult to avoid. In that respect, Resq Club (https://resq-club.com/) is a Finnish startup that in 2016 launched its services in Sweden, enabling customers to “rescue” surplus food portions from restaurants in Stockholm, Göteborg, and Malmö. The system works as follows. Through an app, customers can make their orders and decide from which restaurant they want to pick up the leftovers. Portions are typically sold with a discount that ranges between 40% and70%. The service has gained popularity and it has more than 200 active partners (including restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and hotels) and over 17,000 registered users.
Supermarkets and Retailers
At the end of a day, in supermarkets and groceries, there are many products that are not consumed and are about to expire but are still in good conditions. It is important to differentiate the sell-by date and the use-by date. While the use-by date specifies the recommended date by which the product should be used or consumed, the former indicates that although the sell-by date passes, the food is still safe to eat. However, many people still think that they have to toss it. Similarly, supermarkets and grocery stores might decide to throw it away because the sell-by date is approaching.
Aiming at fighting against food waste, there are several startups working to reclaim out of date food. One example is the German startup FoodLoop (www.foodloop.net/en/). A retailers’ platform that ties grocer inventory system to consumer-facing mobile apps to provide real-time deals and personalized offers based on consumers’ interests, purchase history, and location. Using the app, customers can receive discount offers on products that are about to expire in the supermarkets or small shops. The Italian app, Last Minute Sotto Casa (www.lastminutesottocasa.it/), has a similar purpose and functioning. When there is a product about to expire or when there is an excess of food that it is likely to remain unsold, the owner of the grocery or supermarket posts a discounted offer in the app. Customers receive a notification when a new offer is posted. If sound, they can buy it through the app and then go to the shop to pick up what they have purchased.
Some start-ups have expanded this service and gone a step further by allowing individuals and household to exchange for free and/or sell their leftovers. Olio (https://olioex.com/) is a free app developed in 2015 in the UK that allows users to snap photos of spare food with a brief description. The app incorporates an instant messenger that allows users to arrange a pick-up. According to their website, one of the things users value most of this app is the opportunity to meet neighbors and exchange food with them. In two years, the app has been downloaded 85,000 times, redistributing more than 125,000 items. Also from the UK, The Real Junk Food Project (http://therealjunkfoodproject.org/about/) collects food surpluses (either from individuals or supermarkets) that are in perfect conditions. Starting in 2013, their business model consists in taking all this food to a bar, cook it, and transform it into a delicious meal. Customers can go to the bar and pay what they believe this meal would cost. If someone cannot afford anything in exchange, they can help with the cleaning or collaborate with anything they can bring.
Other endeavors that fight against food waste are those programs where suppliers (supermarkets, households, restaurants etc.) offer discounts for products that are going to expire, do not meet standards of beauty, or have not been sold out and there are large amounts. Some Finish start-ups that fall within this category are From Waste to Taste (http://waste2taste.com/) and Froodly (http://froodly.com/). In the USA, Food Cowboy (www.foodcowboy.com/) and Spolier Alert (www.spoileralert.com/) also help food businesses manage their unsold inventory.
Food for the Needy
Within this category, we can include those organizations that allow individuals, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, and any other type of donors to give surplus food to needy people such as homeless, social dining rooms, or new arrivals. This task is possible thanks to a group of volunteers, who go after this food and help in distributing it correctly. Table 4 summarizes some of these initiatives.
Some examples of organizations whose aim is to donate food to the needy while reducing food waste
Funding year
OzHarvest
Collects quality food surpluses from more than 2,000 commercial outlets (e.g., fruit and vegetable markets, supermarkets, hotels, wholesalers, farmers) and deliver it, directly and free of charge, to more than 900 charities.
Second bite
Redistributes high-quality surplus fresh food to the homeless, women and families in crisis, youth at risk, indigenous communities, asylum seekers, and new arrivals. Food is donated by farmers, wholesalers, markets, supermarkets, caterers, and events.
An app that allows restaurants and shops make lists of leftover foods, which are sent to food pantries and social dining rooms. The organization is responsible for the collection and delivery of food.
Feeding India
App in which users can post warnings whenever they have food to give. Volunteers go after it to bring it to poor families, orphanages, nursing homes, or shelters. Food is also collected from restaurants, hostels, and companies.
412 FoodRescue
Collects food that is not sold by retailers, wholesalers, restaurants, caterers, and universities among others, and is later delivered to organizations that need food surpluses.
Other Food Waste Related Initiatives
What to do with large amounts of food surpluses? Love Food Hate Waste (www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/) can help you reduce your food waste. This initiative aims to raise food waste awareness by giving us some suggestion on how to start taking action. The website includes easy practical everyday suggestions, recipes, and articles that show users how to waste less food while saving money.
Do “ugly” products taste bad? The answer is no. Nevertheless, an odd physic appearance might prevent people to buy food that does not look as “perfect” as it should. Misshapen products are thus difficult to be sold out. Imperfect (www.imperfectproduce.com/) is a mission-driven start-up that operates in the Bay Area (San Francisco) and Los Angeles. It is a home produce delivery service focused on finding “a home” for these misshapen fruits and veggies. Discounts can reach 30–50% of the original price. The business model also generates extra revenue to California farmers. Hungry Harvest (www.hungryharvest.net/) is another solution that sells ugly fruit and veggies at a reduced price. In addition, for every harvest they deliver, 2 pounds are donated to help feed someone in need. It has only been two years since they started and they have already reduced 2 million pounds of food from going to the landfill and donated almost 450,000 lbs to people in need. They are currently operating in Maryland, DC, Northern Virginia, Philly, and South Jersey.
Is it possible to transform food surpluses into another product? For sure! Some food is thrown away because the offer exceeds the demand or because it cannot be sold out as it has expired. WiSErg (https://wiserg.com/) transforms food scraps and food surpluses into organic fertilizer (e.g., landfills, composters, and digesters). The process starts by placing WISErg Harvesters at food service facilities. This machine ingests and processes food scraps in an odorless, pest-free, self-contained system. During the transformation process, the Harvester captures and stabilizes valuable nutrients from the food scraps. The resulting material is transported to a nearby WISErg facility, where it is processed into liquid fertilizer. Similarly, Re-Nuble (www.re-nuble.com/), a social enterprise founded in 2011, creates an organic, nontoxic, liquid nutrient for hydroponic growers and traditional gardeners as an affordable and effective alternative to chemicals. This product can be later used to cultivate new products.
Case Study: Espigoladors
There are fruits and vegetables that grow imperfect and delicious. Espigoladors (http://www.espigoladors.cat) is a nonprofit organization located in Barcelona , Spain, whose objective is to fight against food waste and empower people at social risk in a transformative, participative, inclusive, and sustainable way. In particular, Espigoladors sends volunteers into the fields to pick leftover produce for distribution to the vulnerable and unemployed. Volunteers are individuals, but also companies and other type of organizations. Very frequently, the same vulnerable and unemployed that receive the fresh fruit and vegetables also go into the fields themselves to help in the picking. With all the fruit and vegetables picked, Espigoladors gives 90% to nonprofit organizations that distribute the fresh food among their beneficiaries, the other 10% is processed by the four full-time Espigoladors’ employees that transform it into high-quality juices, sauces, creams, and jams, that are later sold under the brand Imperfect. The project has multiple benefits for all its stakeholders. Volunteers enjoy a day in the fields doing a different activity that, in addition to be enjoyable, is going to help people in need. On top of the social intrinsic reward involved in volunteering in such type of activity, volunteers also increase their awareness about food waste. Nonprofit organizations receive the fresh product from Espigoladors and later distribute them among their beneficiaries. For the nonprofit organization, to be supplied by Espigoladors is a great opportunity as obtaining fresh fruit and vegetables is not straightforward for this type of organizations that are more accustomed to deal with canned food as it can be stored for longer periods of time and is therefore less demand dependable. For people at risk of social exclusion, in addition to receiving fresh food through nonprofits, there is the possibility to participate as volunteers in the fruit picking. This is a great opportunity for them to mingle with other people, do a new activity, and feel useful and empowered which has a tremendous positive psychological impact on them.
Fruit and vegetables are left on the fields because of several reasons. In occasions, producers generate some surplus that they do not manage to sell, in other cases, fruit and vegetables do not have the adequate size, color, or shape to be accepted by sellers. Those misshapen products are perfectly healthy and tasty but their physical appearance works against them. Potatoes too big, broken carrots, bananas with black spots, or a curvy cucumber do not fit with grocery stores’ strict cosmetic standards.
The word espigoladors means gleaner in Catalan, the mother tongue of Mireia Barba, the founder. Gleaners are the people in charge to glean the fields, that is, to collect what was left over in the fields once the main harvesting was finished. This activity was very frequent in the nineteenth century but had progressively disappeared until being nearly unknown nowadays.
Mireia Barba, Espigoladors’ founder, was grown in Gelida, a 7,000 inhabitants’ town on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. There she observed how the delicious misshapen lemons of his grandfathers’ garden could not be found in the local supermarket. She obtained a double degree in business and social work. In 2013, a project started by her daughters’ primary school teacher in order to raise awareness among children about the importance of not throwing away food, kept Mireia thinking about the issue. She visited several organizations that dealt with the issue of food waste and food needs including nonprofits, governmental initiatives, and community kitchens for the underprivileged. She observed that some supermarkets or grocery stores threw food that was about to expire, but still in good conditions, including ripen fruit and vegetables. At the same time, some people were picking what was left over on garbage containers around the city. With the idea that food in good conditions must not be spoiled in the field if it can be of profit, in 2014, Mireia Barba, together with two colleagues: Jordi Bruna, a financial analyst, and Marina Pons, an expert in communication, funded Espigoladors. Espigoladors philosophy is that of 0% waste.
Espigoladors had a very good social response from the beginning. The initiative has won many prizes and has received numerous support, both in financial terms through grants and prizes but also in social terms, being able to create a strong network of supporters and advisors. The advisory team now includes famous cookers as well as business school professors, government representatives, and leaders of nonprofit organizations.
Espigoladors project aims to respond to three social needs:
Food waste: According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted. This accounts for approximately 1.3 billion tones. Fruit and vegetables have the highest wastage rate, with around 45% of losses. Losses occur all along the food value chain. In Europe and North America, per capita food losses are approximately 280 kg of food per year. In Catalonia region, which is the area of influence of Espigoladors, 700,000 tons per year are squandered.
Work opportunities for underprivileged people: The Statistics Bureau of the European Union, EUROSTAT, calculated that, in Europe, 23% of the population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion. In some countries, the unemployment rate is also very high, this is the case of Spain, where Espigoladors is located, a country with a 20% unemployment rate in 2014, the year in which the company was created.
Access to healthy and fresh food: 17% of the adult Spanish population is obese. This percentage is over 30% for the USA. Obesity is directly related to food consumption and particularly to low consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables that have been substituted by high calories processed aliments.
And does so with a business plan that relies on three main activities
Picking: Creating agreements with companies, grocery-stores, and producers. In the case of producers, Espigoladors guarantees that with a 24 to 48 h prior notice from the producer, a team of gleaners will be in the field ready to pick up what has been left. For supermarkets and grocery stores, Espigoladors commits to pick up whatever the store is going to throw away.
Donation: Espigoladors will donate 90% of the products picked to social organizations. Particularly to community kitchens and nonprofit organizations in that act in the area of food waste and food provision for the underprivileged.
Transformation: 10% of the fruit and vegetables will be processed under the im-perfect brand and sold. This part of the business plan is critical, as is the one that provides revenues to economically sustain the rest of the operations. Although the vegetables are given to Espigoladors for free, the company has some associated costs like transportation, processing, and overhead.
Throughout its value chain of picking-donation-transformation, Espigoladors wants to raise social awareness about food waste and to, whenever possible, include people at risk of social exclusion to actively participate in the project either as volunteers in the picking or as employees in the transport and transformation part of the process.
Espigoladors is still a small company with a very local impact, on average, Espigoladors picks around 50,000 kg of fruit and vegetables annually with a team of 6 people full time and approximately 60 volunteers.
Reflection Questions
Draw the food value chain, that is, think about the different stages from food production to food consumption. Where is some risk of food waste?
Enumerate all the stages where the risk of food waste can occur. Find information to understand how much food is lost in each of the stages.
Hint: This TED talk video can help: https://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal
Espigoladors effort to reduce food waste acts on one of the first stages of the food value chain: food that is left on the fields after harvesting. Where do you think most of the food waste happens, at the earlier stages of the food value chain or at the later stages? Would that depend on the development of the country under study? Find information that supports your opinion.
Hint: The webpage of the FAO can help: http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
Currently, Espigoladors is only acting within its region, particularly in a ratio of 150 km from Barcelona, where its main offices are. How scalable is Espigoladors’ business model? Can Espigoladors reach a higher radio of action? Can the same business model expand to other cities, areas, regions, countries? Find arguments that support your opinion.
Espigoladors aims to have a social, environmental, and economic impact. Besides the kg per year of fruits and vegetables recovered and given a second chance by Espigoladors, what other additional measures of impact can be used? Is kg/year the best impact measure for the type of activity Espigoladors runs?
Exercises in Practice
Exercise 1: The Zero-Waste Challenge
Although food waste happens at different stages of the food value chain, as consumers, we are especially responsible for the final part of this chain. The stage that includes shopping, cooking, and consumption also produce a certain amount of food waste that is entirely under our responsibility. The objective of this exercise is to become more aware of our behavior in terms of food squandering at our homes.
During a week, observe closely the amount of food you buy and the amount you consume. You can do that at an individual level if you are the responsible for your own grocery shopping, cooking, and consumption, or at a family level if it makes more sense to you. Or even at a school level if the exercise is done as part of a school project. Try to start in a week where your fridge is relatively empty!
List all the food you buy, specifying date, quantity, and time. For example:
Calculate all the food waste during cooking. You can do that either by observing how much is thrown when cooking or simply weighing the organic trash at the end of the day. Food waste at this stage will contain anything that can be either eatable or used for other purposes. For example, the peduncle and the seed of a cherry are not eaten by humans, but can be used for garden composting which would reduce waste and make the process much more sustainable and environmentally friendly. So you should count that as food waste.
Once food is cooked and ready to eat, calculate food waste after consumption. How much has been leftover? If leftovers can be consumed the following days, then they would not count as food waste, but if the leftovers are thrown away, then they are.
Add all food waste calculations to have an overall picture of your own (or your family/school) food waste during that period of time. Using the table elaborated in step one, calculate the waste in kilograms and also in monetary terms.
You have now your food waste for a week, multiply this number by 52 to have your food waste for a full year.
First individually and then in teams, reflect on which strategies could be applied to reduce food waste at this stage and list them. Present your team ideas to the rest of the group.
Idea!: Store potatoes with apples to keep them from sprouting, and keep them away from onions. Onions will make them go bad faster.
Do you know other tricks to better store your food?
Implement the ideas developed in step 6 during the following week and, following the same method outlined above, calculate what is your food waste level now. Have you improved? Have you been successful at the zero-waste challenge proposed? You can think of a prize for the winner.
Exercise 2: National Food Waste
Find statistics about the amount of food wasted in your particular country. Data can be in kg/person or in a total number of kg or tones.
Statistics about food waste are difficult to get and sometimes unreliable, so try to build your own. Think about the supply and demand of food in your country.
Food supply:
Find how much food is produced in your country. Find data about fruit and vegetable production as well as livestock and fish.
Find out your country food imports and exports. Together with the information gathered in question 2a, calculate the overall food production of your country. This would be the supply of food.
Food demand:
What is the number of inhabitants in your country? Understand the proportion of children versus adults and also women versus men.
Find what is the average intake of an average adult male, adult female, and children in terms of calories. Translate these calories into kg of food by considering a standard healthy diet. Compute now the amount of food consumed by all the people in your country.
If you want to sophisticate your analysis, consider also other factors that can help you calculate the national intake such as the percentage of obese people.
Compute the difference between the number you have obtained in question two and the number you have obtained in question 3. Does this number coincide with the number found in question one? Why?
Exercise 3: Healthy Eating
Is food waste somehow related to healthy eating ? How and why?
In the text, the Mediterranean diet is mentioned as an example of healthy and sustainable diet. What are the characteristics of a healthy and sustainable diet? Design a healthy diet plan for the following week. Think about breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each of the days.
Watch the TED video of Ellen Gustafson about obesity and hunger (https://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_gustafson_obesity_hunger_1_global_food_issue). Discuss in teams what are the main reasons for the issue presented in the video and propose some solutions.
Exercise 4: Debate
In the text, genetically modified seeds are mentioned as a technique to increase crops production.
What are genetically modified seeds?
Are genetically modified seeds healthy?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of genetically modified crops?
Prepare arguments in favor and against genetically modified seeds. In class, you will be randomly assigned to a team, either in favor or against genetically modified seeds. Which group will better debate? Think a prize for the winner team.
Engaged Sustainability Lessons
Food management is an important part of sustainable development. The food supply chain has many stakeholders, each of them facing different challenges and with different objectives. However, all actors have an active responsibility for managing food appropriately.
Food waste is a global issue.
Many initiatives exist to reduce food waste all along the food supply chain. All societal actors should be actively involved in these initiatives, consumers, businesses, politicians, and educators, all have an important role in contributing to food waste reduction.
Chapter-End Reflection Questions
Many online tools exist to calculate your environmental footprint, some of them break up the calculation into different types of footprints, one of them being the Food Footprint. Calculate your Food Footprint, for example using the tool offered online by the NGO Redefining Progress (http://rprogress.org/index.htm), or calculate your global Environmental Footprint using the tools offered by the World Wide Fund for Nature (http://footprint.wwf.org.uk) or the Global Footprint Network (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/footprint-calculator/). Reflect on your results.
Unfortunately, not only food is wasted in our world. Also, some other precious goods like water or energy suffer from squandering. Can the lessons learned in this chapter be applied to other type of goods?
How could you fight against food waste in your family, in your school, in your community? Are there already some organizations taking care of the issue? Could you be actively involved in them? If there are not, is there anything you could do?
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Wine Sustainability Through Managing Ecosystem Services: A Case in Point of Sustainable Food Systems
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© Springer International Publishing AG 2018
1.Managerial Decisions Sciences DepartmentIESE Business School – University of NavarraBarcelonaSpain
2.Department of Economy and Business OrganizationUniversitat Internacional CatalunyaBarcelonaSpain
Alegre I., Berbegal-Mirabent J. (2018) Gourmet Products from Food Waste. In: Dhiman S., Marques J. (eds) Handbook of Engaged Sustainability. Springer, Cham
Accepted 25 November 2017
First Online 21 December 2017
eBook Packages Business and Management
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Irish National Association of Adult Education
Return to Education for Four Adult Learners
With the second annual Further Education and Training (FET) Fair having taken place on Wednesday April 5, as part of the Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival, I recently chatted with some adult learners to see how they have benefitted from returning to education.
Kevin, Jay, Ann and Kim are studying on the Personal Effectiveness, Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) Level 3 course at the Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board’s (LCETB) Further Education and Training Centre at the O’Connell Avenue Campus, and they attended and displayed some of their work at the FET Fair.
The fair gave the learners an opportunity to find information about education and training options in Limerick, to meet and chat with the programme providers and learn more about the full and part-time courses from QQI Level 1 to Level 6 that are available.
Kevin, who left school aged 11, returned to education when he lost his job and found himself on the dole, “I worked my whole life, always lower paid hard jobs. I had no education. I felt it always held me back. When I was going to school the teachers were the bullies, so how are you supposed to learn anything in that environment?”
Kevin met with an Adult Education Guidance Counsellor at the O’Connell Avenue Campus, and decided to undertake the Return to Learn, 6 week Programme. Since then he has attended other day and evening courses and by the end of the summer he will have achieved 5 minor QQI awards and two Security Licences.
“I was nervous at 46 going to school but I found that everybody in the class was in the same situation, early school leavers. If you need a bit of help there’s extra classes here to do, the Guidance Counsellor and tutors are always there to help out if you have any problems.
“I don’t want to ever be in a position again that I have to get up out of bed and hate going to work, I want to educate myself enough so I can pick a job that I don’t mind going to work,” Kevin added.
Class Project
The class project that was on display at the FET Fair was a traffic light poster, devised by Kevin and each member of the class worked on it as a team building exercise. Red represents the learners feelings before beginning their studies, being stuck in a rut and that life is over. Orange symbolises their discovery of information about courses and going back to school, and the green light represents the learners as they are now, feeling more confident having taken their courses and learned so much, happy, confident and ready to start on a new career path.
Jay, who is in Ireland for International protection, already has a degree in Information Technology, “I needed something to get my mind busy. I find the experience was incredible. I have learned lots of things. If my circumstances haven’t changed I might take in some more courses.
“It’s very friendly from the classmates to the staff. They work with you and check in on how your course is going, if you need any help and lots of extra supports. No matter the level of the course, you are going to learn something. My long term plan is to do a tech start up.”
Ann’s father was unemployed due to a serious injury he received while working on the Docks and later died in his fifties. Ann is from a family of 10 who all left school early to in order to support the family. Having worked since the age of fourteen she is now a carer for her husband.
“Last September I decided to get up the courage to come in and see what they had on offer, that was very difficult. I was scared. It was Maths I wanted to do and spellings. I decided to do three courses Communications, Personal Effectiveness and Maths,” said Ann.
Ann has two children who are college graduates and are working in their chosen careers as a dental nurse and financial advisor and with her son in second year in college she felt it was time to do something for herself.
“We came from the wrong side of the track as they called us in school, in school we never got a chance to develop. My biggest thing to my children is never look down on anyone unless you are helping them up, cause we were looked done on growing up.
“I’m really enjoying it. I’ve got the confidence back. The staff here are very good to us, the tutors are easy going and calm. I’m glad I got the chance, I’m loving meeting everyone else, you begin to share things and see that you are not the only one here that had a difficult upbringing,” said Ann.
Kim also an early school leaver, always intended returning to education but working full time in Tesco’s while rearing a family of four left little time for her to follow her dream.
“I finished up my job last year then I said I wanted to up skill myself. A couple of years ago I did my Junior and Leaving Cert in English. I’m doing 4 courses here now also and I’ve loved it.
“You’d be a bit nervous coming back but you see they are all ages, all levels, they are very friendly in here, they are dedicated to what they do and so obliging the supports are very good,” said Kim.
Kim hopes to continue studying and eventually have a career as a Special Needs Assistant, Healthcare or Childcare Worker.
“I’ve made great friends, you miss that from work. It’s different to going to school, because you decide to come back to education, you want to do it to help yourself and make yourself feel better. I’m delighted I took the step in coming back I plan to stick to it, I’m sorry I didn’t do it years ago it’s a great service,” Kim added.
April 16, 2017 lmyriad Adult Education, Adult Education Courses, Adult Literacy, AONTAS, Building confidence, Confidence, Education, FET, Further Education and Training Fair, Guidance Counsellor, Ireland, Irish National Association of Adult Education, LCETB, limerick, Limerick and Clare Education Training Board, Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival, Literacy, Niamh O'Reilly CEO AONTAS, O'Connell Avenue Campus, Personal Effectiveness, Project, QQI, Quality and Qualifications Ireland Leave a comment
CEO of AONTAS Niamh O’Reilly launches LCEN website at the Hunt Museum
A new website for the Limerick Community Education Network (LCEN) was launched today at the Hunt Museum by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Irish National Association of Adult Education (AONTAS) Niamh O’Reilly.
Niamh O’Reilly CEO AONTAS
The LCEN promotes and supports adult learning in local communities and helps adult learners to access accredited and non-accredited programmes across Limerick City. Established in 1993, it consists of a network of fifteen community organisations and statutory agencies which are involved in the provision of Community Adult Education.
“I think the website is a brilliant way of promoting the fantastic community education that is offered across the city of Limerick supported by the LCEN. I’m so glad that you have a website to promote your work because what happening at a community level is hugely important, we have been able to bring across Europe the message of what’s happening in Limerick
“The LCEN is a really important member for AONTAS because if a question comes to me on community education, the first place I go to is the LCEN because it has such a grass roots understanding. AONTAS is committed to ensuring that all adults have the right to go back into education, particularly that which is practiced in Limerick.
“I would hope that the LCEN would be supported with funding because the expertise that has been built would be a huge loss to community education in limerick and also at national level if the LCEN do not get further funding to continue. The website is a way of promoting their work but it is also bigger than that, we have to look really seriously at how community education is going to be sustainably funded,” said CEO of AONTAS Niamh O’Reilly.
The LCEN website was set up from the donation of a prize that AONTAS won when they were exhibiting at an education fair in Limerick in 2016. Work on the website began in November 2016.
The connection between AONTAS and the LCEN goes back eleven years when AONTAS used the LCEN as a model of how to replicate community education at a national level.
The launch was also attended by Councillor Jo Leddin and Deputy Mayor Councillor Michael Sheehan who paid tribute to the fantastic community work that chairperson of LCEN Helen Flanagan and her team are doing in Limerick.
Helen Flanagan Chair LCEN
“LCEN is recognised nationally as a model of good practice and when AONTAS won a prize at the lifelong learning festival, they donated it to LCEN and we decided to set up a website. I think the website will make it more accessible what the work of LCEN does more accessible to our learners, it will be up to date and people will know exactly what’s happening in their local area,” said chairperson of LCEN Helen Flanagan.
Aobhan Haverty Adult Education Officer in Limerick LCETB
Adult Education Officer in Limerick LCETB Aobhan Haverty is part of the Limerick and Clare Education Training Board (ETB) which supports the LCEN, “I think the LCEN are the most fantastic group. The website is the front of house to celebrate a lot of the work that these volunteers do that goes under the radar. We wouldn’t be able to get programmes out into the community without the wonderful work done by the local community based organisations.”
www.lcen.ie
Aine Lyne Community Education Rseource Worker and Mary Flannery Community Education Facilitator
Deputy Mayor Councillor Michael Sheehan
Joan Storan, chair St Saviours
Brendan Ryan LCETB Representative
Catherine Aylmer LCEN Development Officer
March 8, 2017 lmyriad Adult Education, Adult Education Courses, Adult Education Officer, Adult Literacy, AONTAS, Catherine Aylmer, Councillor Joe Leddin, Deputy Mayor Michael Sheehan, Education, Helen Flanagan LCEN, Hunt Museum, Irish National Association of Adult Education, LCEN, LCETB, Learner, Learning, limerick, Limerick and Clare Education Training Board, Limerick City Council, Limerick Community Education Network, Literacy, Niamh O'Reilly CEO AONTAS, Website, Website Launch Leave a comment
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Shannon kidnap suspect remanded in custody
metrowebukmetroTuesday 18 Mar 2008 10:46 am
Shannon Matthews
A 39-year-old man was remanded in custody today charged with the kidnap and false imprisonment of Shannon Matthews.
Michael Donovan, of Lidgate Gardens, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, appeared at Dewsbury Magistrates’ Court charged with taking the nine-year-old schoolgirl on February 19.
He was remanded in custody and will appear next at Leeds Crown Court on March 25.
Shannon was discovered less than one mile from her home in Dewsbury on Friday afternoon, 24 days after she went missing.
Donovan was led into the dock shortly before 10.15am, handcuffed to a custody officer.
The handcuffs were removed and he sat down, flanked by four custody officers, throughout the seven-minute hearing.
Dressed in a dark blue sweatshirt and dark grey trousers, Donovan spoke in a frail voice to confirm his name, address and date of birth.
Throughout the short hearing he sat motionless, looking at the magistrates as the charges were put to him.
Members of Shannon’s family attended the hearing, including her uncle, Neil Hyett, and his wife, Amanda, who broke down in tears at the start of the proceedings.
After the charges were put to Donovan and he was remanded in custody, he was once again handcuffed and led out of the court by the custody officers.
There was no application for bail by Donovan’s solicitor, Malcolm Knowle.
The court was told the defendant will make his next appearance at Crown Court by video link.
He is charged with two offences. The first is that on February 19, in Dewsbury, he “unlawfully and by force or fraud took away Shannon Matthews against her will”.
The second is that between February 18 and March 15, he “at 26 Lidgate Gardens, Dewsbury, unlawfully and injuriously imprisoned Shannon Matthews and detained her against her will”.
Michael DonovanNeil HyettShannon Matthews
Man who killed wife with spiked sex toy is spared jail
Strong earthquake hits Athens sending people running into streets
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The sinking of RMS Lusitania in May 1915 – A personal recollection.
RMS Lusitania which won the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic by a liner. She was torpedoed 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7th May 1915.
With the commencement of World War I commemorations in 2014, it is appropriate to mention a local commemoration in the south-east Cork area. Cobh, formerly Queenstown, will commemorate the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. This fast passenger liner, en route from New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed about 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale by U-20 shortly after 14.10 hours on 7th May 1915. What happened next is debated, but the ship sank so rapidly that only that only six of her lifeboats could be launched successfully. Of the 1959 passengers and crew aboard her, only 764 were rescued despite the best efforts of local Irish fishermen who sailed to assist.
Recruiting poster issued by the British government for use in Ireland. The sinking of the Lusitania caused outrage in Ireland.
The Irish fishermen who went to assist the survivors did not have modern fishing vessels. Most of their boats were powered by sail or, more rarely, by a steam engine. This meant that they could be slow to get the the site, thus increasing the distress of the survivors struggling to combat hypothermia in the cold waters. Hypothermic shock was likely the biggest killer of the survivors – the seas around Ireland can remain cold until June – and even then they need a long spell of warm weather to make the water just about bearable.
Most of the survivors were conveyed to Queenstown, the principal base for the Royal Navy on the south coast of Ireland, and the center commanding the rescue operations. In Queenstown, the survivors were cared for in hospitals and lodged in hotels and guest houses. In the days following the sinking, bodies washed ashore all over west Cork, but most of the bodies that were recovered were interred in mass graves in Queenstown, although a small number were interred in Kinsale, which was closer to the site of the sinking. The majority of the victims were never recovered.
Most of the victims of the Lusitania were never recovered. This poster shows how desperate people were to recover just the remains of their loved ones.
At the time the US newspapers published details of the ship’s manifest and munitions and war materiel were clearly stated to be aboard the ship. However in Britain and Ireland this information was suppressed. Indeed many people in Ireland remain ignorant to this day of the RMS Lusitania’s official status as an Auxiliary Merchant Cruiser – she was so listed in Jane’s Naval Ships in 1914. The Lusitania was not just built with private funds – but her construction and operations were subsidized by the British government (RMS means Royal Mail Ship – the Lusitania was contracted to carry letters and parcels for the Royal Mail – a useful subsidy).
Roches Point lighthouse, not far from Midleton, marked the nearest safe haven for a vessel the size of the Lusitania – Cork Harbour. On her maiden voyage, Lusitania, like Titanic, stopped offshore to take on passengers from Queenstown.
One controversy about the Lusitania concerns the ‘second explosion’. Kaiptanleutnant Walther Schwieger, commander of U-20, recorded that he only fired one torpedo and was reluctant to fire a second in the the struggling mass of humanity struggling in the water. Yet there was a second explosion – this is clear now. It wasn’t widely known when I was growing up. Yet, I have personal testimony that supports one view of the sinking. Years ago we had a neighbour, Mr Patrick Donovan, who was a retired Garda (Irish police officer). Pat grew up near the coast not far from the Old Head of Kinsale. Once, when I visited him in the late 1980s, he told me of his experience the sinking of the Lusitania. His memory was slightly hazy about the events of May 1915, but only slightly – this man remained lucid to the end of his life, and he was very clear on certain points.
I’ll give you the gist is his own words – they are still very vivid to me. One point to remember, dinner in rural Ireland was then eaten in the middle of the day (and this is still the case for a lot of people). That was the first thing he said – ‘it happened just as we were finishing our dinner. We heard an explosion. We knew it came from the sea so we ran out of the house up a nearby hill to look. As we left the house there was a second explosion. When we got to the top of the hill we saw on the horizon a big ship sinking. it was gone in about five minutes.’
Needless to say I was taken aback by this so I asked him – are you sure there was a second explosion? The history books say there was only one torpedo.’ ‘Tony,’ he said ‘the books are wrong – I was there and there were two explosions. I heard a second explosion. We all heard the second explosion. The first one got us up from the table and the second happened as we ran from the house.’
The view from the Old Head of Kinsale towards the area where the Lusitania sank in 1915.
Why do I remember this conversation so vividly? Simple, my neighbour had contradicted everything I knew about the Lusitania – and he was very clear about the second explosion. Curiously it would be several years before the story of the second explosion became more widely known and the theories that were put foward ranged from a coal dust detonation to suspicion of munitions going off.
The British hoped that the loss of so many American lives aboard he Lusitania would propel he US into the war – this has led to speculation that Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty had deliberately put the ship in harm’s way to achieve an American entry into the war. I think it seems too farfetched – the Lusitania was a fast vessel, having held the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. It was assumed she would outrun any submarine. But she couldn’t outrun a submarine that just accidentally stumbled upon her. She was simply in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.
The Lusitania Memorial in Cobh, by Jerome Connor, with stone carved by Seamus Murphy, is actually unfinished. In a way it is oddly appropriate since the ship didn’t complete her voyage in May 1915. The two figures at the front commemorate the fishermen who rescued survivors and retrieved bodies.
Keep you eyes open for the commemorative events in Cobh this year!
Some links about the commemorations:
http://www.irelandcork.com/cobh-attractions-summary.php?ID=49&sc=12
http://www.corkharbour.ie/pages/newsDisplay.php?id=357
Posted in Anniversary, Cobh, Great War, Lusitania, Queenstown
Tagged Cobh, Eyewitness, Queenstownot, RMS Lusitania, Second Explosion, U-20
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Chemotherapy following radiation treatment improves progression-free survival
by Mayo Clinic
A chemotherapy regimen consisting of procarbazine, CCNU, and vincristine (PCV) administered following radiation therapy improved progression-free survival and overall survival in adults with low-grade gliomas, a form of brain cancer, when compared to radiation therapy alone. The findings were part of the results of a Phase III clinical trial presented today at the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting by the study's primary author Jan Buckner, M.D., deputy director, Cancer Practice, at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center.
"On average, patients who received PCV lived 5.5 years longer than those who received radiation alone," says Dr. Buckner. "These findings build on results published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2012 which showed that PCV given with radiation therapy at the time of initial diagnosis prolongs progression free-survival but not overall survival."
The trial, RTOG 9802, enrolled 251 patients with low-grade gliomas between October 1998 and June 2002 to address the role of chemotherapy following radiation treatment. Patients enrolled were at high risk compared to other low-grade glioma patients because they were 40 years of age or older or had a less than complete surgical removal of their tumor if they were under 40.
Investigators also found that patients with oligodendroglioma had better outcomes than those with astrocytoma or oligoastrocytoma, as did females.
"RTOG 9802 involved a network of investigators across the United States and Canada working through the National Cancer Institute's National Clinical Trials Network," says Dr. Buckner. "This trial could only have been conducted through a publicly-funded national clinical trials network." He says the next step is to study tumor tissue from participating patients to identify biomarkers that will allow researchers to determine which patients will benefit the most from specific therapies.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 23,000 people will be diagnosed with primary brain tumors in the United States in 2014 and, of those, 10 to 15 percent will have low-grade gliomas. Gliomas are tumors that begin in the brain or spinal cord. They are the most common form of primary brain tumor.
Chemotherapy following radiation treatment improves survival for adults with a slow-growing type of brain tumor
Journal information: Journal of Clinical Oncology
Provided by Mayo Clinic
Citation: Chemotherapy following radiation treatment improves progression-free survival (2014, June 1) retrieved 19 July 2019 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-chemotherapy-treatment-progression-free-survival.html
New approach to reducing damage after a heart attack
Study sheds light on the darker parts of our genetic heritage
EORTC study identifies patients with anaplastic oligodendroglioma that benefit from adjuvant PCV
High long-term survival of most common pediatric brain tumor, less when radiation was used
Deep, integrated genomic analysis re-classifies lower-grade brain tumors
Abnormal chromosome indicator of treatment and outcome in patients with rare brain tumor
Pairing cancer treatments shows patient improvement
Study finds key metabolic changes in patients with chemotherapy-associated cardiotoxicity
Promising system delivers chemo drug straight into tumors with fewer side effects
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Project Update – St Cadoc’s Church, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan
by elliepridgeon
In recent months, there has been extensive coverage in both the national press and among medieval online communities concerning the discovery and conservation of the late-fifteenth-century wall paintings at St Cadoc’s church, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan. Over the last six years, renowned conservators Ann Ballantyne and Jane Rutherfoord have revealed a number of highly-significant schemes, including Death and the Gallant, St George and the Dragon, and the Seven Deadly Sins.
St George and the Dragon, St Cadoc’s Church, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan. Late Fifteenth Century.
In a recent video interview produced by the BBC, Jane Rutherfoord explains how back in 2007, she was invited by St Cadoc’s church architect to provide advice on the significance of a thin red line visible below the roof line, the only section of the wall paintings perceptible at the time. The subsequent removal of overlying layers of limewash led to the discovery of two heads belonging to the princess and king, who feature commonly in St George scenes. Also interviewed by the BBC was Dr Madeline Gray, Reader in History at the University of South Wales, who suggests that the image of St George – a figure who medieval parishioners strived to emulate – was deliberately juxtaposed with the Seven Deadly Sins – transgressions which conversely congregations endeavoured to avoid. Dr Gray also sheds light on the Death and the Gallant mural, which depicts a fashionably-dressed young man (the Gallant) dragged into a graveyard by Death, who is portrayed as a rotting corpse wrapped in a shroud.
Gules 3 Swan Proper Bawdrip heraldic shield (top centre) and Seven Deadly Sins (detail, left), St Cadoc’s Church, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan. Late Fifteenth Century.
The work is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, CADW, and local trusts. The project website provides further information about the wall paintings, and includes a discussion of the Gules 3 Swan Proper heraldic shield located above the diminutive Virgin, whose key functions are to bless and highlight the figure of St George. This device denotes the Bawdrip family who lived at nearby Penmark Place from the fourteenth century, and it was no-doubt strategically positioned to ensure enhanced invocation and intercession from the Virgin. The Bawdrip shield also functioned as a symbol of familial status and piety, whose target audiences included earthly visitors to the church and God himself. The insertion of the shield may also indicate that members of the family were responsible for providing funds towards the execution of the painting.
For further details about the iconography of the Seven Deadly Sins in medieval wall painting, readers should refer to the website of Dr Miriam Gill (University of Leicester).
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Cumulatively from the first week of June 2015 to 2 June 2016, 62,180 households representing 109,783 individuals have crossed the border into Haitian territory. 35.1% were female while 64.9% were male. 1,516 presumed unaccompanied minors were identified.
Haiti — Border Monitoring Situation Report (2 June...
These fourth results take into account the 4,025 migrants and refugees that were interviewed from 07 December 2015 to 31 May 2016. 6.5% of respondents answered ‘yes’ to one of the trafficking and other exploitative practices indicators, based on theirown direct experience.
Europe — Counter-Trafficking Survey (May 2016)
Niger — Flow Monitoring Report (24—30 May 2016)
The number of maritime incidents off Libyan coasts has increased in May 2016, with the last week in particular witnessing a dramatic number of rescue operations being conducted in the Southern Mediterranean.
Libya — Migration and Assistance Overview (16—31 M...
This week’s report focuses on providing an analysis over time of Syrian, Iraqi, Pakistani, Afghan and Maroccan respondents.
On 15 May 2016, local authorities conducted a rescue at sea operation in Tajourah in Tripoli. 115 migrants were rescued, 50 of whom were women.
Libya — Migration and Assistance Overview (3—15 Ma...
Cumulatively from the first week of June 2015 to 12 May 2016, 58,078 households representing 102,214 individuals have crossed the border into Haitian territory. 34.9% were female while 65.1% were male. 1,448 presumed unaccompanied minors were identified.
Haiti — Border Monitoring Situation Report (12 May...
Niger — Flow Monitoring Report (3—9 May 2016)
Cumulatively from the first week of June 2015 to 5 May 2016, 56,859 households representing 99,919 individuals have crossed the border into Haitian territory. 34.7% were female while 65.3% were male. 1,403 presumed unaccompanied minors were identified.
Haiti — Border Monitoring Situation Report (5 May...
Niger — Flow Monitoring Report (26 April — 2 May 2...
A total of 60,970 migrants were registered passing through the flow monitoring points between 1 February 2016 and 30 April 2016. Out of the 60,970 migrants, 63% are going to Libya, 14% were coming from Libya, 11% were going to Algeria and 12% were coming from Algeria.
Niger — Flow Monitoring Quarterly Report (February...
2,155,618 IDPs (352,840 households) were identified in Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Gombe, Taraba, Yobe, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kaduna, Kano, Zamfara states and Abuja. The highest number of IDPs are in Borno (1,427,999 IDPs), followed by Adamawa (150,718) and Adawama (134,415 IDPs).
Nigeria — Displacement Report 9 (1 March 2016—30 A...
2,155,618 IDPs in 352,840 households were identified in Round 9 assessments from March to April 2016. 54% of the IDP population in the sites are children, 53% are female. The dashboard includes a map of displacement severity by Local Government Area (LGA) and ward.
Nigeria — Displacement Dashboard 9 (1 March — 30 A...
200,085 IDPs in 33,441 households were identified in 97 displacement sites. 53% of the IDP population are children. The dashboard includes a map showing the location and population of sites by Local Government Area (LGA) assessed.
Nigeria — Site Assessment Dashboard 9 (1 March — 3...
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South African actor and filmmaker John Kani made his big screen debut as a sergeant opposite industry veterans Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris in "The Wild Geese," a 1978 action flick in which a group of experienced mercenaries attempt to overthrow a dictator in the heart of Africa. Following a myriad of moderate successes in the 1980s, Kani enjoyed a bona fide hit with "Sarafina!" in 1992. Headlined by Academy Award-winner Whoopi Goldberg, the musical drama cast Kani as a school principal in his native South Africa. In 1996, director Stephen Hopkins tapped Kani to play Samuel, a native African assisting in the hunt of two deadly lions in the period thriller "The Ghost and the Darkness," starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. Kani's character provides the film's memorable narration. Kani made his directorial debut in 2009, an adaptation of his play "Nothing But the Truth," which is set amidst the social turmoil of post-apartheid South Africa. Kani also played the lead role in the film. The veteran actor's penchant for theater caught the eye of Academy Award-winner Ralph Fiennes, who cast Kani as General Cominius of the Roman army in his big screen mounting of "Coriolanus," based on the classic Shakespeare play.
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KLPGA to Host 2019 International Qualifying Tournament
PATTAYA, Thailand & SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 10, 2019--
The Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA) will host the ‘ KLPGA 2019 International Qualifying Tournament ’ from August 20 to 23. This year the event will be held at the Phoenix Golf & Country Club in Pattaya, Thailand, in a four-round, 72-hole stroke-play competition.
The International Qualifying Tournament (IQT) is an annual tour event that offers an opportunity for non-Korean golfers to participate in the KLPGA Tour. In its first year, 2015, the event attracted six international golfers; the year after that, it was 20. Last year, the event, held in Malaysia, attracted 50 golfers from ten countries including Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, China, the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, and Hong Kong.
A large field is expected this year as well, with even more benefits being offered to participants, especially international players. Like last year, the total prize money is USD 30,000, and green fees are waived, but unlike last year, the top three players will be eligible for the 2020 KLPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament Stage 3 without having to compete in a preliminary qualifying tournament. Moreover, the top five players will qualify to play on the KLPGA 2020 Dream Tour, and the players finishing the IQT ranked 6th through 10th do not have to compete in the preliminary qualifying tournament for the 2020 Dream Tour and will be eligible for the KLPGA 2020 Jump Tour.
Every year, KLPGA international rookies’ performance is of major interest to golf fans. Last year, Ploychompoo Wirairungrueng (Thailand) won the IQT, finishing at five under par 283 (73, 69, 72, 69). About the Tour she said, “I really appreciate KLPGA for giving me the opportunity to meet and compete with so many excellent international players.”
Genevieve Ling I-Rynn (Malaysia) said, “Since the KLPGA tour is so competitive, I learn a lot from just watching the other players. I decided to join the IQT to continue to play on the KLPGA tour this year.”
As of today, six international players, including Ploychompoo Wirairungrueng (Thailand), Sui Xiang (China), Takabayashi Yumi (Japan), Aratake Rui (Japan), Nishimura Miki (Japan) and Chen Yu Ju (Taiwan) have registered for the KLPGA.
Because of the heightened interest of international players, KLPGA is working to increase the competitiveness of the tour by offering more support to international players. Special services now being offered include transportation to and from tournament venues and the booking of practice rounds. It also plans to redesign its website to be more accommodating to international players. For international players living in Korea, it plans to provide Korean learning materials and cultural content.
A KLPGA official said, “We will do everything we can to make the Tour one of the best, most accommodating, most competitive tours in the world.”
More information on how to apply is available on the official IQT website at http://klpgaiqt.com/.
Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA)
KLPGA, since its founding in 1978 and for the last 41 years, has been promoting its brand and tour players in the interest of Korean ladies professional golf. As the organizer of tour events, it puts forth efforts to host championships and contribute to the popularization of golf and the globalization of Korean ladies professional golfers. This year, it will hold 29 KLPGA Tours, 21 Dream Tours, 16 Jump Tours, and 12 Champions Tours. KLPGA is taking the lead in developing the most advanced golf tour system using an IT-driven K-ranking system and KLPGA Data Center Service. Furthermore, to recruit international players, it has created an online and offline infrastructure for the management of IQT players and I-Tour members, and revised its website dedicated to foreign players, and offered more Korea-related content. Its ultimate goal is to become Global No. 1 tour.
CONTACT: For Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA)
Howard Kim
klpga@kpr.co.kr
KEYWORD: SOUTH KOREA JAPAN VIET NAM THAILAND TAIWAN ASIA PACIFIC CHINA MALAYSIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: WOMEN SPORTS GOLF CONSUMER EDUCATION TRAINING
SOURCE: The Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association
PUB: 07/10/2019 09:00 PM/DISC: 07/10/2019 09:01 PM
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Sydney’s gay pride street parade celebrates same-sex marriage, honors early activists
Published March 3, 2018, 6:49 PM
About half a million people are expected to line Sydney’s streets on Saturday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the first time the annual parade has taken place since Australia legalized same-sex marriage.
A participant wearing a costume prepares for the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade in central Sydney, Australia, March 3, 2018. (REUTERS/David Gray/ MANILA BULLETIN)
The event started in 1978 as a protest march for gay rights and the decriminalization of homosexuality but has since grown into a major tourist spectacle featuring leather, sequins, glitter, lasers and dance music. It is now Sydney’s biggest street party and a major focal point for Australia’s gay and lesbian community.
This year’s procession includes 200 floats and groups of street dancers and will be headed by Dykes on Bikes, a motorcycle club.
Pop superstar Cher will headline the parade’s official party, the first since Australia in December became the 26th nation to legalize same-sex marriage.
Australians overwhelmingly endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage in a postal survey in a country where sodomy laws were still in place in some states until as recently as the 1990s.
This year’s Mardi Gras will honor the 78ers, a group of people involved in the original protest, which took place on June 24, 1978 as a peaceful march for gay rights that sparked the annual parade.
That protest was marred by police brutality with 53 people arrested in subsequent scuffles.
Police have since apologized for the events of 1978 and now march each year in the parade alongside other emergency services.
Bruce Pollack, a Mardi Gras volunteer since 1984, said the parade has played a major role in changing attitudes toward the LGBT community over the decades.
“I was involved in the gay and lesbian counseling service … you would always hear young gays, and older gays, and much older gays say‘it’s OK to come out because I saw people like me in the parade enjoying themselves – and there were spectators’,” Pollack told Reuters.“It was Mardi Gras that made it OK to be gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender.”
Tags: Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, gay pride, Manila Bulletin, parade, same-sex marriage, Sydney
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Teen has gone from a stroke during art class to helping strike out stroke
Ryan Banks was sitting in his high school art class in Trenton, Ohio, when he began feeling funny. He texted his mom, Sherry, that his right arm was tingling and he felt confused.
Sherry recommended that Ryan go see the nurse. Meantime, Sherry headed to the school, thinking Ryan – who at 15 already had spent years battling migraines – might be having a headache with new symptoms and could need to be treated at a hospital.
When Sherry arrived, Ryan wasn’t in the nurse’s office. A secretary called his classroom to track him down. As they walked out, she asked Ryan why he was still there.
“I didn’t know how to tell the teacher that I needed to leave,” he said.
As they continued to walk, Ryan said his arm was numb and he felt confused. She made him stop and look at her.
“When he talked to me, he couldn’t focus on my face. He would look to the side of me. That really started to scare me,” she said. “That’s when I knew there was something more to what was going on.”
During the 20-minute ride to the children’s hospital, Ryan’s speech became garbled. At the hospital, he stopped speaking altogether. Sherry handed him her cell phone in hopes that he would text his thoughts.
He tried. But he couldn’t. In frustration, he threw the phone down.
An MRI showed Ryan was having a stroke.
Doctors started Ryan on a clot-busting medicine and told his mom he needed to be flown by helicopter ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Hospital. A stroke team awaited them, and soon discovered the clot wouldn’t dissolve. So doctors performed a procedure to remove it.
All this happened Oct. 11, 2012. Ryan and his mom were told it would be at least six months to a year before he would be able to speak clearly. As for what other effects the stroke had, only time would tell.
Sherry spent that night in her son’s room, falling asleep with the TV tuned to ESPN. At 3 a.m., she heard the familiar SportsCenter tone, “Da nah nah, da nah nah.”
“Do you know the Steelers lost last night,” Ryan said.
Yes, Ryan said it in a voice about 85 to 90 percent his usual clarity.
“I almost fell out of my chair,” Sherry said. “All I could think was, ‘My gosh. We have a miracle.’”
The next morning, Ryan fed himself breakfast despite having a very slight weakness in his right hand the night before.
“To look at him, you would have never thought he had a major stroke,” Sherry said.
Although stroke is often viewed as occurring primarily in the elderly, it also strikes young adults, children, infants and even babies who aren’t yet born. The risk of stroke from birth through age 19 is nearly 5 per 100,000 children per year.
As with adults, speedy diagnosis, treatment and age-appropriate rehabilitation and therapy can minimize death and disability. In addition, more research is needed to better understand the unique aspects of diagnosing and treating stroke in children.
Doctors put Ryan through a battery of tests to try to figure out why he had a stroke, including heart tests, genetic testing and a check of his blood to see if something was wrong with its clotting. Everything came back normal, leaving doctors unsure what caused his stroke.
Among the changes Ryan’s made are a return to sports. After two years away from playing soccer, he returned six months after his stroke, playing goalkeeper for his high school team and a select squad.
And when he turned 16, he got his driver’s license and a ’98 Mustang.
Ryan did face some challenges. The honors student sometimes had difficulty thinking of a word, or couldn’t articulate what he knew in his head. He had trouble with inference when he was reading. Doctors diagnosed him with aphasia (difficulty with speech and language).
He’s getting better but he still has some trouble. Luckily, Ryan can joke about it.
“If we’re playing a family game or something and he doesn’t know something, he says, ‘I had a stroke! What do you expect?’” Sherry said.
Ryan also has been spreading awareness about stroke – and pediatric stroke. That includes throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Cincinnati Reds game as part of Strike Out Stroke, sponsored by the University of Cincinnati Hospital.
“That was fun. I loved doing that,” Ryan said. “It went great. I went out there, and I threw it right down the middle. It was a perfect pitch.”
He enjoys sharing his story in hopes that others understand that stroke can hit anyone at any age, and to teach them how to recognize a stroke F.A.S.T. — that is, if you detect face drooping, arm weakness or speech difficulty, it’s time to call 9-1-1.
“It can happen to anyone, not just older people,” Ryan said. “It can happen to younger people, too.”
August 7th, 2014|Health|Comments Off on Teen has gone from a stroke during art class to helping strike out stroke
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Home | Wild Files | N.H. Animals | Animals A-Z | Watch Online
Passeridae - Old World Sparrows, Snow Finches
Family: Passeridae
The birds in this family are native to Europe, Asia, and Africa. A few species, like the house sparrow, have been introduced around the world.
Birds in this family are found in open habitats like woodlands, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural areas and are frequently found in urban and suburban areas. They are small birds, between 5-7 inches in length. They have short, thick bills; short, pointed wings; short legs; and stocky bodies. Most species are brown or gray in color with black or white markings. Males are usually larger than females and more brightly colored.
The birds in this family usually feed in flocks and eat insects, seeds, fruits, and berries. American sparrows and Old World sparrows are not closely related. American sparrows are members of the Emberizidae family.
Passeridae Photo Gallery
World Status Key
Least Concern Near Threatened Vulnerable Endangered Critically Endangered Extinct in Wild Extinct Not Enough Data
Status and range is taken from ICUN Redlist.
U.S. Status Key
Threatened in US Endangered in US Introduced
Status taken from US Fish and Wildlife. Click on U.S. status icon to go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife species profile. New Hampshire Status Key
Threatened in NH Endangered in NH Breeds in NH (birds)
Status taken from NH Fish and Game
Africa Asia Australia/Oceania Europe North America South America NH Click for More Info Click for Image
New Hampshire Species
North/Central American Species
House Sparrow - Passer domesticus
Eurasian Tree Sparrow - Passer montanus
Other Species Around the World
Rufous-tailed Weaver - Histurgops ruficaudus
Black-winged Snowfinch - Montifringilla adamsi
Plain-backed Snowfinch - Montifringilla blanfordi
Small Snowfinch - Montifringilla davidiana
White-winged Snowfinch - Montifringilla nivalis
Rufous-necked Snowfinch - Montifringilla ruficollis
White-rumped Snowfinch - Montifringilla taczanowskii
Afghan Snowfinch - Montifringilla theresae
Saxaul Sparrow - Passer ammodendri
Somali Sparrow - Passer castanopterus
Kordofan Sparrow - Passer cordofanicus
Southern Gray-headed Sparrow - Passer diffusus
Chestnut Sparrow - Passer eminibey
Arabian Golden Sparrow - Passer euchlorus
Plain-backed Sparrow - Passer flaveolus
Parrot-billed Sparrow - Passer gongonensis
Northern gray-headed Sparrow - Passer griseus
Abd al Kuri Sparrow - Passer hemileucus
Spanish Sparrow - Passer hispaniolensis
Iago Sparrow - Passer iagoensis
Socotra Sparrow - Passer insularis
Sudan Golden Sparrow - Passer luteus
Cape Sparrow - Passer melanurus
Dead Sea Sparrow - Passer moabiticus
Southern Rufous Sparrow - Passer motitensis
Sind Sparrow - Passer pyrrhonotus
Kenya Rufous Sparrow - Passer rufocinctus
Russet Sparrow - Passer rutilans
Shelley's Sparrow - Passer shelleyi
Desert Sparrow - Passer simplex
Swahili Sparrow - Passer suahelicus
Swainson's Sparrow - Passer swainsonii
Pale Rock Sparrow - Petronia brachydactyla
Bush Petronia - Petronia dentata
Rock Sparrow - Petronia petronia
Yellow-spotted Petronia - Petronia pyrgita
Yellow-throated Petronia - Petronia superciliaris
Chestnut-shouldered Petronia - Petronia xanthocollis
Sociable Weaver - Philetairus socius
Donaldson-smith's Sparrow-weaver - Plocepasser donaldsoni
White-browed Sparrow-weaver - Plocepasser mahali
Chestnut-backed Sparrow-weaver -Plocepasser rufoscapulatus
Chestnut-crowned Sparrow-weaver - Plocepasser superciliosus
Gray-headed Social-weaver - Pseudonigrita arnaudi
Black-capped Social-weaver - Pseudonigrita cabanisi
Speckle-fronted Weaver - Sporopipes frontalis
Scaly Weaver - Sporopipes squamifrons
Key: Profile Photos Video Audio
The black-capped social-weaver is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania.
Source: Internet Bird Collection Intended Audience: General Reading Level: Middle School Teacher Section: No
The black-winged snowfinch is found in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.
The Cape sparrow is found in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
The chestnut-backed sparrow-weaver is found in Angola, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, and Zambia.
The chestnut-crowned sparrow-weaver is found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Togo, and Uganda.
The chestnut-shouldered petronia is found in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
Source: Arkive Intended Audience: General Reading Level: Middle School Teacher Section: Yes
The chestnut sparrow is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The rock sparrow is found in northern Africa, southern Europe and central Asia.
The Dead Sea sparrow is found in Afghanistan, Cyprus, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey.
The desert sparrow is found in Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Donaldson-smith's sparrow-weaver is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
The Eurasian tree sparrow is native to Eurasia and Southeast Asia.
Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology Intended Audience: General Reading Level: Middle School Teacher Section: No
The Eurasian tree sparrow was released into the St. Louis, Missouri, area in 1870. Unlike the house sparrow, it has not spread far and remains in that area in the United States.
The gray-headed Social-weaver is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The house sparrow is native to Eurasia and North Africa, but it has been introduced around the world.
Source: Animal Diversity Web Intended Audience: General Reading Level: Middle School Teacher Section: Yes
The house sparrow was introduced into Brooklyn, New York, in 1851
The house sparrow eats seeds and insects
The Iago sparrow is found in Cape Verde.
The Iago sparrow is also known as the Cape Verde sparrow.
The northern gray-headed sparrow is also known as the common gray-headed sparrow. It is found in central and southern Africa.
The pale rock sparrow is found in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
The parrot-billed sparrow is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The plain-backed sparrow is also known as the Pegu sparrow. It is found in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The rufous-tailed weaver is found in Kenya and Tanzania.
The russet sparrow is found in Bhutan, China, India, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Saxaul sparrow is found in China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The scaly weaver is also known as the scaly-feathered finch. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The Sind sparrow is found in India and Pakistan.
The sociable weaver is found in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.
The Somali sparrow is found in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
The southern gray-headed sparrow is found in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The southern rufous sparrow is found in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The Spanish sparrow is found in the Mediterranean region and in central and southwest Asia.
The Spanish sparrow looks a lot like the house sparrow.
The speckle-fronted weaver is found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The Sudan golden sparrow is found in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.
The Swahili sparrow is found in Kenya, Malawi, and Tanzania.
Swainson's sparrow is found in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
The white-browed sparrow-weaver is found in Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The white-winged snowfinch is found from southern Europe through central Asia.
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Matthew Winn
Siobhan Melia
Glen Garrod
Angela Hillery
Andrew Burnell
Will Hancock
Rob Webster
Helen Stokes-Lampard
Robert Harrison
Paul Corrigan CBE
Back to NHS Providers
Provider voices
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
As chief operating officer, Robert is responsible for the daily operational management of the Hospital and the achievement of performance targets. Duties also include responsibility for IT, information, estates and facilities. Mr Harrison is the chief operating officer lead for urgent and emergency care and stroke on behalf of the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts.
The long term plan supports the direction we’ve been heading in ourselves – working together across primary, social and community care in developing an ethos of prevention being better than cure, and developing services that promote independence and support people throughout their life, including end of life.
The Harrogate and Rural Alliance is made up of the local CCG, the county council, the district council, ourselves as the acute and community provider, the mental health provider and the federation of GPs. It’s a coalition across the whole of health and social care but also includes housing and other teams within the two tiers of council services. Our focus is on beginning to align our services to make them as efficient as possible and to ensure we’re able to provide the best possible services within the resources we’ve got as a coalition.
We are working to create a set of core services that will be jointly managed. They will predominantly be the community adult social care teams and community health teams. Then there’s a group of aligned services that sit alongside them, including community mental health provision, primary care, GP out-of-hours services and services from the hospital, including consultant geriatricians. These essentially come together to provide a service that works around the concept of the primary care home model. Four localities will have virtual hubs within which those teams will come together and undertake their multi-disciplinary teamwork.
Rob Harrison Chief Operating Officer, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
Getting the basics right
We’re into the soft launch period at the moment. We’ve been redesigning our services for the last eight to nine months – the initial changes were around management structures and governance of the teams. We’re in the process of appointing an alliance director who will take over joint management of the community teams. The alliance director will be employed either by the foundation trust or the council. To encourage people to apply, we’ve left it so they can pick either employer, but whichever they choose, they will be managing people who are employed by a different employer.
This programme has required us to work through what localities look like and how we align with GP practices when they’ve got populations spread across boundaries where different community and social care teams have historically worked. We’ve had to look at how to align those and make them function differently. We’ve been working with our teams on how to make sure they’ve got the IT kit they need to be able to do mobile working. Some of this is just getting the basics right – for instance how can we make sure that staff can enter any of the buildings any of us owns, and hot-desk so they’re not restricted to going back to their own base?
We are sharing the case load, understanding who the best individuals are to have the most impact on the patient or service user, and trying to avoid the ping pong scenarios that have happened in the past where a GP on a home visit wants to refer and isn’t really sure where to refer to. How can we support keeping people out of hospital, keeping them well in the long term and building on the work the local council had been putting in place around living well practitioners?
We are sharing the case load, understanding who the best individuals are to have the most impact on the patient or service user, and trying to avoid the ping pong scenarios that have happened in the past where a GP on a home visit wants to refer and isn’t really sure where to refer to.
The real change has come in the last eight to nine months, when we agreed we’d all put the whole caseload into the work programme. As a result, people don’t feel that they have to manage another risk somewhere else. It says "actually, we’re all in this together, we recognise we’ve got a whole case load from every partner that’s involved in this, we’ve also got to do our day job and manage that case load, but now we can start to have a conversation about whether there is a way in which by sharing those resources and sharing the way in which we manage those caseloads we can become more effective".
Some of the bigger challenges are about, when somebody does need acute care, how quickly we can get them back home again. In the last 12 months, we’ve developed a supportive discharge service which also has a consultant geriatrician as part of the team, whose focus is on getting people back home as soon as possible. If someone’s got a package of care in place but can’t start it until the Monday, we will bridge that care in the community over the weekend until the package starts, so we can get people out of hospital – that’s enabled us to get our long length of stay down. Working with the local authority and the CCG, we’ve also got delayed transfers of care down to under 3% recurrently at the moment.
Relationships over structures
There is a whole heap of arguments either way as to whether to put community services in with acute care or not. If you’ve got the relationships right, I don’t think it matters much whether you’re a combined trust or not. The work we’ve been doing with the CCG, the local authority and the GP federation in particular demonstrates you can start to align services, integrate the way in which teams work together, regardless of what the corporate body is.
Some of the bigger challenges are about, when somebody does need acute care, how quickly we can get them back home again.
There are up-sides and down-sides to the trust being the provider of acute and community services. In some ways, the community has a different type of focus from acute management. Even so, we’ve put acute medicine, A&E, out-of-hours GPs and community district nursing teams into the same directorate management team. That gives them an overview and understanding of those services and how they can impact on each other, but actually the biggest impact on hospital services doesn’t come directly from health community teams – it comes from the ways those health community teams work with primary care, with mental health services and particularly with social care.
I don’t think you can solve all of this just as an acute and community provider on your own – it gives you a level of understanding of how to manage some of those movements across acute and community, but the broader benefits of working with system partners actually mean that its not critical that community services are managed as part of a combined organisation. We’ve achieved a lot under our approach, but with the right relationships in acute and community, we could have achieved exactly the same result without being a combined trust.
This is about leadership – about trust between organisations, relationships and doing the right thing. If you’ve got a focus on the individual who’s receiving care or can be prevented from needing care, you can build a coalition of the willing around that. You’ve just got to make sure you’ve got the right governance structure in place. This is about leadership not organisation. We’re not necessarily saying we’ve got it all right, we’ve been on a long journey to get to this place – we’ve had our ups and downs, as every partnership does. You build the trust - we’ve got to a place where our senior management teams and middle management teams are now starting to work in a really different way.
If you’ve got a focus on the individual who’s receiving care or can be prevented from needing care, you can build a coalition of the willing around that. You’ve just got to make sure you’ve got the right governance structure in place.
Ensuring the right governance
There are some basics you’ve got to get in place – how do you manage your complaints between you and how do you make sure you’ve got good consents in place for sharing data? That’s about being upfront with people about creating an alliance, and being clear about who’s in that alliance. One of the things we’re really focused on at the moment is getting the pace right for staff so they feel confident that they are still providing services in a really safe way through the transition, while giving them the opportunity to innovate and experience new ways of working, and backing that up with the right governance structure so that they continue to feel safe in what they do. While we’d all like to just come in on Monday and start doing things completely differently, it’s important to recognise that this is a transition and to have a really clear, phased mobilisation.
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Former US secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. (IMAGE: Brett Weinstein, Flickr)
Why We Grieved For Hillary Clinton And Who Defends ‘Western Values’ Anyway?
By Petra Bueskens on November 26, 2016 Civil Society
A woman in the White House is inevitable. Dr Petra Bueskens takes a look at the journey to get there.
It’s not often that elections, let alone foreign ones, elicit such a strong emotional response as the wave of grief that broke across liberal, intellectual and left social circles in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory.
Writer and actress Lena Dunham said that “Wednesday was a day of mourning. Thursday too. Hell, I’m giving us till Sunday.” On social media the grief was raw and deep. Many talked of being unable to process Trump’s victory and of feeling shocked, despairing, fearful, angry and anxious. The shock and distress were palpable, and certainly I felt it too.
Why do we – the collective feminist left in particular – feel this way? I think there are multiple levels beginning with the most personal. Clinton’s defeat is emblematic of the many defeats we have suffered in our attempts to forge careers and compete in the ostensible meritocracy. What we see, regardless of our feelings about her “dishonesty”, “war mongering”, and “corrupt” associations with banks – the epithets that weigh her down on the left and make it difficult to express political support let alone admiration – is that still in 2016 a talented, highly qualified, accomplished and eminently experienced woman coming through the established party political channels lost to an incompetent, blundering, inexperienced buffoon.
We mourn that even in the face of such manifestly unequal candidates Clinton is still the loser.
Hillary Clinton’s concession is the aggregate pain of every woman who has had no choice but to accept a preference for an inferior man.
— HuffPostWomen (@HuffPostWomen) November 9, 2016
We are pained and angry for her, for ourselves and for the message this sends our daughters. As Van Badham said in a tweet on the eve of Clinton’s election defeat, “Every little girl in America has just been told that if you work hard, be good & make nice you still can’t be president but your abuser can.” For many of us, her defeat is an outrageous miscarriage of justice and one we carry in our own experiences.
I can think of an immediate example in my own life. At my last place of work, a private higher education provider, there were several men with the proverbial “corner office”, literally and figuratively, who were no more qualified and in several cases demonstrably less so than senior women in the organisation. I recall one man who was promoted to (or perhaps appointed at) senior lecturer level who didn’t have a PhD. When I tentatively inquired about promotion to this level, with both a PhD and a book under my belt, I was told I “didn’t have enough administrative experience” to even apply. While this was true, I wasn’t chalking up the admin work (I had a 2 and 5-year-old at the time), it is also true that admin is low down the academic food chain. However, because administration is in the criteria for promotion, this was an apparently unbiased answer.
The problem was there were male senior lecturers who hadn’t met the far more important criteria of PhD’s and/or publications. Similarly with offices, these seemed to be granted on the basis of prestige and luck more than qualifications and experience.
What I learned at this workplace, and several others too, is that there are so-called objective criteria for hiring and promotion (often supported with egalitarian policies) but these are interpreted according to subjective and routinely biased beliefs. This is why capable women do not get promoted at the same rate as capable men and why women who are mothers (unlike men who are fathers) so often end up on the “mummy track” – sure this is about hours worked but it’s also about (mis)conceptions regarding mothers’ competence and commitment. Women cannot have faith in a meritocracy that systematically disadvantages them; nor can racial and ethnic minority groups.
This was driven home with force on the eve of Hillary Clinton’s defeat and for many of us it raised painful feelings of hopelessness. Just as her victory was our victory. Her defeat was our defeat.
US Democrat presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. (IMAGE: Pan Photo, Flickr)
My own experience is but one miniscule example in one field of endeavour, but we know discrimination is endemic, born out in social psychology studies that show when male and female candidates are deemed equally competent, the male candidate is routinely favoured. This gender bias is demonstrated in the fact that this preference remains even when identical applications are swapped – “James” will always be preferred to “Andrea” regardless of which application is labelled “James” or “Andrea”. But this is not the worst of it; additional studies have shown that when female candidates are clearly identified as outstanding – and therefore encroaching on the status territories of men – they flip into being unlikeable. Specifically, they come to be seen as hostile and untrustworthy.
In Clinton’s case, she was actively disliked even hated by those on the Right and Left, men and women, rich and poor, boomers and millennials alike: indeed hatred of her was arguably a key unifying political force. This hinged on two pervasive discourses: first, that she was untrustworthy, scheming and conniving (e.g., the email “scandal” which was given more media attention than all her policy issues combined); and second, that her candidacy was illegitimate and consequently that she didn’t even deserve to be in the race.
There were the pernicious accusations that she “rigged” the primaries when in fact she won by a lead of close to 3 million votes, and various other bombastic conspiracies including that she was a murderer. Very soon Trump’s pejorative monikers “crooked Hillary”, “nasty woman” and “liar” stuck. This manifested in calls to “lock her up” and, at its most extreme, to kill her. The truth behind the lie is that Clinton so violated patriarchal norms of womanly propriety that “we” didn’t know what to do with her but, like a Salem witch trial, call for her arrest and murder.
For having the audacity to pursue the most senior office in the land and being streets ahead of all her male rivals, Hillary Clinton found herself in the successful woman’s catch-22: “she can be good or liked but not both”. This is the painful conundrum that dogged and defined her campaign. Sady Doyle, drawing on her new book Trainwreck explores the public’s glee in tearing down successful women.
“It’s… the tendency to hate women when they’re up and love them when they’re down, which is the most perverse feature of trainwreck culture and our aversion to female success… Clinton may not have to [die]to win us over. But she fits the pattern. Over and over, we embrace her once we think she’s down for the count. When Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed – making Hillary appear before the nation as the betrayed and humiliated “little woman”… her approval ratings soared, from 42 to 64 per cent. When she ran against Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary, people hated her even more feverishly than they do now, yet when he beat her, and she accepted a subordinate position in his administration, she became one of the US’s most popular politicians.
44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. (IMAGE: Marc Nozell, Flickr)
Moreover, it is this bias mechanism – akin to the status penalty described by the social psychologists – that redefined her positive qualities as “faults”. Coming through the accepted channels and having the requisite qualifications and experience made her an “establishment candidate” which was, in turn, recast as a liability. The offenses are manifold – she was too polished, too professional, too experienced, too connected. Since when have these qualities been liabilities for a professional politician?
Similarly, her ambition, normal among high achievers in any field, was defined as suspect and immoral. As Jill Abramson said, “Her fierce determination to seek the presidency a second time, eight years after being defeated by Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries, was seen as evidence that she was relentlessly ambitious. Her perseverance and resilience were mistaken for power madness.”
And it seems the aura of defeat has not lifted the criticism. Even now, in the aftermath of her political death, Clinton is being excoriated for not having stepped aside for a better man (code for: known her place). Commentators on the left like Owen Jones have said Clinton was a “disastrous choice”. Others insist she should have stepped aside and allowed the more likable Bernie Sanders to beat Trump (something that is unlikely to have happened). Taken to its logical extreme, it is Hillary Clinton’s fault – or the fault of the Democratic party who nominated her – that Trump is president. How dare she have thought she should prevail over less qualified, less experienced and less capable men?
This brings a whole new level of sexism to politics. By this tortuous logic – the exact inverse of the meritocracy we ostensibly live in – women in or aspiring to high office should step aside for inferior but more likeable candidates. The problem with this argument is that men in positions of authority are always more likeable than women in authority as numerous social psychology studies show. In effect these commentators are asking highly qualified women to accept this outrageous bias and quietly get out of the way. This is apparently in the name of equality, diversity and liberal values – because, you know, voting in and appointing more white men will ensure ever greater diversity! Again what this fails to see is that Hillary Clinton didn’t only fight for equality; she embodied it. Like Obama before her, her very existence transforms the paradigm of leadership.
What it also fails to see is that the reproduction of patriarchy – men as the ubiquitous face of power and authority – is an inextricable part of our broader social and political problem – the so-called “wicked problems” that face our age like climate change, the mass movement of refugees, war and inequality itself. We can’t just keep the same people in positions of authority (white, middle and upper-class men) reproducing their own back-scratching, likeable, world-destroying biases. What we need are new perspectives – generated from a variety of social, psychological, economic, political and cultural subject positions. It is precisely an expanded, genuinely cosmopolitan and intersectional perspective that we need. This isn’t limited to but it certainly includes women’s perspectives.
Unsuccessful US presidential candidate, Hillary CLinton, at a midnight rally in North Carolina the night before the election. (IMAGE: jalexartis, Flickr)
The fact that Clinton is a mother is in my view also significant – she has given birth to, nurtured and raised a child and this too informs her worldview. As policy research shows, putting more women in public office leads to better outcomes for women, many of which are long overdue. It means more and better paid parental leave policies, more flexibility at work for carers (almost always women), a greater focus on welfare and upholding women’s reproductive rights. We only need look to the Nordic countries as solid empirical evidence in this regard; more women in power means better social welfare policies.
As I have written elsewhere matricentric feminism is a gift to the world principally because the uniting of an ethic of care (motherhood) with an ethic of justice (feminism) is critical to the advancement of equality, including of the non-human, sentient world. Hillary Clinton holds this dual perspective that remains rare among men quite simply because so few have been (or are) primary carers, even co-equal primary careers, of dependent children. Her tireless work for children’s charities, strong support for paid parental leave, childcare, equal pay and women’s reproductive rights are evidence in this regard.
The fact that Clinton didn’t win and Trump did is because of irrational, misogynistic bias that would never have dogged a man but the answer to this is not to move competent and therefore unlikable women out of the way; it is to put more such women up so that we address, tackle and diffuse this pernicious bias. The only way we can do so is for women in senior office to become normal rather than a threatening aberration. We want more not less Hillary Clinton’s!
Another thing that is worth mentioning concerns nomenclature. We assume a first-name familiarity with “Hillary” that we do not with “Trump” who is invariably addressed with the formality and deference of his surname. These days that is preceded with “President elect”. We did the same with our first woman Prime Minister “Julia” and her opponent “Abbot”. In addition to the overt misogyny that bedevils women like Clinton and Gillard, this more subtle and seemingly friendly refusal to grant them authority is tantamount to a refusal to accept them in that role or to grant them equivalent status. This is especially stark give that such a convention is unanimously applied to men.
Referring to women in senior office without using their title or surname, however well intentioned, demonstrates a lack of distance and a concomitant lack of respect. It is evidence of our charged emotional relationship to women in power and our collective need to diminish them. We do not see women leaders as sufficiently eminent or, in Clinton’s case, “presidential”. “She doesn’t look presidential” chimed Trump in their final debate, but how can she when she is the first of her kind? Of course he was exploiting a prejudice here and he made a point of referring to her by her first name. “Hillary” is the name of choice for her supporters as well as her detractors, but it demonstrates an inappropriate familiarity and, as we all know, familiarity breeds contempt.
So why do we cry? We cry because it’s not fair that a woman of the quality, calibre and tenacity of Hillary Rodham Clinton was runner up to an incompetent, inexperienced, openly bigoted, dangerous buffoon. We cry because we know that hard fought for civil liberties for black and coloured people, for immigrants, refugees, LGBTI people and women’s reproductive rights are so very fragile. We cry because Trump’s victory gives bigots a mandate to harass, intimidate and abuse all these groups (as they already are) and to feel they have a licence to symbolically and actually assault women – aka “grab them by the p*ssy”. We grieve for fear of a world on the precipice of environmental disaster being lead by a man who believes climate change is a conspiracy of the Chinese. We grieve for the lost hope and lost opportunity of making history.
But, unlike the workplace Hillary Clinton was judged by the court of popular opinion and it is this that so shocks and distresses the experts, the liberals, the media pundits, the intelligentsia and the feminists alike; those who are shocked by the extent of the new right-wing populism as evidenced in the UK with Brexit and growing in Europe too. We have missed the fundamental change that has been happening all around us because of the echo chambers of our own curated newsfeeds.
While feminism is enjoying a resurgence in the west facilitated by social media, and progressive liberal values have seemingly prevailed; in fact, for the majority they have not. Liberal values are under attack all over the western world as a response to two decades of neo-liberalism with its community-destroying austerity policies; the feminist backlash evidenced in the new “manosphere” and “alt-right” groups; fear over terrorism (with little understanding of the critical role of the US in generating, funding and supporting the growth of “terrorism”); and of the unprecedented mass movement of refugees. There is a new reactionary desire to defend white privilege, male privilege and a parochial conception of national, or worse, “western”, culture.
Former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
But even this is contested territory. The far right claim to be standing up for western humanism (see Tony Abbot’s new think tank as a prime example); they claim to be defending the centre against left radicals or “elites” who are allegedly destroying the culture by letting in refugees, Muslims, uppity women and the like (to the country, the government and other positions of power). This argument is replete with falsehoods and doublespeak given the very people who are producing culture – artists, writers, intellectuals, political activists, journalists and others in the so-called “chattering classes” – are the target of their campaign. It is not western culture that is being defended; rather, it is white tribalism and a colonialist, patriarchal version of the world that no longer exists.
These modern day crusaders of “western civilization” repudiate our greatest achievement: liberal humanism, that makes a cosmopolitan, human-rights based perspective possible. All else is war and parochialism, us and them, xenophobia and castes. And, in fact it is the early modern “elites” who forewarned this as a critical danger of democracy – popular opinion can be just, noble and true, but it is also true that it can succumb to groupthink and mob rule or what Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous and still timely study Democracy in America called “tyranny of the majority”. In a prophetic read of American culture, still defined as one the best books on both democracy and the US, he forewarned of the danger of a political system which based its rule on numbers rather than on “rightness or excellence”.
This was also a grave concern for JS Mill in his canonical On Liberty – the problem with democracy is that it can justify the abrogation of individual rights – say the rights of Muslim Americans or of women to make decision about our own bodies – and it also generates a disturbing uniformity of opinion. The point about rights is that they cannot and should not be reducible to anything, least of all popular opinion. This constitutes a form of democratic despotism.
This fashionable rejection of so-called “elites” – exploited to the hilt by disingenuous demagogues like Trump and our own Tony Abbot – is that the very culture they purport to protect is disproportionally created by precisely these groups and/or the liberal conditions that create them. Where would art be, we might ask, without gay men or civil rights without suffragettes and abolitionists? What they want to obliterate is critical thinkers and critical thinking not “elites”. Of course this populism speaks also to economic injustice – the decline in manufacturing jobs – that has been experienced disproportionately in recent decades by white working class men, but this doesn’t make the populist messages true (that refugees, immigrants, the Chinese or women are to blame). It is neoliberalism that is to blame – the decline in jobs and welfare and a new winner-takes-all capitalism. The truth is they are the elites. Trump is part of the 1 percent.
The idea that Clinton was so in bed with corporate America that Trump represents authentic change is patently absurd, yet it gained traction across liberal and conservative media and built the case that Clinton was more of the same when the reality is the opposite. Having a woman as president is such a radical departure from the norm that US society clearly wasn’t ready. We can’t mention “false consciousness” or “propaganda” because, according to the right-wing, that’s “elitist”. Fear of this charge means we arrive at the manifestly absurd situation that people as right wing, conservative and neoliberal as Trump, Nigel Farage, Tony Abbot and Malcolm Turnbull can claim to be on the side of the poor; these are the true elites but in a spectacularly successful public relations exercise it is now journalists, academics, artists, students and feminists who are “the elite”.
Donald Trump meets Nigel Farage… in a gold-plated lift in Trump Tower.
The curious thing about the United States is while being at the apex of the New World (for better and for worse) and since at least de Tocqueville’s time a place of individualism and ingenuity they have a fraught relationship with gender equality. While the fight for womanhood suffrage began in the 1840s, with the historic Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the key campaigners did not see the vote materialise in their lifetime. It was the daughters, and in some cases granddaughters, of the great suffragettes who finally saw the vote granted to women in 1920. It took almost a century! That fight was long and hard and far behind our own rogue, convict settler nation who granted white women the vote, and the right to stand for parliament, in the remarkably early date of 1845 (in the state of South Australia).
Likewise the Equal Right Amendment (ERA) was introduced in the Congress for the first time in 1923 and yet it took until 1972 – effectively 50 years! – until it was passed by both houses, only to be defeated at the eleventh hour by Phyllis Schlafley and her vociferous campaign saying “equality” – as it was understood and promulgated by liberal feminists – would undermine housewives; a precedent perhaps for majority of white women (53%) who turned away from Clinton and voted for Trump. The ERA was never ratified by the requisite number of states and five states withdrew their ratification after they had given it. Again, so close but so far!
So while we lament the sexism, indeed misogyny, of this presidential campaign, there is a well-established history of almost getting there with key milestones toward gender equality in the US. Hillary Clinton is, in this sense, the consummate first female presidential candidate. She almost got there but was pulled back at the eleventh hour by the sway of popular conservatism. We can console ourselves that she has already made history. She has, as she says, put gigantic cracks in that hardest, highest glass ceiling. The next woman candidate will find it that much easier because of Clinton’s passion and tenacity.
There will no doubt be several stops and starts before the nation is prepared to have a woman in the Ova(l) office. But fate can only be delayed for so long.
Tags: 2016 us presidential electiondonald trumpdr petra bueskenshillary clinton
Petra Bueskens
Dr Petra Bueskens is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, a psychotherapist in private practice, and a freelance opinion writer. Her books include Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (Routledge 2018), the edited volume Motherhood and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives (Demeter, 2014), and two forthcoming edited volumes Nancy Chodorow: The Reproduction of Mothering: Forty Years On with Tanya Cassidy and Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives with Carla Pascoe Leahy (Palgrave, 2019). Her opinion pieces have appeared in New Matilda, The Conversation, The Huffington Post, Arena Magazine and more.
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Major Vidalia packing house and land set for auction
March 17, 2017 by Carl Carter
VIDALIA, Georgia — The packing house, land and equipment formerly used in the produce operations for Plantation Sweets will be offered in a bank-ordered auction Wednesday, April 26. These assets were a major part of one of the larger growing and packing operations for Vidalia onions and sweet potatoes in the state of Georgia.
The modern packing facility has 94,000 square feet of atmospherically controlled area, as well as a 13,350-square-foot shop/equipment shed. Also selling will be parcels of land ranging from 14 to 182 acres and a tract consisting of the processing equipment used in the sorting and packing of onions and sweet potatoes.
The packing facilities and land are all located in Tattnall County, one of the few counties in the nation that are permitted under federal regulations and state law to market Vidalia onions or Vidalia green onions under the U.S. Certification Mark of Vidalia.
“It’s very rare to see an operation of this size and quality, positioned to grow and market Vidalia onions, go on the market,” said Ken Nofziger, of Murray Wise Associates, which is managing the auction in cooperation with Crosby & Associates and Woltz & Associates.
The land, located near Cobbtown, includes seven different farms, with approximately 567 farmable acres and 11 irrigation ponds totaling approximately 24 acres. It has 15 pivots and two wells for irrigation.
“Historically, the operation has grown and packed not only Vidalia onions and sweet potatoes, but also watermelon, corn, cabbage and tobacco,” said Ben Crosby, of Crosby & Associates. “This is a turn-key operation suitable for anybody looking to expand into this niche produce market.”
The packing house includes 20,000 square feet of atmospherically controlled coolers and a 7,200-square-foot hydro cooling room completed in 2015.
Auction staff will be available from 10 a.m. to noon March 28 and April 12 at the packing house, 1652 Ronny Collins Road, Cobbtown, to provide detailed information and accommodate inspections.
The auction will begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 26, at the Hawk’s Point Golf Club, 1801 North Loop Road, Vidalia, Georgia.
Farming equipment and micro-bins used in the operations will be sold in a separate auction Thursday, April 27. For details, visit weeksauction.com or call 352-351-4951.
Anyone seeking additional information may visit murraywiseassociates.com or crosbydirt.com, or call 800-607-6888.
Murray Wise Associates LLC, headquartered in Champaign, Illinois, is a leading national agricultural real estate marketing and financial advisory firm, with additional offices in Clarion, Iowa and Naples, Florida.
Crosby & Associates Inc., based in Winter Haven, Florida, provides a full range of land and commercial real estate services throughout the United States, with an emphasis on Florida and the Southeast.
Woltz & Associates, headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, is a leading auctioneer and broker of homes, land, commercial properties and other high-value real estate nationwide, with an emphasis on the Mid-Atlantic Region.
Filed Under: Crosby & Associates, Murray Wise Associates, Recent Releases, Woltz & Associates
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Finance-
Revenue Division-
Government » DEPARTMENTS » Finance
Welcome to the Revenue Division
The Revenue Division is responsible for overall revenue administration, including development, recovery, and analysis. This plays a key role in the City’s ability to maintain consistent service levels. Staff members monitor proposed legislative changes that affect the City’s revenue streams. They often take a lead role in mounting opposition against bills that have a detrimental impact on municipal services.
Staff reviews existing State laws mandating a higher level of service on the City, and pursues reimbursement of the additional costs imposed by the State. As local control over revenue streams has shifted to State and County agencies, Revenue staff’s review of the accuracy of subventions from those agencies has increased.
The Citywide consolidation of receivables management has increased efficiencies and expanded the Department’s customer service responsibilities to its external customers, residents, and visitors. Included in these customer services is the adjudication of all non-criminal actions taken by City Departments (e.g., parking and administrative citations). Revenue specific compliance and allocation audits, license inspectors and other revenue enhancement measures ensure a level playing field for all taxpayers within each tax base.
Revenue Division Information Telephone Number:
Revenue Division Location:
City of Newport Beach City Hall, Bay A, First Level
100 Civic Center Drive
Revenue Division Hours of Operation:
Monday through Thursday: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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New dragonfly hotspot in Aberdeen
A nature reserve in Aberdeen has been designated as a Dragonfly Hotspot in Scotland.
Scotstown Moor Local Nature Reserve, which is run by Aberdeen City Council and managed by the ACC Ranger Service, is the only place in the city to be officially recognised by the British Dragonfly Society. It is also the Society's most northerly Dragonfly Hotspot.
Aberdeen City Council Communities, Housing and Infrastructure Convener Councillor Neil Cooney said: "It is great news that Scotstown Moor Local Nature Reserve is now an official Hotspot for dragonfly-spotting.
"We have an abundance of places around the city for spotting different types of wildlife ranging from dolphins to red squirrels to birds of prey and it is good to have Scotstown Moor Local Nature Reserve officially recognised as one of these."
Dragonflies are powerful and agile fliers, capable of migrating across oceans, moving in any direction and changing direction suddenly. In flight, the adult dragonfly can propel itself in six directions: upward, downward, forward, back, to the left and to the right. Large dragonflies can reach a maximum speed of 1015 metres per second (2234 mph), and the species live in wetland habitat such as rivers or bogs They are symbols of courage, strength and happiness in Japan, but are regarded as sinister in European folklore.
Daniele Muir, Scotland Officer with the British Dragonfly Society, said 'Scotstown Moor LNR is one of the best places in the city to spot dragonflies.
"On a guided walk we're having, I would hope we'll see at least five different species and we'll look at the best ways to tell them apart and how easy it is to record your dragonfly sightings. Dragonflies are beautiful insects that have been around since before the dinosaurs and I'm really pleased to be working with ACC's Ranger Service at this Dragonfly Hotspot.'
The designation means special events are to be held at the Nature Reserve to enable people to spot and identify the beautifully-coloured insects, and help make the reserve an even better habitat for dragonflies, with practical pond-management tasks planned for the autumn and winter.
The guided walk event is being held at Scotstown Moor Local Nature Reserve on Friday (7 August) from 1pm to 3pm, with City Council Countryside Ranger Simon Whitworth and Daniele Muir.
The event will cover the identification and ecology of the species found on the reserve, along with the folklore that surrounds these amazing insects. Types of these creatures which can be found at Scotstown Moor Local Nature Reserve include Black Darters, Common Hawkers, Emerald Damselflies, Azure Damselflies and Common Blue Damselflies.
Numbers are limited so places should be booked by contacting Aberdeen City Council Ranger Service on 01224 897400 or email lochinch@aberdeencity.gov.uk. Meet at 1pm at the Scotstown Moor car park on Scotstown Rd, Bridge of Don, Aberdeen, grid ref NJ933117. Participants are asked to wear sturdy shoes/boots and bring binoculars if they have them. The walk will cover approx two miles so the event is suitable for children over the age of 10.
More information about dragonflies and the BDS is available from the website www.british-dragonflies.org.uk.
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Jazz Innovator and Jackson Pollock Lover Ornette Coleman Dies at 85
He used a Jackson Pollock painting for the cover of his 1960 breakthrough album.
Amah-Rose Abrams, June 12, 2015
Ornette Coleman at 80
Photo via: irom.wordpress.com
William Claxton Ornette Coleman (1959)
Photo via: The Redlist
Jazz innovator Ornette Coleman died of a heart attack in New York yesterday. He was 85.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930, Coleman started out playing rhythm and blues. His progressive approach made him few friends but it lead him to forever change his musical genre. Ferociously cutting-edge, he used fellow innovator Jackson Pollock‘s White Light (1954) for the cover of his seminal Free Jazz (1960) album.
The post-war avant-garde scene was alive and kicking in through the 1940s-60s in Manhattan and Coleman was a key figure in a community that included not only musicians, but also poets, and artists.
Jackson Pollock White Light (1954) used on the cover of Coleman’s Free Jazz (1960)
Photo via: Artpedia
A self- taught musician, legend has it he bought his first saxophone with money he had earned shining shoes.
“I didn’t know you had to learn to play,” he told the Guardian. “I didn’t know music was a style and that it had rules and stuff, I thought it was just sound. I thought you had to play to play, and I still think that.”
After some years of struggle, he gained overnight success in 1959 and completed a legendary ten-week residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York, where he met people like writer and curator Frank O’Hara and beat poet LeRoi Jones.
Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz
Photo via: London Jazz Collector
The alto-saxophonist was always looking to push creative boundaries, and in doing so took the jazz movement into new territory. His first album, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959), broke from the bebop jazz style of the day and reportedly split audiences, with fans walking out or arguing during his concerts at the Five Spot.
In 1960, Coleman released Free Jazz A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, an album that would not only create a new type of jazz music, but also featured Jackson Pollock’s White Light (1954) on the cover.
Over the years, critics have drawn parallels between the musician and artist for their seemingly free and unrestricted approaches to their art (see Jackson Pollock Masterpiece Reveals Drip Paintings’ Secret).
The inlay of Free Jazz featuring Pollock’s White Light
A great admirer of Pollock, in 2006 Coleman gave an interview to the Observer at New York’s Guggenheim museum, while walking around Pollock’s exhibition “No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock” (see Strictly Critical Video: One Hour Looking at a Jackson Pollock Painting at MoMA).
“These don’t look like strokes,” he said, speaking of Pollock’s Number 13 (1939). “They look like signals or messages, like a letter he’s writing in the form of art, like some advanced Braille […] It’s not something that you’ve seen before that you can name. It’s something that he created as he did it. The act of creation is the creation.”
This description of Pollock’s work speaks to the revered musician’s approach to music. A true innovator, Coleman was breaking boundaries right into his old age, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his album Sound Grammar in 2007.
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People, Profiles
Al Gore at UC Berkeley: ‘Democracy has been hacked’
By Anne Brice, Berkeley News| April 30, 2015 July 9, 2015
April 30, 2015 July 9, 2015 Anne Brice
In an impassioned campus speech, former Vice President Al Gore urged nearly 400 UC Berkeley students, faculty and staff, alumni and community members to “stop tolerating the destruction of humankind” and the environment and to redouble their efforts to stop climate change.
Gore chats onstage with Laura D’Andrea Tyson, director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact, and Rich Lyons, dean of the Berkeley-Haas School of Business. Tyson, who worked with Gore as national economic adviser during President Clinton’s first term, called Gore “a true visionary leader committed to making society a better place.” (Photo by Jim Block)
The talk, which took place Wednesday at International House, was sponsored by the Berkeley-Haas School of Business’s Dean’s Speaker Series and the Institute for Business and Social Impact.
While Gore expressed optimism that the climate change challenge would be met, he emphasized the obstacles that stand in the way — especially the breakdown of effective government in the United States.
“Democracy has been hacked,” he said. “Our political system has decayed. It’s an outrage. We are in danger of losing our democracy. We better wake up.”
“I’ve always heard as you get older you get more conservative,” he added, acknowledging an evolution in his thinking about politics since his days in the Clinton White House. “It’s been kind of the opposite for me.”
Gore opened by highlighting the importance of accounting for the “whole spectrum” — every system that supports humanity — and not just focusing on what we can see. “We need to shift our way of looking at things by finding new perspectives,” he said.
One way to do this, he said, is to recognize the value in natural resources and quality of life and not just things you can buy. “If the only tool you use to measure value is a price tag, then things that don’t have a price tag begin to look as if they have no value,” he said. “What about the cleanliness of air and water? What about a business’s treatment of its employees?”
Policymakers need to change the way they measure value, he said. Depletion of natural resources, for example, isn’t included in GDP, he said, so we’re running out of water. “California — particularly agriculture — is facing dire circumstances because of this historical drought.”
Gore said 90 percent of heat energy trapped in the earth’s atmosphere by global warming pollution is going into the oceans, “and so you get these much stronger storms” that destroy areas of the United States and other parts of the globe. He called for a decrease in our reliance on carbon, and swift adoption of cleaner, sustainable energy sources like wind power.
“Mother Nature,” said Gore, “is telling us that we have to change.”
Yet, despite the obstacles, “We are going to solve the climate crisis,” he predicted. “We are going to win this.” He encouraged students to challenge policymakers and bring innovative ideas to companies that support sustainable practices. “We are seeing the greatest business opportunity in the history of the world with the decarbonization of the economy.”
Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and bestselling author on climate change, is the chairman of the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit he founded to find solutions to the global climate crisis, and to inspire people to get involved in “making a global shift from dirty fossil fuels to clean, renewable energies like solar and wind.”
To see the entire talk, watch this video produced by Berkeley-Haas School of Business.
Topics: climate change, energy, public policy
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NEB Makes Important Pipeline Safety Standard Publicly Available
Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) is launching a one-year pilot program to make a key pipeline safety standard, known as CSA Z662 – Oil and Gas Pipeline Systems (CSA Z662), available online to the public free of charge. Previously this information was only available to the public through a paid online subscription, the NEB’s onsite library or through interlibrary loans across Canada.
CSA Z662 is incorporated by reference in the National Energy Board Onshore Pipeline Regulations (OPR) making it a regulation that applies to NEB-regulated oil and gas pipelines. It is also included in the NEB’s Filing Manual and companies must follow CSA Z662 when they submit an application for a new project.
“CSA Z662 is a critical piece of the NEB’s regulatory oversight. I believe it’s important that Canadians have the opportunity to review the standard online,” says Peter Watson, NEB chairman and CEO.
CSA Z662 is comprised of over 500 pages of prescriptive and performance-based requirements and covers the technical aspects of design, construction, operation, maintenance, deactivation, and abandonment of oil and gas industry pipeline systems. CSA Z662 is continually reviewed and updated to incorporate lessons learned, technological advancements, and best practices.
Reviews and updates are coordinated through the work of the Z662 Technical Committee and Subcommittees, which has more than 250 expert volunteer members. NEB technical staff participate in the development of these standards, along with technical experts from industry, other regulators and the public.
The pilot runs until March 2018 with the NEB covering the cost so Canadians can have full, digital access. The CSA is a not-for-profit standards organization which develops standards in 57 areas of specialization.
For more information on the NEB and its mandate, please visit neb-one.gc.ca.
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Technology Trap: Why Britain Needs to Steer Clear of Huawei
June 11, 2019 Topic: Security Region: Europe Tags: Technology5gBritainXi JinpingNational Security
5G is certainly a game changer, and Huawei has convinced the world that 5G cannot be built without it.
by Chuck Cooper
The reign of the United Kingdom’s Theresa May, a woman whose time in power has been, it is safe to say, a mixed success, is coming to an end. One of her final tasks as prime minister was to meet with President Donald Trump about her decision to include Huawei in the United Kingdom’s 5G network. While the government has at least promised to exclude Huawei from providing “core” parts of this network, the Daily Mail—a UK newspaper—understands that Everything Everywhere has not followed that rule in its 5G rollout. In an interview with the BBC on the first day of his visit, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was comparatively noncommittal on the subject of Huawei, emphasizing that the United States “doesn’t have a veto” on British policy. While it is of course important that the UK exercise independence in its policymaking, one cannot help but wonder about the wisdom of its current course.
It is worth remembering that the Chinese government has been carrying out interference campaigns in other democracies, including Australia and New Zealand, and there is no reason to assume it lacks similar intentions with regards to the UK. A recent report from the Henry Jackson Society notes that “Huawei is alleged to have a special relationship with the PLA, which allows it to take part in procurement tenders. It also alleged to have a relationship with state sponsored hacking groups.” These suspicions are only exacerbated by Huawei’s refusal to turn over internal corporate documents to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Select Committee for fear of violating China’s state-secret laws. As the committee noted, “It is strange the internal corporate documents of purportedly private sector firms are considered classified secrets in China. This fact alone gives us a reason to question their independence.”
Given the obvious threat that the organization potentially poses, one cannot help but wonder why the soft touch from May? The answer may lay in the myth that China’s rise is inevitable, a conventional wisdom that has become a truism among London’s financial classes. As Sun Tzu said, “to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” In this sense, the “truth” that China’s rise is unstoppable has led to a soft form of appeasement. Indeed, at a recent event in Parliament, Tobias Ellwood spoke of how “China is on the rise, there is no turning back.” He is correct, of course, but is its rise to the top inevitable? Far from it. China finds itself afflicted by a rapidly aging population, slowing growth, and a chronic lack of allies around the world. We need not view it as an unstoppable colossus, merely another great power, one to be viewed not with fear or hostility, but with caution.
Another possible explanation is anxiety about the status of a post–Brexit Britain. The Cameron government sought to establish the UK as “China’s best partner in the West.” The current reality does not reflect these ambitions. The UK still lags behind a number of other European countries in its trading relationship (in 2018 Germany accounted for around 5.26 percent of Chinese imports compared to the UK’s 1.21 percent) and will likely be much less attractive partner for China’s ambitions in the West after it leaves the European Union. There have also been a number of diplomatic incidents that have made that relationship more difficult. Theresa May’s delay of a decision on the construction of the Hinkley Point power station was a particular source of irritation for Beijing, which demonstrated this with May’s relatively pomp-free visit in 2015. In the face of such circumstances it is understandable that the government is keen to avoid further alienating the world’s second-largest economy, not to mention sacrificing access to low-price 5G technology.
Such a sacrifice would not come without its challenges. With its potential to enhance innovation in artificial intelligence technology, industrial automation, and much more, 5G is certainly a game changer, and Huawei has convinced the world that 5G cannot be built without it. Of course, this myth has been perpetuated by those who have a stake in Huawei’s subsidized prices (after all, nineteen U.S. cities have 5G programs without Huawei in them). The rest of the EU, while expressing caution at its potential risks, has not outright banned Huawei’s network technology. The company has already been banned from the 5G networks of Australia and the United States over security concerns; still, President Trump has fed the idea that this is about technology primacy, unhelpfully saying that the U.S. ban might only be a temporary measure for the current trade war.
Despite this, it is crucial that the UK reconsider its policy. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has proven its flagrant disregard the sovereignty of other nations with its interference in the politics of others and is clearly learning to use trade as political leverage. Allowing such a regime access to our own networks doesn’t conjure up an image of a lamb being led to the slaughter, so much as a lamb volunteering for it. While the government’s confused position is hardly promising, the response to former Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson’s (alleged) leak of the plan to use Huawei equipment indicates that there might be hope in a leadership change. If this can be made an issue during the leadership contest, then some hope is possible. Williamson is currently backing Boris Johnson, who also happens to be the bookies favorite to win. While Boris has been relatively quiet on the topic of Huawei, he would be wise to take a position of strength on this issue.
For the sake of political and economic stability it is vital that the West is able to cultivate a strong and cooperative relationship with the PRC. That does not mean that the West needs to sacrifice its interests in the face of a rising China. This is especially true of the UK. Its current situation with Brexit has left it in need of new trading arrangements, and courting the world’s second largest economy will no doubt be a vital step in securing our future prosperity. If the Chinese want their companies to be able to play a role in the development of our infrastructure, then they must respect the UK’s security concerns. So long as Huawei cannot confirm its own independence from Beijing, then it cannot be allowed to play a role in the UK.
Chuck Cooper is a research assistant at the Henry Jackson Society’s Asia Studies Centre.
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The Cannes Film Festival is back, now with 100 per cent more Xavier Dolan
The festival announced its lineup on Thursday, with a slate that includes four female directors in competition for the Palme d’Or prize
The official poster for Cannes, featuring a rendering by Flore Maquin of a photo taken as a still from the 1955 film La pointe courte by Agnes Varda.Flore Maquin and Philippe Savoir / Festival de Cannes/Filifox / AFP
The sizzle is back in the Cannes Film Festival this year, with more A-list talent, more female directors than ever — and 100 per cent more Xavier Dolan. The Quebec director returns to the Croisette in May with his newest film, Matthias and Maxine, in which he also stars.
The festival announced its lineup on Thursday, with a slate that includes four female directors in competition for the Palme d’Or prize. They are Mati Diop (Atlantique), Celine Sciamma (Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire), Justine Triet (Sibyl) and Jessica Hausner (Little Joe). The relatively modest number nonetheless ties the 2011 record. Last year, there were three female directors at Cannes; in 2012, none.
High-profile offerings include Terrence Malick’s newest film, A Hidden Life, based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector during the Second World War. Pedro Almodóvar returns with Pain & Glory, starring Spanish stars Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. And Ben Whishaw and Emily Beecham star in Little Joe, a science-fiction story about a genetically engineered plant whose seeds cause strange effects in animals, including humans.
The festival kicks off May 14 with Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, a zombie comedy with a huge ensemble cast that includes Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Rosie Perez, Danny Glover, Iggy Pop and Selena Gomez. Cannes will also host the world premiere of the biopic Rocketman, with Taron Egerton starring as Elton John.
Other films in competition include festival regulars Ken Loach (Sorry We Missed You), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Young Ahmed) and Bong Joon Ho (Parasite).
Last year’s festival was seen as a lacklustre affair, especially from a North American perspective. There were no Canadians in competition, and one of the few Americans, David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), stumbled badly with his film Under the Silver Lake, which has not yet opened in Canada. Nevertheless, it debuted such hits as Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War.
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This year’s lineup was widely expected to include Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which stars Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie. The film is still in post-production, but a Cannes berth would let it premiere on the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d’Or in 1994. The festival usually has a few last-minute additions to its schedule, so there’s still a chance this could happen.
“We hope that we will have the good news that it will be present and integrated into the selection,” said festival chief Thierry Frémaux after making the announcement.
Chris Knight will be reporting from the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 14 through May 25.
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Timothy Caulfield: The IV therapy myth
There's a better way to get your vitamins than hooking yourself up to an IV: eat healthy food.
Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press
Over the past few years, the popularity of intravenous (IV) vitamin therapy has grown dramatically. It is marketed as a way to recover from hangovers, strengthen the immune system, alleviate jet lag, help people lose weight, “extinguish fatigue” and increase energy. But there’s no evidence it does any of these things.
IV vitamin therapy is most often sold by naturopaths or through “health and wellness” clinics. It is argued that IV vitamin therapy speeds the uptake of vitamins in “therapeutic doses,” as suggested by a naturopath in a recent CBC interview, by bypassing the digestive system. Why this is needed, or why it’s beneficial, is rarely, if ever, explained.
Alternative health-care providers, especially naturopaths, have had a long and intense love affair with vitamins and supplements. And no matter how many studies suggest that most offer no measurable benefit, they keep pushing the pills. Given this reality, it should be no surprise that vitamin companies — a multi-billion-dollar industry — have supported naturopaths’ efforts to become a regulated profession (a “holistic” conflict of interest?).
IV therapy is just the most recent and intense version of the illogical “more-vitamins-the-better” mentality. Let’s be absolutely clear: there is noevidence to support the idea that IV vitamin therapy provides any of the health benefits promised by its purveyors. Moreover, there is no evidence that getting vitamins faster, or bypassing the digestive system, provides any health benefits. Unless you have a fairly serious condition that has caused a severe clinical deficiency, the best way to get your vitamins is through the food that you eat. As the British Nutrition Foundation concludes, IV therapy consumers are “wasting their money,” as “(a)ll the excess vitamins will be excreted in the urine.”
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In fact, there is little evidence to support the idea that using an IV is a better way to hydrate. Intuitively, it may seem more effective because the fluid is being pumped straight into you veins. But in most situations, hydrating the old way — a process known in scientific circles as “drinking water” — is just as effective, or, some studies have found, even more effective than using an IV.
This reality highlights the power and intuitive appeal of the IV therapy myth. Think of all those professional athletes — football, basketball, tennis players — who have been dramatically whisked off the playing field to get urgently re-hydrated. One study found that 75 per cent of National Football League teams use pregame IV hydration, despite the fact that “the evidence base to support the use of IV fluids is nonexistent.”
If pro athletes use it, it must work, right? No. Celebrities and professional athletes have become the primary ambassadors of bunk. Sometimes this is done in a purposeful way (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba, Tom Brady) and sometimes they simply get caught up in the whirl of misinformation and hype.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Every time a TV announcer tells us that an athlete is leaving the field for some IV fluids (this is usually accompanied by a visual of the thirsty professional next to a serious-looking trainer as they march back to the dressing room), the health myth gets a bit of a boost. And clinics pushing IV therapy can use these stories to market their products. For example, in one post-game interview, NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said “IVs are good for you” and “some guys get IVs before the games, some guys have to get them at halftime.” His remarks ended up on websites for IV clinics and all over social media.
If you have trouble keeping fluids down because of nausea, or your body isn’t processing fluids properly (e.g., severe diarrhea), an IV may be the best approach. But in all other situations — that is, almost always — just drink the fluids you need.
Of course, IV therapy is just one of many unproven therapies flooding the wellness and integrative health market today. Still, I hope regulators step up and shut this nonsense down. Most of the marketing claims are blatantly false. While the harms may be primarily financial (the service costs $100 to $300), physical harm does occur. The study of NFL players found that nearly half (48 per cent) reported a complication.
There seems an unquenchable thirst for pseudo-scientific health products. I wish there was an IV drip that could inject more critical thinking into our public discourse.
Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, a Trudeau Fellow and author of Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture And Science Clash (Penguin, 2015).
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A History of Our Calling
Posted by navhistory on November 17, 2017 in Worldwide Partnership
Summary: This article spans the evolution of our Calling from the beginning until the Scriptural Roots of Our Ministry in the early 1990s. Attachments sample the documents in which we defined our sphere of service. The language changed but the root elements endured. God has held us accountable
Dawson Trotman’s Evolving Vision
Lorne Sanny as President of The Navigators
Overseas Policy Conference, 1961
Our Primary Aim and Increasing International Diversity
Some Notes on Calling
Dawson Trotman had a clear vision, but an evolving one. It was still growing when he died. And he used to describe it and proclaim it, rather than define it. Indeed, he usually maintained that it could not be defined in any short statement.
In the 1930s, he started by telling people about Christ. He would witness to anybody he met, with enthusiasm. This seemed to work well, until he picked up a hitchhiker he had led to Christ and found no lasting evidence of a new birth.
So, he developed the idea of follow-up, to establish his new believers in the faith.
By 1935, he was influencing many men, most of whom turned out not to be serious for God. At this time, also, he coined the name of The Navigators and adopted the motto “To Know Christ and to Make Him Known.”
He thus realized that he had to concentrate, to build more deeply into a few receptive men, in order to set them up spiritually for the long haul. So, he focused on a few “strong fellows.” The idea of man-to-man discipleship was born.
Daws looked for those who would get down to business with God. He spoke of “rugged soldiers of the cross,” men who had “an eye single to His glory.” He was looking for “a band of men, whose hearts God had touched” (1 Samuel 10:26). He used to compare David’s thirty and three with Jesus’s twelve and three.
He prayed for men who were disciplined in their pursuit of God. Continuing discipline needs support, so Daws worked hard at developing materials. He realized that methods and materials would extend his ministry far beyond his own personal reach.
In 1937, at Long Beach, near Los Angeles, the Key Man System started to develop. Notebook materials were designed and high schoolers requested help.
In the years leading up to World War II, therefore, Daws moved:
from quantity to quality
from breadth to depth
from experiments to methods
Looking back in 1961, his successor, Lorne Sanny, spoke of the significant strengths in Daws’s life. One of the most important was the claiming of the promises of God, in prayer. Daws would sometimes declare, “I know that God has given me certain promises and I know He is going to fulfill them.” Lorne saw it as a key factor that Daws was disappointed in the men he found in Southern California who would readily give their testimonies, but had no prayer lives. Nor could he find helpers for his boys’ work. Thus, he began to recruit these men and get them engaged in regular methods of memory, Bible study, check charts, etc. He focused on recruiting men of caliber. That was where it was at the start of World War II.
Scripture Memory, of course, had been emphasized much earlier, as with Les Spencer in 1933.
During World War II the work spread to one thousand ships and bases and camps. Our strongest work was in Honolulu. Keeping up became harder and harder, for Daws. He even dreamed of using a plane as his mobile office!
The set of Daws’s heart and the disciplined atmosphere of military personnel came together nicely. One could say that his ministry was well contextualized. As on active service, there were systems and targets and inspections to keep one another on track, spiritually. There were written communications, personal visits, and mutual challenge.
Nav homes were well established (the first being in San Pedro in 1933), but their leaders had employment and could not spend individual time with every needy person. Bob Foster, in 1958, recalled the example of one Nav leader who had seventeen men living with him in 1946. They invested in intensive Bible Study and memory work, yet this did not produce many faithful men who were real disciples. There were too many people in whom to invest.
In 1945, Daws visited the work in Honolulu. It troubled him. He saw that all the key men were leading Bible classes: Nobody was zeroing in on personal training. He realized that we were reproducing Bible classes, not individuals in depth. The guest books for the Nav home in Honolulu eventually contained 25,000 signatures!
There was a problem: We usually lost momentum after the second or third generation, because the group became a substitute for individuals, and because there were too many sterile or immature people. So, Daws returned to Los Angeles and began to preach on producing reproducers.
At the end of the war, the Navs had to decide whether to close down, or to become merely a fellowship of men who were in civilian employment. The 1946 conference at Forest Home was a rallying point for continuing the ministry.
Meanwhile, also in 1946, the idea of reproducing men had taken practical shape, through a strong example. Lorne Sanny was in Seattle (from 1944) working with Charlie Riggs who soon had four generations of fruit. It was an exciting breakthrough.
The Big Dipper (see attachment link below), for Daws, illustrated a new emphasis on serving other agencies and church denominations. By encouraging Nav-trained people to spread out into the wider Body, we should see spiritual multiplication occur naturally. However, the results were mixed. Our reproducers seemed to lose their cutting edge, and it was hard to sustain a dual emphasis: pursuing our vision and giving men sacrificially to other works.
In his book Born to Reproduce, after all these years, we can still hear the urgency of Daws’s voice: “Men, where is your man? Women, where is your woman?”
In the letters that he wrote to Dick Hillis, Hubert Mitchell, and Dave Morken, he kept emphasizing the spread of the Gospel in that generation.1 He used three phrases: propagation, multiplication instead of addition, and making disciples.
On December 28, 1948, Roy Robertson sailed for China. Although it is true that most of our work outside the USA was to be carried forward in English for many years, yet we did not entirely ignore the local languages. Roy, for example, took with him a new translation of the Topical Memory System in Mandarin: He used to give his contacts a Chinese Bible and point them to references in his English Bible.
Then, Daws traveled around the world in 1948, to China, India, and Europe. Returning through Europe, he met Dutch believer Gien Karssen at a conference in Switzerland and enthusiastically called her our Lydia in Europe (Acts 16:11-15). Then to Paris, where he studied the stars from the roof of the King George V Hotel and came up with the illustration of The Big Dipper.
When he returned from his trip, Daws declared, “From now on, we are going to beat our own drums.”2
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the vision continued to mature in Daws’s heart. He continued to build on God’s unshakable promises.3
Personal man-to-man training, rather than correspondence courses, was the key to spiritual multiplication. Let’s review the Navigator Log that Daws wrote in May 1949. (See attachment 2, log 37, May 1949, at the end of this article. Notice on this first page these ingredients: promises, prayer, training, 2:2 principle, multiplication. Then, after speaking of China and India, notice the sentences that Daws writes at the foot of page 2: “What shall we do to meet these requests? To provide materials and methods is not the answer. They are simply tools. It’s the workman that counts.”)
Association with Billy Graham
Our close association with Billy Graham developed in the late 1940s. Daws joined his team in 1951, supported by Lorne and other Nav leaders, with a view in preparing counselors for the Graham Crusades. With our “other works” emphasis, we usually merely loaned individuals.
However, in the case of Billy Graham’s ministry, we deliberately invested our best people, including Daws and Lorne. Somehow, the Graham organization was different. They knew, clearly, that their work would be wasted if they did not secure follow-up and counselor training. So, there was a meeting of minds.
Looking back on our Crusade experience several years later, Lorne listed the benefits as he saw them:
The personal preparation of his own life.
The securing of Glen Eyrie, through Billy Graham’s help.
The emphasis on The Navigators, as a visible and contributory organization.
Relating to the Body and linking with key leaders.
Towards the end of Daws’s life, he began to see the need for a training center and for our own summer conference grounds. Hence, in 1953, the purchase of Glen Eyrie.
Daws was a man of ideas – whether his own or another’s idea. He had a compulsion to refine the ideas until they worked, and to get other people to apply them (Sanny, July 1959). He was a very creative and adaptable leader, an artist rather than an engineer. Yet, above all, he was a man who took God at His word and staked all he had on His promises.4
Dawson Trotman’s Promises from Isaiah
Seventeen years earlier, in 1932, Daws had begun to reach out in prayer to the nations. And he had begun to claim those classic promises in Isaiah which are so much a part of our heritage. (See link below to attachment 3: Classic Promises from Isaiah.)
By the 1950s, Daws was feeling the strain of all the requests flowing in for men to go overseas. Promises for the nations were bearing fruit. Yet, there were several disappointments. Our launch couple for India, for example, turned out not to be ready.
When Lorne became president in 1956, we began to sharpen and to stabilize. For thirty years we were to be led by a master of clarity. It is not accidental that Lorne often declared his first responsibility as “to clarify, communicate, and maintain the purpose of The Navigators.”
In 1957, Lorne and Rod Sargent made a world tour. Our emphasis then was still on mass follow-up. For example: Germany, Japan, Kenya, and Taiwan. But, again, this was not producing laborers. So, we pulled out of Taiwan and ended our partnership with Overseas Crusades.
There was an increase in resignations after Lorne took over. Representatives fell from thirty-seven to twenty-six. By 1959, 35 percent of all Reps appointed had resigned.
In 1958, after being president for two years, Lorne spoke at the staff conference on Nav objectives. He affirmed that our overall objective was to glorify God, but that we had a unique purpose5 within the Body of Christ. It was:
To recruit and build men of maturity.
To focus on people, not programs.
To speed the multiplication process.
A few months earlier, in May 1957, Lorne declared that, “A man of vision sees before others see; he sees more than others see; he sees more clearly than others see.”
Lessons from these early years of Lorne’s presidency include:
Every generation needs to find its identity, both individually and collectively. Conflict arises when the existing leaders frustrate this process.
The cost of our identity crisis was high, but so was the fruit. It is needful to have a time of debate as to who we are; otherwise, one merely borrows an identity, and accumulates questions.
Context is important. The context in the USA was one of Christian success and youthful idealism. The Navigators evolved within American evangelical culture, including many who had come out of rural backgrounds and been exposed to the world in World War II.
There were many field innovations: first field training program (Nebraska, 1957); first one-day conference (Iowa, 1958); start of collegiate ministry (Lincoln, Leroy Eims, 1958); shift from big cities (Waldron Scott) to big dormitories (Leroy Eims); Eagle Lake Camps from 1957. Overseas expansion included Africa in 1956, Denmark, and Latin America in 1957, Canada in 1960, Middle East in 1960.
How did we stay on track and sustain our focus, when often criticized? For example, we were asked about our position on dispensationalism, on the millennium, on working with Billy Graham, etc. In 1962, Sanny’s advice was:
By giving an answer, you pick up more dust than by not having one.
Rather than take a position, let’s take the central things and carry them out.
Stand for inspiration, for example, but not for a certain theory of inspiration.
Our Overseas Policy Conference (OPC) in 1961 was a watershed. It looked at the entire world outside the USA and brought focus to the varied streams of our work. (To review the conclusions of the OPC, see attachment 4 using the attachment link below.) Notice that:
The glory of God is no longer explicit, though His “objectives” are still deduced.
There is a high view of the centrality of local congregations.
The Navs are understood as clearly different from local congregations.
Producing reproducers is still central, but the objective during the 1960s will be to demonstrate this.
Demonstration had become essential. We had loaned leaders in the 1950s to other agencies, we had served the Graham organization sacrificially, we had lost some staff in the transition from Daws to Lorne. It was time to practice rather than to preach the vision.6
Leroy Eims said, “In the 1950s, we went around telling everybody how to do what we used to do, and in the 1960s, we decided to give ourselves to doing it again.”
The notes of this conference are a precious resource. They vividly reveal the daily thrust of debate. Each word was carefully weighed. For example, should we say “objective” or “primary objective.” Lorne eventually decided not to dilute the statement, so “primary” was dropped. A decade later, of course, it had appeared again, probably because we became ever more conscious of the fact that many Christians were not getting into the Word for themselves. Helping them do so, Lorne would later say, was one of our other aims.
The conference displayed a new sense of focus, of a committed community at work. However, it would be wrong to interpret this as a decision to withdraw from the Body. For Lorne, such a course was biblically unacceptable. He told the staff in 1962, “I believe that each Nav representative should be active in a local church and should contribute to the overall mission of the church,” and he explained that, “to have only a Nav vision is too narrow a vision.” Yet, the fact is that we did drop out of sight and lose contact with the Body.
Listen to Lorne in 1964:
How can we as a growing, worldwide work keep together in purpose and stay on target towards the particular goal God has given us? Not by the prescribed uniformity of a policy manual or procedure book, but by holding a common objective. I consider it my main responsibility to set, clarify and maintain this objective.
Initial Focus on International Expansion
At this time, we see stirrings of attention to future Navigators who would not be Americans. For example:
“We cannot continue to expand into all the countries of the world, from Glen Eyrie . . . We will have to produce reproducers in other nations to carry on. . . . The cultural aspect is a heavy factor. . . . Ten years from now, we will have to emphasize nationals, so these ten years should be to produce reproducers” (Waldron Scott, January 1961).
“It is no longer necessary for overseas nationals to be at international headquarters before receiving appointment as international staff” (OPC, June 1964).
Post-OPC Developments
For the next few years, the decisions of the 1961 OPC were refined and elaborated. “Reproducers” was altered to “laborers” to give a stronger connection to NT language, and “multiplying” was chosen as having more bite than “producing.” Another difficulty was that “producing reproducers” turned out to have too many different interpretations.
In 1966, Lorne published the remarkable eighteen-point exegesis of our objective (see attachment 5):
Point 7 is the first reference to “young men between the ages of eighteen and thirty,” a bias which would be resisted a decade later as we moved into community ministries. We had always gone first to young people, but now this was made explicit. Clarity!
Point 13 positions the objective as a four-generation statement, although this is somewhat buried in the text.
Point 18 emphasizes results and therefore prepared the way for Management by Objectives which, as Lorne said, “got us on track but nearly tore us apart.”
In spite of the long list of points, surprisingly, there is no direct reference to the nations.
Lorne continued to struggle to keep us from confusing the means and the end. At the Overseas Directors Conference in 1966, for example, he expressed his concern about such restrictive ideas as concentrating on the development of staff to the exclusion of an impact ministry. He felt that we could do both, based on our history. Also, we must do both, in order to attract the kind of men we want. Also, if we were planning an impact in 1984 onwards, we must be working towards this now. If he had to choose between the two, Lorne said, he would probably sacrifice organizational growth in order to make a broader impact in selected areas.
Lorne saw producing reproducers as the means, our true objective having to do with laborers of many kinds. However, as our planning became intentional and systematic, “full-time” ministry became a badge of effectiveness, conveying “forget the Mickey Mouse . . . sell the farm.”
Our “Primary Aim” and Increasing Multinational Diversity
By 1969, a Primary Aim was clearly stated (see attachment 6 using the link below) and held unchanged through 1973. It read: “To help fulfill Christ’s Great Commission by making disciples and developing disciple-makers in every nation.”
For a few years, we split this aim into making disciples and developing disciple-makers, because some staff argued that we were stretching the term “laborers” too far. This is why it is so carefully explored in the FOM.
It is interesting that the 1969 Divisional Directors Conference had a goal of “instituting a management by objectives program for the future,” and that, “We will work at establishing some clear measurable senior objectives for the overall Nav work . . .” (Stephens, 1969). A couple of comments on the 1969 statement:
The definition of “world” is quite advanced, for that period. It is “cultures, races, nationalities, languages.”
Observe that “we will be dependent on official Nav reps as the key to the strategy.”
Our Primary Aim, by 1970, was accepted enough to allow a ten-year corporate plan to be agreed for the 1980s (see attachment 7). This identified how we would pursue our Primary Aim during the decade. The objectives were tough, and it soon became clear that one cannot sustain a constant percentage increase across many years.
Notice the objective “build up a staff of eighty RDs.” Doug Sparks and Donald McGilchrist, in London, took this very seriously: The result was the first major study in which I collaborated with Doug, and which produced careful assumptions and projections as to how we would build up to eighty RDs. It was not too well received!
This was a period of remarkable conceptual dynamism and remarkable geographical expansion. We saw the highest sending rates ever. Marked by argument, creativity, confusion, frustration. In four short years, from May 1970 to August 1974, unified numerical global planning targets were introduced, amplified, extended, challenged, defended, and largely discarded.
Global objectives attempted to focus our effort, in response to the debate on “what is required of us.” By the mid-1970s, in contrast, the debate had largely shifted to “who are we?”
In 1973, all dates, rates, and ratios were removed. Instead of saying that we would carry our ministry into every nation of the world in the 1980s, we merely said that we would do so “as God enables” (see attachment 8 using the attachment link below).
Why was there this loss of confidence in our projections? The answer is the impact of Waldron Scott’s paper titled “A Strategy for the 70s.”
This strategy, produced by a team led by Scott, was far in advance of anything that we had yet produced globally, both in breadth and depth. Lorne had asked a simple question: How do we know which nations to enter during the 1980s? What Lorne received from Scott was an elaborate document that adopted some clear philosophical positions. For example, on the importance of multi-national teams and on the need for the wealthy countries to help the poorer countries financially.
From now on, the history of our strategic thinking for the fifteen years ending in 1984 is summarized in attachment 9 (use the attachment link below).
These years are very important, because they witnessed our struggle to lead through a strategy.
After the implications of Scott’s December 1972 strategy began to sink in, various leaders and field staff became increasingly restless with the implications. Here is Lorne writing to the staff in October 1974:
In 1973, we discovered that the staff worldwide was not comfortable with this (strategy). There was uneasiness about meeting goals which they had not set themselves. At our December 1973 meeting, we decided to set it aside and rebuild a complete world strategy by asking each country to come up with its own plan. These plans are now in and have been put together . . . by Walt Henrichsen and his staff into a composite representing the realistic desires for Nav works in thirty-two countries. . . . Now as our international leadership team comes together to plan, we have reached no conclusions in advance . . . our first concern will be to determine the proper balance between input from headquarters and from the field. Now that the work in so many countries is strong and growing, there can and should be more planning done at the national level. As a federation (sic) of national works united in identical goals and a single purpose, we need enough centralized guidance to maintain global priorities. . . . Once the roles of national and central influence have been established, we can function more smoothly as an international team.
You would see, if you were to look carefully in attachment 9, that global objectives were introduced in 1970, de-numbered in 1973, resurrected as imperatives in 1980, introduced again in 1983, and finally discarded in 1984.
It was now abundantly clear that, while there was a place for shared vision and values, we could no longer work with international objectives or with a unified global strategy. The work had become too diverse.
Our subject is our Calling, not our objectives. And, here, we did well in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1974, the directors agreed that we needed to take a new look at our philosophy of ministry, in order to put the right flesh on the bones of our Primary Aim. We saw at least two problems:
Research and experience told us that lay laborers were not laboring.
Our identity relative to local churches was questionable.
In April 1975, Lorne said that the fundamental premise is that we are committed to movement, that our expansion in the community has precipitated this, that we must locate the universals, that all impediments must be swept away, and that our unique contribution should emerge.
Meanwhile, the launch of the International Leadership Team in April 1975 was a radical change. Henceforth “each divisional director had two roles, as representing his division and as contributing to our global perspective.” The men began to see themselves no longer as Sanny’s assistants for particular divisions, but as coworkers with Sanny in reaching the world, under God.
So, Lorne began to work with Jim Petersen and others on what became The Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry (FOM). What was intended? (See attachment 10, Lorne’s May 1976 “Dear Staff” letter, using the attachment link below.)
The FOM was published in 1978 and significantly upgraded in 1982. Yet, our Primary Aim remained the same from 1978 until the turn of the century. (See attachment 11, Primary Aim and Essentials, using the attachment link below.)
The FOM was taught in a new way. It was taught interactively by seminars in each part of the world, rather than by edicts and the preaching of our leaders. This was a more democratic approach and, indeed, the 1982 edition reflects input from many field staff on how things might be better presented or defined. Three comments:
The FOM symbolizes the top-down, bottom-up approach which we associate with Lorne. Previously, the statements of our Aim were usually top-down. The Scriptural Roots of Our Ministry (SRM) introduced in 1990 was largely bottom-up.
In each seminar, Lorne or Jim collected the recommendations of the staff, so that the text evolved progressively into the published 1978 version.
For example, Lorne pushed for “functioning disciples” because he wanted to recognize the place of gifts. To function is to use one’s gifts. Example: Dorcas in Acts 9. However, the staff resisted such broadness.
The core of the understanding of our ministry that was expressed in the FOM is captured in three short paragraphs that appear on page 21 of the 1982 edition. These are worth quoting:
Our ministry is not simply disciple-making. It is multiplying the number of those
who do the disciple-making. It is third generation discipling, that is, reproduction.
A Navigator ministry that does not do this is dead-ended, limited only to what the
Navigator can himself do.
When a person has produced disciples, he has reproduced himself as a disciple. He
has become a laborer. But, when a person has raised up a laborer, he has both
reproduced more disciples and himself as a laborer. This kind of reproduction
multiplies both the disciples and the laborers.
It is sometimes said that the FOM had an organizational bias. I do not agree. Rather, it had a practical bias. For example, the profiles were and are spiritual rather than organizational. They were intended to help us make progress.
In 1980, we held an international leadership conference, to which around 160 participants came from seventeen nationalities. This conference received and developed our new strategic global imperatives (see attachment 12, see attachment link below).
I would summarize Lorne’s contributions to the pursuit of our Calling as including:
Clarity, focus, and urgency
Stabilizing and uniting the staff
Legitimizing the contributions of those who have different gifts. Example: Though we have an apostolic bias, we are not all gifted as apostles, and we need to work in teams.
Placing emphasis upon the stewardship of our Calling.
Encouraging us to perseverance and faith.
Influence of the Scriptural Roots of Our Ministry
By 1987, under Jerry White’s leadership, our International Navigator Council (INC) was discussing whether to produce a third and shorter edition of the FOM. The INC notes say that we analyzed “the tensions inherent in global documents, the need to guard and teach our distinctives, the function and dangers of limits, the varying levels of relevance of our current FOM, the consciously organizational mindset of our current FOM, the essentiality of a common sense of identity and calling.” We desired unity, but were nervous of uniformity.
Two years later, FOM 3 had been retitled the Scriptural Roots of Our Ministry (SRM), and the Council now saw five purposes for the project:
To help new generations move into leadership, with their own convictions.
To facilitate rapid expansion, especially among the unchurched and the unreached.
To work at developing new and appropriate ministry patterns.
To define our own contribution and focus, as a society.
To serve as an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to instruct and direct us.
Attachment 13 (see link below) shows three charts that summarize our experience with the SRM. The one that is important here is “common themes.”
My opinion is that themes 2, 3, 4, and 5 clearly represent our traditional Calling, whereas theme 1 has always been present, but not usually as prominent. Themes 6 and 7 are relatively new.
More than forty countries worked through the SRM and held their forums. The IET received all their sphere statements and we judged a large majority to have been fruitful. A few did not work well, for specific reasons. There was a weakness of process7 in the USA, because of size and timing, but in general, we were well pleased.
The Enabling Global Society
Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1988, our council had formally adopted an international architecture which we called our Enabling Global Society (EGS). The characteristics of this society, as we then saw them emerging, are summarized in attachment 14 (see attachment link below).
There is a strong connection between the EGS and the SRM. The Global Society deliberately let go of central controls and formal policies that had previously governed the international relationship between our countries and their leaders. It freed us for broader ownership of the vision.
The SRM deliberately launched a vision-building period, in which country after country would construct their own pledge of allegiance to some foundational values and functions, surrounding a defined calling or sphere of service. It focused us for deeper commitment.
One could even say that the Global Society lengthened our cords and the SRM strengthened our stakes (Isaiah 54:2-3). Without the Global Society, the SRM would have lacked an enabling context. Without the SRM, the Global Society would have lacked a vibrant and locally owned purpose.
Four Phases of Developing Our Calling
In reviewing the development of our Calling until the early 1990s, it would seem that there were four broad phases as regards the principal means that we used:
Preaching from the Center (Declare: 1940s and 1950s)
Discussing/defining around the Center (Decide: 1960s)
Gathering/synthesizing the views of our staff (Consult: 1970s)
Encouraging local/national expressions (Decentralize: 1980s)
Another way of looking at this flow is to highlight two key events in the 1970s and two in the 1980s. Thus:
A Strategy for the 1970s – by planning
Fundamentals of our Ministry – by teaching
Enabling Global Society – by releasing
Scriptural Roots of our Ministry – by empowering
A third way is to summarize the phases in our international evolution since Lorne Sanny became president in 1953 (see attachment 15 using the attachment link below).
Finally, the question emerges as to whether an organization can have a calling (see attachment 16).
This article has taken us into the late 1990s after which the flow is traced in the article on “The Approach to The Core.”
Some on Calling
Calling impacts the heart more than the mind. Therefore, it is hard to define. We feel it, and we show it. This is why we have looked in recent years at our ethos or character or values, as a way of confirming the imprint of God upon our community. One of the launch pads for the FOM was a study on the ultimate character of The Navigators. Our character should reflect our Calling.
Calling requires strategy. God’s Calling to Moses was typically simple. He did not spell out for Moses all the ramifications. Therefore, Moses needed to develop a strategy for handling the implications of his calling. In the ebb and flow of strategy, we sometimes lengthen the cords and sometimes strengthen the stakes. Example: In 1961, we needed to incarnate our vision, so as to demonstrate producing reproducers; strengthening the stakes, organizationally. Example: In the 1980s, we needed to recover our apostolic momentum, so we were led into a Global Society in which everybody carries responsibility for reaching into the nations; lengthening the cords, structurally.
Calling is dependent upon us as leaders. If we do not hold high our Calling, it will fade and fall. It has to be expressed in our lives, in our words, and in our priorities. It is strong, because it comes from God, yet fragile because it is so easily ignored in favor of simpler things.
Calling is precious. Without it, we are just another helpful organization doing Christian work. However, our calling is our ongoing assurance that the Lord of the harvest has a particular and vital place for us. We need this!
Calling demands passion. Thus, we are recovering some of the apostolic mindset that Daws had, and have added the ingredient of teams. An apostolic team should be creative, pioneering, and aggressive. Not afraid to make mistakes! The SRM helped in this. It is no accident that many new countries were opened in the 1990s. We own with passion our Calling to the nations. As Lorne often said: We should bring vision, faith, and courage to directed effort.
Has our Calling evolved? Yes, but in richness more than in content. The central themes run clear and strong. Our understanding of it has certainly evolved.
By Donald McGilchrist
Attachments Link
See also articles on:
Five Milestones
Navigators Among the People of God
Overseas Policies: 1961
Overseas Directors Conference: 1966
Our Contributions: 1960s
The Nations
Global Planning: 1966-1975
Global Planning: 1976 –
Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry
Nationalizing
Internationalizing
Contextualizing
International Leadership Conference: 1980
Our Enabling Global Society
The Scriptural Roots of our Ministry
The CoMission
Materials & Communications
Six Critical Factors
Strategic International Statements: 1935 – 2002
The Approach to The Core
Dick Hillis, Hubert Mitchell, David Morken, as well as Bob Pierce and Daws had cooperated in Youth for Christ evangelistic rallies. All of them spoke in China. Hillis, who was already serving under the China Inland Mission, set up the YFC meetings throughout China and arranged with Morken for Daws to come to China. Daws spoke in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengtu and other major cities on the importance of follow-up and the value of memorizing scripture. See Developing a Heart for Mission: Five Missionary Heroes by Roy Robertson, NavMedia, 2002.
Source: OPC 1961, section 12, January 12, quoting Sanny.
Daws, speaking expansively to the staff in 1953, projected a million men in ten years, and exclaimed that in another five years we would be able to reach all the population of the world over three years of age!
Recordings of more than fifty of Daws’s messages on MP3 are available from our US Discipleship Library. Two of the most compelling are “The Need of the Hour” and “Born to Reproduce.”
“The basic objective is to recruit, build and send men” (Lorne, April 1957).
Warren Myers, OPC S19, page 2; “Our job is to produce reproducers personally, rather than to talk about it and challenge others to do it.”
The US prepared their own edition titled SRM Version 2.1. It was simpler and offer more guidance than the original international edition.
About the Worldwide Partnership Articles
Articles in this collection were researched and written by Donald McGilchrist, who served on our International Executive Team from 1976 to 2005. They tell the story of the international expansion of The Navigators, rooted in our US origins in the 1930s through the birth of The Core in 2002.
Drawing from many interviews and countless historical documents, as well as his own experience, McGilchrist surveys the sweeping story of The Navigators primarily during the last half of the twentieth century.
NavHistory articles should not be seen as position statements of Navigator leaders.
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Men’s Player of the Week: Andrew Musler (Clark, Gr./Belmont, Mass.): In a 1-1 week for the Cougars, Musler averaged 21.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 3.5 blocks while shooting 61.5 percent from the field (13-for-21) and 85 percent from the free throw line (12-for-14). First, in a 70-55 win over Wheaton, Musler just missed out a double-double, finishing with 18 points, nine rebounds and four blocks on 7-for-12 shooting. Then in a narrow 77-73 overtime loss to No. 8 Babson, Musler played 40 of the possible 45 minutes, totaling a season-best 25 points, to go along with four rebounds and three blocks. He was extremely efficient against the Beavers, going 6-for-9 from the field, including 4-for-6 from the three-point line and 9-for-11 from the charity stripe.
Women’s Co-Player of the Week: Laura Cote (Fitchburg State, Sr./Ashby, Mass.): Cote averaged 15.5 points per game and 7.5 steals per game over two contests for Fitchburg State. The senior guard registered 16 points in a 63-58 victory over Anna Maria, while becoming the 10th member of the program’s exclusive 1,000 point club. In the Falcons 66-62 loss to Bridgewater, Cote tallied 15 points with 11 steals.
Women’s Co-Player of the Week: Dani Davis (WPI, Sr./East Granby, Conn.): Davis averaged 18.5 points and five rebounds in a 1-1 week for the Engineers. The senior became the 17th member of the program’s 1,000 point club during WPI’s 62-57 victory Wednesday over Emerson. Davis, who reached the milestone with a jumper with 2:32 remaining before halftime, ended the triumph with 12 points. The forward did not slow down from there, pouring in a career-best 25 points Saturday in a loss to Wheaton. Davis drained 9-of-17 attempts from the field, including connecting on 3-of-4 3-point attempts.
Women’s Rookie of the Week: Sam O’Gara (Clark, Fr./Worcester, Mass.): In a 2-0 week, the first-year lead guard averaged 10.5 points and 5.0 assists as the Cougars won back-to-back games for the first time this season. In a 41-36 win over Wellesley, she finished with 12 points, two rebounds and two assists helping the Scarlet and White snap a 12-game losing streak. Then the next night in a 72-66 win over Pine Manor, she just missed a double-double with nine points and eight assists.
Justin Burrell (Holy Cross, Sr./Dumfries, Va.): Burrell led the Crusaders with a season-high 26 points and five rebounds in the victory at Army and was limited to seven points and four assists in the win over Lehigh. The senior hit 14 of 16 free throws on the week, including seven of eight in the last minute of the Army game, and four of four in the last minute of the Lehigh game.
Jimmy Zenevitch (Assumption, Sr./Methuen, Mass.): Zenevitch averaged 14.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game last week, highlighted by an 18-point, seven-rebound showing at Stonehill as he was 8-for-10 from the field in that game.
Patrick Bradanese (Anna Maria, Jr./ Billerica, Mass.): Bradanese averaged 17.7 points per game in a 1-2 week for the AMCATS. In the team’s lone win, an 85-84 win against Emmanuel, Bradanese scored a game-high 28 points and hit a team-best six three-pointers. On the week, Bradanese shot at 44.7 percent from the floor (17-38) and 43.5 percent from long-distance (10-23) while adding a 9-10 effort at the free-throw line. The junior guard added five assists and five steals on the week.
Nick DaPrato (Clark, Gr./Marshfield, Mass.): In a 1-1 week for the Cougars, DaPrato averaged 19.0 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 2.5 steals, while eclipsing the 100 made three-pointers mark for his career. In a 70-55 win over Wheaton, DaPrato totaled 15 points and three rebounds. Then in a narrow overtime loss to No. 8 Babson, he racked up 23 points, six rebounds four assists and four steals, connecting on four three-pointers and he now sits at 101 made triples.
Charles Gunter (Worcester State, Sr./Boston, Mass.): Gunter averaged 18.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists and connected for 81.3 percent of his free throws (13-16) in an 0-2 week for Worcester State which included 19 points, six boards and three helpers in a 93-82 overtime setback to Bridgewater State and 18 points with six caroms in a 101-81 loss against Westfield State.
Sam Longwell (WPI, Sr./Acton, Mass.): Longwell continued to produce double-doubles notching one in each of WPI’s two victories last week. The senior registered a team-high 20 points and a game-best 14 rebounds in an important 69-58 home triumph over MIT before tallying 19 points and 10 boards in a 65-47 road win at Coast Guard. Longwell shot an impressive 58.3 percent from the field and canned 55.6 percent of his 3-point attempts as he averaged 19.5 points, 12 rebounds and three assists while posting his fifth and sixth double-doubles of the season and eighth and ninth of his career.
Allison Stoddard (Assumption, So./East Lyme, Conn.): In two games, Stoddard averaged 16 points, 2.5 rebounds, 2.5 steals and 1.5 assists in a 1-1 week. Highlighting her week was a career-high 21-point effort in the win at Merrimack as she added four rebounds, two steals and two assists in the victory.
Trafficia Warburton (Anna Maria, Sr./ Worcester, Mass.): Warburton averaged 17.0 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 7.0 steals on the week for Anna Maria. in a non-conference game against Fitchburg, she scored a team-high 22 points and added 16 rebounds and six steals. Against Lasell on Saturday, she netted 12 points and eight steals.
Aretha Sullivan (Clark, So./Worcester, Mass.): In a 2-0 week, Sullivan had the best stretch of her sophomore campaign, averaging 11.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists as the Cougars won back-to-back games for the first time this season. In a 41-36 win over Wellesley, she had eight points and three rebounds, but then in a 72-66 win over Pine Manor, Sullivan was at her best registering 15 points and a game-best 12 rebounds, while handing out five assists. For the week she also went 10-for-10 from the free throw line.
Shannen El-Qasem (Worcester State, Sr./Rutland, Mass.): El-Qasem averaged 10.5 points and 4.0 rebounds and shot 56.3 percent from the floor (9-16) in a 1-1 week for Worcester State which included 12 points and four boards in a 50-44 victory over Bridgewater State.
Ama Biney (WPI, Fr./Worcester, Mass.): Biney continued her strong freshman season by shooting at a 60 percent clip en route to averaging 14 points as WPI split a pair of NEWMAC contests last week. The rookie netted a team-best 17 points and secured the game with a steal in the waning seconds as the Engineers defeated Emerson 62-57 on Wednesday evening. Biney came back and tossed 11 points Saturday versus Wheaton and ended the week with 12 rebounds and seven steals.
Noontime Sports (and NoontimeSports.com) will once again be the home to WACBA this winter, and will post the weekly awards every Tuesday morning. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@NoontimeSports and @NoonSportsBlog), while also keeping up with WACBA (@WACBAHoops) for up-to-date news, notes, scores and more.
tagged with Abby Wambach, Allison Stoddard, Ama Biney, Andrew Musler, Aretha Sullivan, Assumption College, Assumption Greyhounds, Basketball, Charles Gunter, Clark Athletics, Clark Cougars, Clark University, College Basketball, Dani Davis, Fitchburg State, Fitchburg State Falcons, Holy Cross, Holy Cross Crusaders, Jimmy Zenevitch, Justin Burrell, Laura Cote, Nick DaPrato, Patrick Bradanese, Sam Longwell, Sam O’Gara, Shannen El-Qasem, Trafficia Warburton, Worcester, Worcester Area College Basketball Association, Worcester State, Worcester State Lancers, WPI, WPI Engineers
New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
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University of Iowa Athletics Department announces 26th Hall of Fame Class
Six new members to be inducted this fall
Nate Kaeding, a two-time All-American, is one of six former Hawkeyes being inducted into the National Iowa Varsity Club Athletics Hall of Fame. Photo courtesy UI Athletic Communications.
By: UI Athletic Communications | 2014.08.12 | 09:52 am
The National Iowa Varsity Club and the University of Iowa Athletics Department will induct six individuals into the National Iowa Varsity Club Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, Aug. 29. Five former University of Iowa student-athletes and one former coach make up the 26th Hall of Fame Class.
Don Hatch (gymnastics, 1967-69), Jon Reimer (track and field, 1965-67), Nate Kaeding (football, 2000-03), Bruce Kinseth (wrestling, 1976-79), Jeanne Kruckeberg (cross country, 1987-89; track and field, 1987-90) and Jerry Hassard (women’s cross country and track and field coach, 1976-96) represent Iowa’s newest group of Hall of Fame inductees.
These six inductees were selected by a vote of all dues-paying members of the National Iowa Varsity Club. All former Hawkeye athletes who have won at least one major letter are eligible for the UI Athletics Hall of Fame. Athletes must have completed their eligibility at least 10 years and coaches/administrators at least five years prior to their selection.
Deadline Aug. 22 to purchase tickets
The induction banquet/dinner is open to the public.
Tickets may be purchased for $35 by sending your name and check to the National Iowa Varsity Club, ATTN: HoF Banquet, University of Iowa, N409 CHA, Iowa City, IA, 52242 by Friday, Aug. 22.
For more information call the Varsity Club office at 319-335-9438.
The Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony banquet/dinner will be held on Friday, Aug. at 6:30 p.m. inside the Grand Coral Ballroom at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. A reception will precede the dinner beginning at 5:30 p.m.
The induction banquet/dinner is open to the public. Tickets may be purchased for $35 by sending your name and check to the National Iowa Varsity Club, ATTN: HoF Banquet, University of Iowa, N409 CHA, Iowa City, IA, 52242 by Friday, Aug. 22. For more information please call the Varsity Club office at 319-335-9438.
Heritage Era Athletes
Don Hatch: Hatch was a three-time letter winner in gymnastics from 1967-69. He was a three-time NCAA All-American on the still rings, the 1967 U.S. Open still rings champion, and a three-time All-Big Ten performer, winning the Big Ten title on the still rings in 1967, 1968 and 1969. He was a member of Iowa’s 1969 NCAA championship team, as well as the 1967 and 1968 Big Ten championship teams.
Jon Reimer: Reimer earned three varsity letters in track from 1965-67, earning All-American honors in the 440-yard hurdles (1965, 1967) and the mile relay (1967). He was a four-time Big Ten champion (1967 indoor mile, 1965 and 1967 outdoor mile relay, 1965 outdoor 330 and 440-yard hurdles). He set both the NCAA and Big Ten mile relay records in 1967, and still holds the Big Ten record in the 330-yard hurdles.
Modern Era Athletes
Nate Kaeding: Kaeding was a four-year letter winner for the Iowa football team from 2000-03. He was a two-time, first-team All-American (2002-03), and won the 2002 Lou Groza Award as the nation’s best place kicker. An All-Big Ten first-team selection in 2002 and 2003, Kaeding holds school records for single-season and career scoring, consecutive and career field goals made, and PAT’s made in a season, career, and consecutively. Following his career as a Hawkeye, Kaeding played ten years in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers and Miami Dolphins.
Bruce Kinseth: Kinseth was a four-year letter winner in wrestling from 1976-79. As a senior he won the 1979 NCAA and Big Ten championships at 150 lbs., becoming the only athlete in NCAA history to pin his way through both the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments. He was named Outstanding Wrestler of the 1979 NCAA Championships and set an Iowa record for pins in a season (23), being awarded the Gorriaran Trophy for the most pins in the least amount of time. He was also the 1978 NCAA runner-up at 150 lbs.
Jeanne Kruckeberg: Kruckeberg earned four varsity letters in cross country (1987-90) and three in track (1988-90). She was a four-time NCAA All-American, two-time Big Ten indoor champion (1987 880 yards, 1989 3,200-meter relay), and a runner-up at the 1989 NCAA Indoor Championships (800 meters) and 1989 Big Ten Cross Country Championships. She was named 1989 Drake Relays Female Athlete of the Meet after winning the 1,500 meters and distance medley relays. She set six school records during her career, and still owns the indoor and outdoor 3,200-meter relay and outdoor distance medley records.
Jerry Hassard: Hassard coached the Iowa women’s cross country and track and field teams from 1976-96. During his tenure, he developed 27 track and field and six cross country All-Americans, 25 Big Ten individual track and field champions, and 12 athletes that competed in the United States Track and Field Olympic Trials. His track and field teams twice placed 10th at the NCAA meet, and his 1982 cross country team won the program’s first Big Ten title and finished eighth at the NCAA Championships, still the highest placing in school history. He coached two student-athletes to NCAA track and field titles, including Nan Doak (1985), Iowa’s first female NCAA champion.
Athletic Communications, 319-335-9411
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HomePage Magazine Conversations
Ocula Conversation
Tsubasa Kato in Conversation
Laura Thomson 24 March 2015
Tsubasa Kato (b. 1984) is a performance artist whose work relies largely on the participation of others. He is most well known for his Pull and Raise project, an ongoing series of performances that require the assistance of friends, colleagues and the public to be executed.
Tsubasa Kato studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He has exhibited extensively within Japan and has executed several large scale projects internationally. He is represented by MUJIN-TO Production in Tokyo and the gallery showcased his work at Art Basel Hong Kong 2015.
Ocula talks to Tsubasa Kato on the occasion of his recent solo exhibition at MUJIN-TO Production.
How would you define yourself as an artist?
I am an artist focusing on human relationships, and I do so via performance.
And what is your background? How did you first become interested in art?
I don’t remember when I decided to be an artist. Just that I liked to be outside of my familiar environment and I was very much focused on discovery and new experiences. I studied painting, but soon began to question the medium which led me to start working outside of the studio.
You are most well known for your Pull and Raise works: a long term series of projects in which large scale wooden structures replicating buildings or other monuments are pulled up from the ground using ropes by a large number of participants. When you started making these works they operated in the reverse, Pull and Down. Can you share your thinking behind these works and why you changed to pulling them up?
In the early stage, the motifs for the Pull and Raise projects were mainly houses, based on my house as well as other people's houses. I make the structures to exact scale, and also models on smaller scale too. My idea was to create new experiences and in a sense history in the action of pulling down the structure.
Then the Great East Japan Earthquake happened on March 11, 2011. As you know, the Tsunami destroyed countless houses. After experiencing such incredible loss and observing the recovery effort begin, which in a sense heralded a new era, the circumstances of Pull and Down drastically changed. I was planning to perform the Pull and Down project in front of Osaka Castle, but I cancelled the event and changed it to Pull and Raise, which involved slowly raising the structure by pulling the ropes.
And they are documented by photography and video, which, alongside scale models of the structures, make up the body of your exhibitions?
Yes. The installation includes my first Pull and Raise work right after the disaster and the project I held in Fukushima.
Communication and collaboration are central to your work; the success of the performances relies on people coming together to achieve a common aim. You have referred to these events as “hard-core communication”. Can you talk to us about this with respect to modern society and the breakdown of traditional communication and relationships?
For example, when the organised participants couldn’t move the structure during the Pull and Raise event, observers joined voluntarily and helped to pull at the ropes. I think this is related to reflective action, rather than being about people sharing the same goal. No doubt there is something physical, almost reflexive, about the observers joining unintentionally.
And what about the significance of place in your work? You have executed Pull and Raise projects around Japan and internationally, including major projects in America, Australia and Malaysia.
I created works with Native Americans in the U.S.A and people without nationality in Malaysia. An important part of the Pull and Raise project is to shed light on the nuances of different realities in the world which lie beyond the shared action.
When races and languages differ there are some changes to the way my works are made and the reaction to them. I also am interested particularly in how common the phenomenon of observers unintentionally joining in the performance in the different places.
I understand you will move to Seattle this year for a two-year scholarship granted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan. Please tell us about the scholarship and what you hope to achieve?
I’ve been to number of countries for exhibitions and other projects but this will be the first time that I will have an extended stay (2 years) in a foreign country. I’m very excited about it. And am thinking about how to show my past works and how to create new works.
What did you show at Art Basel Hong Kong?
I constructed an installation with the works themed on “post catastrophe Japan” and “border.” It’s not that I wanted to present these keywords, but more question what can be done to the reality these words reflect.
And do you have any other exhibitions planned for 2015?
I will participate in an exhibition called Time of Others at the National Museum of Art, Osaka from 25th July to 23rd September. This exhibition is directed by four Asian curators and will tour to the Singapore Art Museum and the Queensland Art Gallery. My work is not included in all of the touring exhibitions, but the exhibition is formed by the artists from numerous Asian courtiers and it’s a must see!—[O]
Back to Conversations
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There is something irrepressibly compelling about the lewd animated videos of Wong Ping. Is it their flat surfaces rendered in popping colours? Or their dark narratives that resonate with the deepest recesses of the human psyche? They have been included in an impressive repertoire of group exhibitions in recent years, including One Hand Clapping at...
Ocula Conversation 田原 Tian Yuan 田原谈空白空间十年
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Ocula Conversation Thomas J Price: Reframing Classical Sculpture
When the London-born artist Thomas J Price graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts in 2004, the school's college art prize was by no means his most notable accomplishment as an emerging artist. In 2001, Price presented his much-talked-about work Licked, a daring performance, later profiled on the BBC 4 television...
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Odd Deaths
Weird News Stories
Rogue Cop Christopher Dorner Manifesto
It’s like a movie – cop gone rogue. In this case, the disgruntled cop’s name is Christopher Dorner and so far he has already been linked to the deaths of 3 people. The reasons for what he is doing can be found in a manifesto he left behind on Facebook.
Chris Dorner on left, former police Chief William Bratton on right.
The manifesto starts out like so:
From: Christopher Jordan Dorner /7648
To: America
Subj: Last resort
Regarding CF# 07-004281
I know most of you who personally know me are in disbelief to hear from media reports that I am suspected of committing such horrendous murders and have taken drastic and shocking actions in the last couple of days. You are saying to yourself that this is completely out of character of the man you knew who always wore a smile wherever he was seen. I know I will be villified by the LAPD and the media.
Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name. The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse. The consent decree should never have been lifted. The only thing that has evolved from the consent decree is those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff, and executive positions.
The question is, what would you do to clear your name?
The almost-entire Christopher Dorner Manifesto can be seen here. A shortened version can be downloaded here (pdf).
The short version of the manifesto is that Dorner was tired of the rampant racism, bullying tactics, and willful ignorance of the law that he saw during his years at the Los Angeles Police Department. Dorner writes that back in 2007, he witnessed Officer Teresa Evans using excessive force on a suspect, kicking him in the chest and face. He reported it, breaking the “blue line” as they call it. Not only did his superiors do nothing, but almost a year later he was relieved of duty by a board panel on which a friend of Officer Evans sat.
One event Dorner recalls is how he choked a fellow officer for using the n-word, writing “What I should have done, was put a Winchester Ranger SXT 9mm 147 grain bullet in his skull.” Some other tidbits of information: Dorner would strike those who hurled racist epithets at him but not before; apparently Officer Evans was known as Chupacabra, something that amused her.
I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple babies momma’s. I am an American by choice, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a military service member, I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered, and libeled me. I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North. I didn’t need the US Navy to instill Honor, Courage, and Commitment in me but I thank them for re-enforcing it. It’s in my DNA.
Self Preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago on 1/2/09. I was told by my mother that sometimes bad things happen to good people. I refuse to accept that. From 2/05 to 1/09 I saw some of the most vile things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the streets of LA. It was in the confounds of LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.
An interesting bit of history involving King/Gates/Fuhrman/Solano:
This department has not changed from the Daryl Gates and Mark Fuhrman days. Those officers are still employed and have all promoted to Command staff and supervisory positions. I will correct this error. Are you aware that an officer (a rookie/probationer at the time) seen on the Rodney King videotape striking Mr. King multiple times with a baton on 3/3/91 is still employed by the LAPD and is now a Captain on the police department? Captain Rolando Solano is now the commanding officer of a LAPD police station (West LA division). As a commanding officer, he is now responsible for over 200 officers. Do you trust him to enforce department policy and investigate use of force investigations on arrestees by his officers?
Then Dorner declares war on his fellow officers (and their families), calling them “high value targets”:
I am here to change and make policy. The culture of LAPD versus the community and honest/good officers needs to and will change. I am here to correct and calibrate your morale compasses to true north.
He then pleads with citizens not to interfere and not to assist downed officers, saying that they would not do the same if the situation was reversed, and “Let the balance of loss of life take place. Sometimes a reset needs to occur.”
There are lots of disturbing things here. His use of the Thomas Jefferson quote about “refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants” and how he thinks it applies to the LAPD (but he supports the US Government – no doubt his experience in the US Navy was more positive than in the force). His description of his training and how he will use it to get to his targets (chilling). Then he talks about gun control in a bizarre rant, talks about President Obama, and a story about his high school. He also wants his “brain preserved for science/research to study the effects of severe depression on an individual’s brain.” The rest reads off like a suicide note, as he says goodbye to his friends. Oh, and the occasional WTF sidenote, like:
It’s kind of sad I won’t be around to view and enjoy The Hangover III. What an awesome trilogy. Todd Phillips, don’t make anymore Hangovers after the third, takes away the originality of its foundation. World War Z looks good and The Walking Dead season 3 (second half) looked intriguing. Damn, gonna miss shark week.
After that, he gives little messages to politicians like VP Biden (urging him to ban assault weapons), Hillary Clinton (asking her to run for President), Governor Christie, NRA Prez LaPierre (calling him a “vile and inhumane piece of shit. May all of your immediate and distant family die horrific deaths in front of you.”), then some media faces like Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper. He also demands that Fareed Zakaria be deported and Piers Morgan be given a resident alien and Visa card.
Murders Tied to Christopher Dorner
Last Sunday, Monica Quan and her fiancé, Keith Lawrence, were found shot in their car near their condo in Irvine, CA. Irvine police read Dorner’s Facebook rant, which mentions Randy Quan, former LAPD officer and Dorner’s former attorney, who Dorner felt betrayed him. Monica was Randy’s daughter. Later, an officer was killed by a motorist with a rifle (believed to be Dorner) and another was wounded seriously.
Manhunt for Chris Dorner
Dorner is now the subject of a heavy southern California manhunt. People are urged to call 911 if he is spotted. Police Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference:
“Of course he knows what he’s doing; we trained him. He was also a member of the Armed Forces. It is extremely worrisome and scary.”
Innocent Women Shot By Police
The LAPD is getting jittery. In Torrance, two women in a truck (said to match the one Dorner is supposedly driving) were shot by police in an act of mistaken identity (apparently without any warning). The women, who were delivering newspapers, were taken to a hospital. In another incident, officers fired on another truck which turned out not to be the vehicle they were looking for. Fortunately, in that instance, the driver was not hit.
Oh, good one, LAPD.
Well stated by Boy With Grenade:
If you live in Southern California and own any kind of vehicle that resembles Christopher Dorner’s truck, I suggest you stay indoors. Otherwise, cops will just unload a hail of bullets on you like they did today in Torrance.
On the radio this morning, people in the areas of the manhunt were urged not to answer the door to any strangers, unless they were wearing police uniforms. However, it was stated that Dorner is believe to be in possession of his police uniform. And, of course, you have incidents like the ones above, so we suggest not answering the door to anyone. In fact, you should probably just leave town.
The resort of Big Bear was put on lockdown around the same time Dorner’s torched truck was discovered along a forest road nearby. CNN’s Anderson Cooper reportedly received a package from Dorner, which included a special coin handed out by the police chief (which was shot up) and the note “Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton.”
Dorner’s torched truck found.
At this point, all we can say is that we have been unimpressed with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Sources: ABC7, LA Times, LA Times Blog, MyWay News, Boy With Grenade
Update: February 12, 2013
The word is that the police are using drones to try to find Dorner. (source)
A black police sergeant stated that African American men should expect some racial profiling.
“If you’re an African American man, you could be stopped and questioned. There are many people that may look like Chris Dorner, my self-included. If you are stopped and questioned its important to cooperate with officers.”
The San Diego Black Police Officer Association says
“If you are stopped or confronted by officers, cooperate and follow instructions. Do not escalate the situation by becoming argumentative, belligerent or non-compliant. The consequences of failure to comply are high for everyone involved, citizens, and law enforcement officers included.”
Image from PrisonPlanet.com
After a huge firefight, police surrounded Dorner inside a cabin near the intersection of Highway 38 and Jenks Lake Rd E, outside of Big Bear. Police reportedly fired tear gas canisters (“burners”) which caused the cabin to go up in flames, apparently killing Dorner.
A suspect they believe is Dorner entered the cabin and did not come out as it burned to the ground. “We believe that he was still inside the cabin [as it burned down], yes,” Bachman said.
The earlier shootout ended with two deputies shot; one of them died later, increasing the number of Dorner’s victims to 4. Audio recordings of the event suggest that police intended to burn the cabin down, with one officer saying “f**king burn this motherf**ker” and another saying “go ahead with the plan with the burners.”
Sources: ABC News, InfoWars
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Famous Plays About Women
By Kristina Seleshanko ; Updated October 03, 2017
Throughout history, plays have been written mostly by and about men. Even so, there are hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of plays focusing on female characters. Many of them are award winning, were made into films and are coveted by today's best actresses. They also may be broken down into broad categories regarding the basic type of women they portray.
Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" is a classic example of a play featuring a strong woman. Cleopatra is many things, including powerful and determined. A more modern example is Robert Harling's 1987 "Steel Magnolias," in which a millionairess, a beautician and an average mother learn they can be tough as steel. Another famous example is Eliza from George Bernard Shaw's 1912 "Pygmalion." She's a strong-willed woman who diligently works her way up the social ladder and woos the man who thought he ruled over her.
Fragile Women
Tennessee Williams' 1944 "The Glass Menagerie" is an excellent example of a play featuring fragile women. In it, Amanda embraces fantasy in place of harsh reality while her daughter, Laura, develops illness and isolation because she's not strong enough to face the world. Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" features Blanche DuBois, who drinks too much and throws herself in the arms of too many men to avoid reality. A less obvious example is the three sisters in Beth Henley's 1981 "Crimes of the Heart." Here, the women feel alone and insecure, the youngest among them slipping into a fantasy world in order to hang onto a wisp of sanity.
Devious Women
Perhaps the most famous play about a devious woman is Shakespeare's "Macbeth," in which Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband into committing murder. Arthur Miller's 1953 play, "The Crucible," features many women who deviously accuse others of witchcraft -- a sure way to ostracize or kill people they don't like. In "Great Expectations," made into a play in 1939, Miss Havisham manipulates virtually everyone and focuses on training young Estella to be just as devious as she is.
Virtuous Women
George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" is an excellent example of a virtuous woman in a famous play. The main character is Joan of Ark, who's laser-focused on doing what God commands. In the play "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," Francie is innocent and virtuous, thriving in a less-than-ideal environment. A less obvious virtuous woman is Vinnie Day, the mother in "Life With Father," which became a stage play in 1939. Vinnie holds the family together and guides her husband toward good.
Open Source Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra
The Project Gutenberg: Pygmalion
Penguin: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
Dramatists Play Service: Steel Magnolias
Shakespeare Online: Macbeth
TeacherVision: The Crucible
Project Gutenberg: Great Expectations
Project Gutenberg Australia: Saint Joan
Kristina Seleshanko began adult life as a professional singer and actress, working on both the West and East coasts. She regularly sang jazz in nightclubs, performed in musical theatre, and sang opera and pop. Later, Seleshanko became the author of 18 books, and has written for such publications as "Woman's Day," "Today's Christian Woman," and "True West." Seleshanko has also been a writing coach, a research librarian for "Gourmet" magazine, and a voice teacher.
Famous Stage Plays of Love or Romance
Types of Plays in Greek Theatre
How to Compare the Salem Witch Trials with the Crucible
Differences Between Pygmalion & My Fair Lady
About Wicca Celebrities
The Purpose of Comedy & Tragedy in Greek Drama
Examples of Character Archetypes in Movies
What Are the Differences in Modern and Contemporary Plays?
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Steven J. Green
School of International
& Public Affairs
Department of Public Policy & Administration
IPMCS
MPA Adjunct Faculty
Carol Breece
George M. Burgess
Lourdes Espino Wydler
Fernando Figueredo
Michael G. Gregory
Elsa I. Jaramillo-Velez
Raymond Martinez
Catherine Raymond
Alfredo Riverol
Ralph Rosado
MPA Advisory Board
Modesto A. Maidique PCA 257
11200 SW 8th Street
E-mail: pubadmin@fiu.edu
Ralph Rosado is President of Rosado and Associates, an urban planning and economic development strategy firm based in Miami; a Senior Fellow at the FIU Metropolitan Center, and an instructor in graduate and professional programs at the University of Miami and Florida International University. Ralph holds a PhD in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on Neighborhood Revitalization, Economic Development, and Public-Private Partnerships; a joint Master’s degree in Public Policy and Urban Planning from Princeton University; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Florida International University’s Honors College.
Past professional experience includes serving as a senior government official for three cities, Executive Director of the South Florida Community Development Coalition, and, prior to that, serving as an Urban Design and Neighborhood Revitalization consultant to over a dozen municipalities in Miami-Dade. While in graduate school, at the invitation of President George W. Bush, Ralph served as a White House Graduate Intern with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Honors include three statewide awards from the American Planning Association’s Florida chapter for his professional and civic endeavors, being named Miami Leader (one of Miami’s Top Nonprofit Executives), by the Miami Foundation, 2012, a Top Latino Leader of Miami, by Latino Leaders Magazine, 2013. The Affordable Housing program he co-designed and co-teaches recently won an award for Best Program in the area of Housing & Affordability in Miami-Dade.
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Opinionator | Terminal Miami
Terminal Miami
By Choire Sicha
March 1, 2012 12:00 pm March 1, 2012 12:00 pm
Townies is a series about life in New York, and occasionally other cities.
It’s spring break. This month, Townies goes out of town, to Miami.
I had been to Miami exactly one time before I moved here, unwillingly, if also gratefully, as a recession refugee. Departing on March 1, 2010, in what my East Village landlord’s lawyer later referred to as “the dead of night” (it was actually midmorning), I left behind some furniture, a low six figures of debt and most everyone I’d ever met. I carted the books I didn’t think were worth taking across the street to the bookstore, and the booksellers in turn quietly carted the books they thought not worth taking to the trash cans on the northeast corner of St. Mark’s and First Avenue, and so I drove off for the last time amid a mess of flying pages.
Immediately Miami seemed to be about things crashing into things. The woman who, head down, drove round the corner of the parking garage and slammed into the front of my car without so much as braking. The pelican that splat-bounced off the windshield. (There is, it turns out, no amenable city or county hot line to call about a struck pelican.) The star cracks left in the glass by some millionaire’s dazed gardener on a green street in Miami Beach, leaf-blowing pebbles traffic-ward. Beyond the front seat, there was also the news spectacle of the police officer who, trying to impress a woman, drove an all-terrain vehicle over people waiting at the shore for sunrise. On the sides of the roads, there were always fresh wrecks; fenders and hoods and bits everywhere, girls’ faces in their hands. Everyone coming to a near-stop to watch.
I drove to Miami because, conveniently, my car had to get here somehow, but in truth I’d barely flown since one terrible trip between D.C. and California in the early 1990s. Miami made me start to think I’d be better off in the air. Mine was a proud New York car; it had previously seen only snow and the vicious potholes of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, yet once on the road here we were forced to dodge an actual oven that fell off an old pickup truck on I-95, a road I still think of as the way to New Haven. I live a few blocks from the end of that interstate, and sometimes considered, when driving over to Walgreens for a pack of Winstons, just continuing on to the safer territory of the north. (Besides, I still haven’t completely unpacked the trunk.)
Patrick Leger
If this seems like an awful lot of things about cars, it’s because Miami is about transport. If it’s not the car, it’s the boat. And if it’s not the boat, it’s planes. Except for the Seminole and the Miccosukee, most everyone here is from somewhere else (although not the Cubans, as Cuba’s more like our Staten Island). Most everyone else seems like a stray. The billboards advertise the new nonstops to Madrid; almost half the passengers at the airport are bound outside the United States; English is the first language of one-quarter of the county’s population. Also, the other day I met my first Filipino Jew — though to be fair, he came by way of New York.
But beyond the disorder and collisions of far-off strangers meeting all-too-suddenly, there are points of order: the long banks of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and the green waters of the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, America’s first undersea park. The serene, open-air Bal Harbour mall, quietly crammed with Loro Piana and Bottega Veneta, has some of the highest-earning retail space per square foot in the United States. An hour southwest, across miles of the forgotten and excluded (picture the map of “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,” particularly the abandoned warehouse district and the freeway-locked Overtown, which were modeled on this part of the city), you find the relaxing five-acre-minimum plots of Redland. There it’s all free-roaming dogs and peacocks and horses amid mangoes and avocados. As you go south it becomes even more California, what with the prisons, migrant workers and South Florida’s greatest tortilla shop.
Besides the divide between rich and not rich, there are no extremes here: not a hill, not a valley.
But besides the divide between rich and not rich, there are no extremes here: not a hill, not a valley. It’s flat straight across from the beach to the long straight road on the edge of town, where everything stops and devolves into grassland and turtles and cedars and great blue herons. (And wherever you go, there’s WVUM, which hosts Vamos a la Playa, the exceptionally smooth, electro-suave, beach-sexy sounds of Laura of Miami, one of the truly great D.J.’s of our time.)
There was never anything to run off to: no parties, no birthday drinks, no after-work get-togethers. So in the evenings, I took to sitting downstairs by my apartment building’s pool, smoking the incredibly inexpensive local cigarettes, staring out at Miami’s bay. All through the twilight, you could see airplanes coming in, all lined up, from out at sea. From little dot to roaring overhead, they’d come in, little shiny capsules on a long string.
Miami’s airport is fairly distinct from most of America’s other big city airports in that it is in the thick of the city. Technically, that’s not true at all: the city of Miami’s western border actually stops exactly at the airport, but then the actual city is only 36 square miles. (The little island of Manhattan is 23 square miles.) But the airport is in the center of the occupied area. I can clearly see the control tower from my place, and I’m as far as you can get from it in Miami proper.
Miami International Airport has four runways. Almost 80 percent of the time, according to airport executives, Miami’s winds are from the east-southeast. The three southern-most runways are mostly used to take off to the east, toward the ocean and the wind. The airport now has around 1,100 “operations” each day; 550 each of takeoffs and arrivals. That is, very roughly, an operation every four minutes per runway. (Though like most facts, that’s a meaningless average; 93 percent of the traffic takes place between sunrise and sunset.)
But this is how I started getting over my fear of flying. Here I was, watching plane after plane not crash, ever. It was the constant, orderly presence of airplanes in Miami that cured me. Therapy would start each morning, the overnights from Europe and South America coming in hot and empty. The first American Airlines flight to J.F.K., Flight 518, leaves each day at 6:40 a.m. It is a Boeing 767-300 and it always has a seat; when I hear it take off, I like to picture the men going up to New York for the day with just a manila folder and a BlackBerry. What others might have found a disturbance (the airport tends to receive noise complaints from my neighborhood), I found comforting. Just another plane, going somewhere exciting, happily embedded in the thick, Jello-y air.
Not that I’m not still an actively imaginative flier, and my imagination tends toward the most bizarre. As an airport, like a city, is a fight against nature, the worst time of the year here for the nervous is probably the winter, when the birds migrate south, and the gorgeous turkey buzzards start flying the thermals. The airport has folks who, from sunrise to sunset, spend their entire day scaring birds away from the airspace with pyrotechnics. Birds, like all of us, get acclimated to noise and need to be surprised. Miami has a landfill about seven miles west of the airport, and six months out of the year, someone stays out there in a trailer, just to shoot things at birds — whistles, bangers, propane cannons.
“We don’t use lasers,” Norman Hegedus told me. He is the boss at the Opa-locka Executive Airport, seven miles north of the Miami airport. He was also a planner in the Aircraft Noise and Environmental Planning Office of the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, and the manager of noise abatement and wildlife for area airports. “We found that the more variety you have in your arsenal the better. Birds become accustomed to sounds, to different techniques. We found out that lasers aren’t very good. Some airports may use birds of prey sounds — I don’t find those to be very effective at all. I found that driving out there and just targeting the birds, shooting the pyrotechnics, and don’t let them sit and stay, is the best method of mitigating.” Also, he said, they keep the grass around the airport under 11 inches tall, so that the birds feel exposed and don’t stay long.
When a bird strike occurs — and all told, the airport had 52 in the last year, with only 14 of those in the actual airspace over the airport — the pilots check their altitude and position. Later the airport’s people can go out and see if there is something attracting birds to the area — a Dumpster, a crazy lady with a loaf of bread. They can fine people caught feeding birds around the airport, starting at $250, ending at 30 days in prison.
Florida is also the United States leader in reptile strikes, which is to say, it wins with not very many. (There were only 120 reptile strikes reported from 1990 to 2010 in the country, and New York came in second place: last summer, a J.F.K. runway was closed for a procession of a hundred turtles.) Florida did though have 14 of the country’s 15 reported alligator strikes. “I don’t remember the last time,” Mr. Hegedus said. “I do remember maybe 12 years ago, but it was a small alligator, if I recall correctly, that was at Tamiami Airport.”
“For a period of time we had a jackrabbit concern,” said Marc Henderson, of the public affairs office of the Miami-Dade Aviation Department. “Apparently they used to be utilized to train the dogs at the racetrack. Obviously some of them got out and duplicated, and by the time we started building the fourth runway, the vehicles on the service road inside the airport, they’d kill a rabbit, then they’d have a turkey buzzard.”
He told me the airport eventually caught them and shipped them to a farm in Texas, which felt a little like your parents telling you about what supposedly happened when your dog died.
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One of the airport’s biggest problems, though, is the stray cats. “We don’t have an infestation,” Mr. Henderson said. But “the cats, they don’t secure the cages, the belly of the plane gets opened, poof, there goes the cat. The cats end up in our terminal area, down below, where the baggage room is.” Then they trap them and neuter them, and some of the airport employees try to find people to volunteer to adopt them.
In fact Mr. Hegedus lives with two cats himself, rescued from the airport.
That made me like Mr. Hegedus quite a lot. After our first year here, our magnificent aged cat died, and so my husband and I began to feed, water and trap (for vet visits and neutering) two colonies of feral strays living on opposite rocky banks of the bridge to Key Biscayne. But there were always new abandoned pets and new kittens. Cat babies having cat babies! That got depressing fast. Now I, too, live with two rescued cats. They’re almost as good as human friends. They seem, sometimes, vain and entitled and imperious, and at other times, quite openly grateful and appreciative for being offered a home here, in a town where it’s so easy to go missing, to get run over, to be left out.
And if they ever want to leave Miami for New York, American Airlines allows up to seven animals in the cabin of each plane, two in first class and five in coach, not even including service animals, although only one carry-on animal per person, please contact reservations in advance, and be warned that the airline’s regulations, like everyone’s, are always subject to change.
Townies welcomes submissions at townies@nytimes.com.
Choire Sicha is a co-editor of the Web site The Awl.
Stone Links
A Fight to the Last Pike
Townies, a series about life in New York — and occasionally other cities — written by the novelists, journalists and essayists who live there, appears on Thursdays. This week features an essay by Sandy SooHoo, a freelance photographer and writer who is working on a collection of essays.
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Larocque: On French Language Services, Ontario can learn from Ireland’s mistake
François Larocque
Canadian Francophones rally in front of the Human Rights building during the Franco-Ontario Day of Action in Ottawa on Saturday. LARS HAGBERG / AFP/Getty Images
According to an old Irish proverb, “hindsight is the best insight to foresight.”
It is a folksy reminder that one should learn from past mistakes. There is indeed wisdom in learning from our own failures, and greater wisdom still in taking the lesson from other people’s blunders.
By eliminating essential Francophone services, including a nascent French-language university and the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner, the Ontario government has failed its minority official language population by failing to learn from its past mistakes. In one stroke of a pen, Doug Ford’s government announced the dismantling of institutions that have taken generations to build. It is a monumental failure of policy and math, because unless it is reversed, the move will do nothing to remedy the province’s deficit.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Chris Young / Canadian Press
It has, however, ignited Ontario’s Francophone population – many of whom protested across the province on Saturday – and attracted stern national and international condemnation from every level of government, from community organizations and from thousands of concerned citizens from coast to coast who stand in solidarity with Ontario’s 620,000 Francophones.
Éditorial: Les Franco-Ontariens méritent mieux
This failure could have been avoided had the Ford government bothered to learn about Franco-Ontarian struggles and aspirations and had it recalled the Harris government’s attempt to close the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa. In that instance, tens of thousands of Francophones and Francophiles mobilized, legal challenges were brought, and the government’s decision was ultimately quashed by the Ontario Court of Appeal in what now stands as a landmark precedent in Canadian language rights jurisprudence.
The law is clear: Governments cannot, in the name of financial convenience, eschew fundamental language rights that are based in Canadian constitutional law. The Ontario government would do well to learn from its Conservative predecessor’s mistakes.
The law is clear: Governments cannot, in the name of financial convenience, eschew fundamental language rights that are based in Canadian constitutional law.
It is perhaps too much to ask of an assiduously provincial government to learn from the experience of foreign nations, but the Ford government would also be wise to learn from Ireland’s recent language rights fiasco, a controversy that bears an uncanny resemblance to the current maelstrom in Ontario.
In 2011, the Irish government announced its decision to merge the Irish Language Commissioner’s office with the Ombudsman as part of a national cost savings plan. This is precisely what the Ford government is proposing to do with the Ontario French Language Commissioner’s office. Just like in Ontario, the Irish government did not consult the Language Commissioner, the Ombudsman or the Irish people before announcing the move. Just like in Ontario, the decision was severely criticized in Ireland, and seen as deeply disrespectful of the 70,000 people who speak Irish daily.
The community mobilized and thousands marched in Dublin. Like Franco-Ontarians, Irish speakers could not accept their government’s decision to weaken the legal mechanisms that protect their language rights, and undo decades of linguistic revitalization in the process. In 2014, after finally consulting the public, Ireland reversed course, recognizing that the proposed merger was a mistake.
Editorial: Ontario francophones deserve better
Thousands demonstrate in Ottawa for French-language rights
There is a lesson here for Doug Ford. Both Ontario and Irish Language Commissioners play an essential role in promoting minority language rights, something the Ombudsman is not mandated or equipped to do. In both cases, the financial justifications for the cuts are unconvincing and misguided. The move impoverishes the province and the country’s linguistic environment, violates fundamental rights and provides virtually no cost savings. Just like in Ireland, Ontario’s decision should be reversed.
Responding to the initial outcry, Caroline Mulroney, the Attorney General and Minister responsible for Francophone affairs, presented her government’s conciliatory offer to Franco-Ontarians: The Francophone Affairs Office would become a full-fledged ministry, the French Language Services Commissioner and his staff would still be housed under the Ontario Ombudsman, and the Université de l’Ontario français would be mothballed until finances improve. While the Assemblée de la francophonie de l’Ontario appreciated the government’s new apparent openness, it rejected the proposal, insisting instead that both the university and the Commissioner be restored.
Enshrined in section 16 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the principle that Parliament and legislatures should strive to advance the equality of English and French in Canadian society. It is a powerful notion that recognizes the non-linear nature of progress. Failures can happen but we must keep trying to improve. There is respect and dignity in the effort to do better. To quote Samuel Beckett (one of Ireland’s most celebrated authors who, coincidently, also wrote much of his oeuvre in French), Ontario has failed with respect to Francophone Services. It must try again. “Fail again. Fail better.”
François Larocque is a law professor and lawyer. He holds the Canadian Francophonie Research Chair in Language Rights at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Common Law Section.
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Category Archives: Philosophy
Kimi no Na Wa and Musubi
Kimi no Na Wa is an extremely popular and powerful anime movie directed by Makoto Shinkai. We say “powerful” in that it is thought-provoking of matters outside the ordinary limits of time and space.
Musubi. Kumihimo is a Japanese braiding method for making decorative and functional cords, and it is depicted in several scenes in the movie. Musubi is a knot, a tying together, of connecting people and things. The photo shows two kumihimo cords in a musubi knot.
Motohisa Yamakage has taught Koshinto through books such as The Essence of Shinto. Yamakage Sensei writes, “Musubi means to unite or bind together. … the concept of musubi signifies the proliferation of life and spirit. … the very process of creating and giving birth to life and spirit is described as musubi and we [Koshinto] place it in very high regard.”
Time and Space. We have related the Tanabata Festival tale as the weaving of time and space. This is an observance since early Jomon times that takes place in the seventh night of the seventh lunar month, when the moon is only half-full and the stars in the Milky Way can clearly be seen. The word tanabata means a kind of weaving loom. So picture a fabric being woven with threads of warp and woof. The threads of the warp represent the flow of time, and the shuttling of the woof creates space.
Kimi no Na wa (君の名は) is an international hit movie, entitled Your Name in English. The warping and entangling of time and space is the theme of this metaphysical movie. Perhaps that’s why millions of people find the movie so intriguing.
In today’s essay, we consider how the movie conveys the message of Musubi through the imagery of braiding.
Early on in the movie, we see that Mitsuha lives with her sister and grandmother in a very small town in the rural land of Hida. Grandmother is priestess of an old shrine which has as its goshintai sacred object a megalith in the center of a meteor crater. Mitsuha serves as miko-san shrine maiden and performs a ritual at the shrine. Grandmother is also teaching Mitsuha to braid cords in the style of kumihimo. What, we wonder, is the significance of these elements?
Musubi in Kimi no Na wa
Grandmother’s explanation of Musubi uses the imagery of kumihimo. In one scene, Mitsuha and her sister are going with their grandmother on a pilgrimage to the sacred place of the megalith. On the way, Grandmother is explaining Musubi. We have restored the original word, kami, to the subtitles.
Musubi is the old way of calling the local guardian kami.
Tying thread is Musubi. Connecting people is Musubi.
These are all the kami’s power.
So the braided cords that we make are the kami’s art and represent the flow of time itself.
They converge and take shape. They twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again.
Musubi-knotting. That’s time.
From the above, we can see that the concept of musubi is that of gathering and connecting. Grandmother has explained how people are connected in time and space, and she stresses the time element. This is the basic theme of the movie.
This entry was posted in Cosmology, Hida, Hotsuma, Kami, Philosophy, Worldview, Woshite and tagged Festivals, Kimi no Na wa on 2017/06/08 by Okunomichi.
Lao Tsu Lines
The following one-liners were inspired by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Tao Te Ching, 1972c. The book is beautifully calligraphed and illustrated with English’s black-and-white nature photographs. The numbers in parentheses are the chapter numbers from the Tao Te Ching.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. (1)
The Tao is an empty vessel; it is used, but never filled. (4)
The highest good is like water. (8)
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature. (16)
The way of nature is unchanging. (16)
Yield and overcome; bend and be straight; empty and be full. (22)
The Tao is forever undefined. (32)
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present. (33)
It does not show greatness, and is therefore truly great. (34)
Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone. (37)
Being is born of non-being. (40)
This entry was posted in Consciousness, Cosmology, Nature, Philosophy, Tao and tagged Lao Tsu on 2016/07/07 by Okunomichi.
David Bohm: Wholeness and the Nature of Reality
The question of whether the world we live in is a simulation of some other has recently been raised in the media. For those of our readers who, too, are pondering the nature of reality — and we think that includes most of you — we recommend the study of David Bohm’s work.
Dialogues with Scientists and Sages
We first learned about David Bohm in the book by Renee Weber, Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity, Routledge, 1986. Philosopher Weber interviewed a number of exemplary people of our time: Lama Govinda, Rupert Sheldrake, David Bohm, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Father Bede Griffiths, Ilya Prigogine, Stephen Hawking, and Krishnamurti. This book can be truly transformative and although out of print, should be on our bookshelves to be read and reread. Bohm himself was greatly affected by the Eastern views of Krishnamurti.
David Bohm, 1917-1992, was a prominent quantum theoretical physicist who had studied and worked with Einstein and Oppenheimer. He made a number of important contributions to quantum mechanics, relativity, plasma theory, and ontology theory. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics and philosophy that is concerned with the nature of reality. His work challenged conventional physical thought and offered an innovative approach, so innovative as to be little understood nor accepted by the mainstream. His work, unfortunately unappreciated until now, will surely become more widely known in this century.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
David Bohm was an extraordinary physicist whose great work, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, was published by Routledge in 1980. In the Introduction of this book, he wrote:
“I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment.”
“How are we to think coherently of a simple, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it?
“Clearly, this brings us to consider our overall world view, which includes our general notions concerning the nature of reality along with those concerning the total order of the universe, i.e., cosmology.”
“My suggestion is that a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individua and in society as a whole.”
Topics in his book include the following:
Ch. 1 Wholeness as a world view compared with fragmentation world view.
Ch. 2 Language can be noun-based or verb-based, divisive or unitive.
Ch. 3 Reality as an underlying universal movement/process; world view in which consciousness and reality are not fragmented from each other.
Ch. 4, 5, 6 Technical subjects
Ch. 7 Consciousness and the enfolding-unfolding universe
There is an important Appendix at the end of Chapter 1 on the Western and Eastern forms of insight into wholeness. Here, he notes that in the East, the immeasurable was seen as the primary reality, for measure is a thought of man. “When measure is identified with the very essence of reality, this is illusion.” It is the immeasurable that Bohm calls the implicate order.
What the West can do, Bohm states, is to
“develop new insight into fragmentation and wholeness [that] requires a creative work even more difficult than that needed to make fundamental new discoveries in science, or great and original works of art.”
“assimilate [the great wisdom from the whole of the past, both in the East and in the West] and to go on to new and original perception relevant to our present condition of life.”
In the rest of the book, Bohm lays out the results of his own creative work. We, now, can take up the reins and move ahead into greater wholeness and harmony in our world view and in our lives. This is one of the great books of the twentieth century.
David Bohm and F. David Peat: Science, Order, and Creativity
This book was published in 1987. It is a more descriptive book and may be easier to understand. It takes up topics such as creativity in science, what is order?, the implicate order, consciousness, and creativity in the whole of life. Certainly well worth reading.
D. Bohm and B.J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory
The Undivided Universe by Bohm and his long-time collaborator was published in 1993, a year after Bohm’s passing. This epitome of Bohm’s work elucidates the implicate order and its role in quantum theory, as well as in consciousness.
“As we develop this idea, we shall see that the notion of enfoldment is not merely a metaphor, but that it has to be taken fairly literally. To emphasise this point, we shall therefore say that the order in the hologram is implicate. The order in the object, as well as in the image, will then be unfolded and we shall call it explicate. The process, in this case wave movement, in which this order is conveyed from the object to the hologram will be called enfoldment or implication. The process in which the order in the hologram becomes manifest to the viewer in an image will be called unfoldment or explication.”
“What all this suggests is that our most primary experience in consciousness actually is of an implicate order. And our perception of the explicate order is constituted mostly by a series of abstractions from this.”
“The implicate order is not only the ground of perception, but also of the actual process of thought.”
“All of this is clearly compatible with the notion that the basic order of the mind is implicate and that the explicate arises as a particular case of this implicate order in much the way that we have suggested.”
http://www.david-bohm.net/
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/K.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm
This entry was posted in Consciousness, Cosmology, Philosophy, Science, Worldview and tagged Bohm, universe on 2016/04/27 by Okunomichi.
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Paul Muldoon
A Conversation with Verse
The Irish poet and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon has won the Pulitzer Prize, written for other media from radio to song, and plays in a rock band. He visited us for a magical day at the On Being studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis, including a dinner salon and reading from his work.
Play Unedited Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University and is the poetry editor of the The New Yorker. He is the author of 12 major collections of poetry, including Horse Latitudes, Hay, and One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.
MR. PAUL MULDOON: “I’m interested in revelation, in what will be revealed through the poem, through me — not what I have to reveal, but what it has to reveal.”
MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Today, a conversation with verse, with the Irish poet and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize, written for other media from radio to song, and plays in a rock band, Rogue Oliphant. He visited us for a magical day at the On Being studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis, including a dinner salon and reading from his work — like this excerpt from his poem called “Pelt.”
MR. MULDOON:They piled
it on all day
till I gave way
to a contentment
I’d not felt in years,
not since that winter
I’d worn the world
against my skin,
worn it fur side in.
MS. TIPPETT: Paul Muldoon holds the Howard G.B. Clark chair in the Humanities at Princeton University. He’s been with the The New Yorker since 2007. And he is the author of 12 major collections of poetry, including Horse Latitudes, Hay and his latest collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.
MS. TIPPETT: So, you were born in County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, in a Catholic family, in the Moy. The Moy was the name of the village?
MR. MULDOON: The Moy is the name of the village. It’s the village nearby. It’s actually on the border of counties Armagh and Tyrone. So it’s about halfway across Northern Ireland.
MS. TIPPETT: Oh, I see, OK. Yeah.
MR. MULDOON: And we were actually in County Armagh, but the Moy itself is in County Tyrone substantially.
MS. TIPPETT: OK.
MR. MULDOON: And then there’s a little village across from it, a hamlet really, called Charlemont. So a small place.
MS. TIPPETT: And to be born in that part of the world also was to be born in a place that loved poetry, and kind of lived and breathed story. And I wonder if you think in terms of the spiritual background of your life, expansively defined, would you think about poetry and story as a piece of that, as well?
MR. MULDOON: Well, I would say so, yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have been conscious of that as a child.
MS. TIPPETT: Right, right.
MR. MULDOON: But of course, we were brought up in a culture where, for example, of an evening, a knock might come to the door, and a neighbor would be there, and he would be hoping to come in, and he was welcomed in, and he’d have a cup of tea, at least. And then he — predominately he, but a few women came around, too — would perhaps sing a song, or recite a ballad or a poem. So that was — certainly we were conscious of the larger literary tradition, I mean the tradition in its widest sense, including the oral tradition. So that certainly was part of the back of our mind, too, or perhaps even the front of our mind. But way up front, I think, was the religious aspect. If one had said “spirituality,” that’s what we would’ve been talking about. It was organized religion.
MS. TIPPETT: Right.
MR. MULDOON: And Catholicism in particular.
MS. TIPPETT: You noted in another interview that the Celts had a god of eloquence, which I loved, Ogmios. I’m very interested in this question of what poetry gives voice to in us, what it works in human beings. And I’ve discussed this with poets along the way, and I — and musicians. How would you start to talk about what poetry as a form of expression, and also its forms of language, distinctively draws out?
MR. MULDOON: Well, it is a form of expression, of course. It is an expression of something within as well something without, and perhaps, indeed, the point at which the two combine. It’s very difficult to find a decent metaphor for this. One of the defining characteristics of a metaphor, of course, is that it breaks down fairly soon. You know, only up to a point …
MS. TIPPETT: You mean any metaphor?
MR. MULDOON: That’s right, any metaphor. Only up to a point is my love like a red, red rose.
MR. MULDOON: Only up to a point. So to find a decent way of thinking about it, you know, the expression I — let’s think of what I would say to my students. I mean, the expression of — it’s not as if one is setting out to express oneself. And I say that because, ideally, one has no sense of what is going to come out.
MS. TIPPETT: As a poet, you mean?
MR. MULDOON: As a poet. It’s not as if one has a point of view, I think, ideally. Which is not to say, of course, that there are poems that don’t present points of view, not to say that one has an idea, which is of course not to say that poems don’t express ideas. But that’s not where we begin. We begin again from ignorance, from, perhaps, the germ of something, from a hunch, from a notion that if we take a couple of elements in the world and set them down, something might — something interesting might happen. And gradually, as the poem, in this case, comes into being, what it’s trying to do in the world gradually becomes clear. And it’s only, in fact, as one comes out the other end of it, I think, ideally, that one realizes what it is.
Now, of course, there are other theories of art. I mean, Bertolt Brecht, for example, would say, “Well, actually we have to begin with the idea we’re going to make a political point.” And I absolutely understand that. It’s not the kind of art-making I’m interested in. I’m interested in revelation, in what will be revealed through the poem, through me — not what I have to reveal, but what it has to reveal, if that makes any sense. So I have no revelations at all. I know nothing. I’m not to be trusted on anything. [laughs] But the poem may know something, and may be trusted, actually, on what it has to express in the world, in my practice. Others may think about it differently.
MS. TIPPETT: And as much as you are, it sounds like, perhaps surprised by — there’s a process of discovery for you of what the poem is?
MR. MULDOON: Totally.
MS. TIPPETT: Right?
MR. MULDOON: There’s got to be a process of discovery.
MS. TIPPETT: And then, are you sometimes surprised by that work the poem does in the world, which you also could not have intended? Or how it lands in other people?
MR. MULDOON: Well, yes. I mean, part of the job, of course, is to try to figure out what its impact will be.
MS. TIPPETT: As you’re writing?
MR. MULDOON: As one’s writing.
MS. TIPPETT: All right.
MR. MULDOON: Because if you think about it — again, it’s hard to find a decent analogy for this — but let’s just take it that there are two people involved in the writing of the poem. There’s the writer, who is appealing to her unconscious, to her profound sense of unknowing. And then there’s the reader, who, as the poem comes into being, as I say, as one word puts itself after another, is trying to figure out what the impact of those words in that order might be from a position of knowing. Right? And it’s the negotiation between these two, the unknowing and the knowing, that, crudely put, would represent the positions of the writer and the reader. So if the first reader of the poem is the writer herself, in a strange way the poem is, indeed, only finished, only completely — becomes completely what it might be when that other person comes to it.
MS. TIPPETT: You know, one thing you said — I mean, you, as I say, you’ve done many different kinds of writing in your life.
MR. MULDOON: I have tried.
MS. TIPPETT: Right? And you’ve written for radio, for example, and you’ve written for television, and you’ve written for music. One thing you’ve said about poetry that is distinct from other kinds of writing that intrigues me is that poetry doesn’t build to the big idea like many other kinds of writing, but it starts there, that the poem starts where many kinds of writing would be winding up.
MR. MULDOON: I did say something like that. Of course, one has — I have to think of all the things one has said, including all the daft things one has said, I’m sure. That — I think I recognize what you’re alluding to.
MS. TIPPETT: I think that may have been — there’s a lovely interview in The Paris Review. I think it may have been that interview. And I can just — yeah, I can just ask you, like, how would you talk about how writing a poem is distinct from all those other kinds of writing?
MR. MULDOON: Well, actually, I think it’s often most useful not to think of it as being all that distinct. I think one of the problems with the general perception of poetry is that we think it’s special. And if anything, I think we’d be better served if we thought it was much more like prose fiction. Much more like theater criticism or film criticism than occupying this kind of special realm, Poetryland, you know?
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.
MR. MULDOON: Poetryville, where all bets are off, anything can happen. And again, I used to say to my students, and still do, if they listen to me — which is unlikely, of course — that I expect the poem to be at least as interesting as the film review in the next column. I expect it to — or at least, in general, there’s no particular reason why it wouldn’t have a beginning, middle, and an end, generally in that order, though of course there are times when that’s not what it needs. And that it make sense, unless for some reason it doesn’t quite.
MR. MULDOON: You know? And that as much thought has gone into it as has gone into a film review or the leader in the local newspaper.
MR. MULDOON: The op-ed piece. And that it actually — and one comes out the other end of it thinking, “Huh, that was interesting, I’m glad I was in there. I actually learned something in there.” Not necessarily about whether or not the economy is healthy, but perhaps something about the — just a new way of looking at something that one hasn’t quite seen before. A way of looking at a wheelbarrow, a way of looking at a plum in an icebox, some modest little shift in the world, but a shift, a revelation. And, basically, if there isn’t some kind of revelation, it hasn’t been worth one’s while to be in there.
[music: “Plucky” by Atusi Assiv]
MR. MULDOON: At least they weren’t speaking French
when my father sat with his brothers and sisters, two of each, on a ramshackle bench
at the end of a lane marked by two white stones
and made mouth music as they waited, chilled to the bone
Fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol-di-oh
for the bus meant to bring their parents back from town.
It came and went. Nothing. One sister was weighed down
By the youngest child. A grocery bag from a town more distant still, in troth.
What started as a cough
would briefly push him forward to some minor renown
then shove him back, oddly summery, down
along the trench
to that far-flung realm where, at least, they weren’t speaking French.
MS. TIPPETT: That’s Paul Muldoon reading an excerpt from his poem “At Least They Weren’t Speaking French” at the On Being studios on Loring Park. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.
MS. TIPPETT: I think also what you’re alluding to, in a general way, also, is we’re not sure what the place of poetry is in a culture like this. I mean, it’s not the culture you grew up in, where it was lived and breathed and not, as you say, not the domain of Poetryworld, but of ordinary people in ordinary life. You tell a story somewhere about being with your son — your children, that children are natural poets, that somehow that this is with us. You told a story about your son driving along on the highway and saying, “Those lights are like tadpoles.” And we’ve all had that experience.
MR. MULDOON: I think I’ve given one interview too many, I really do. [laughs]
MS. TIPPETT: Well, I may stop …
MR. MULDOON: I vaguely remember that.
MS. TIPPETT: Well, this is one way — but all right, I’ll stop quoting you at yourself.
MR. MULDOON: No, no, no, not at all. I think it is …
MS. TIPPETT: But this idea that, somehow — how does it get lost? What’s your analysis of that?
MR. MULDOON: I’m afraid that, too often, it gets educated out of us.
MR. MULDOON: I mean, that is something we’ve heard once or twice, maybe more than once or twice. But I really believe this, that the natural capacity that an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old has for coming up with, unselfconsciously, coming up with novel ways of seeing the world, I mean, ways that actually inform us about how the world is. They’re fanciful in some sense, but they’re actually instructive, I think. And one of the reasons why the child — we’ve heard this from William Wordsworth — “The child is father to the man.” And I think, in some sense, she is. Because she is capable of that unprogrammed, unthinking way of seeing the world. No preconceptions, no misconceptions. And there comes a point, actually, where I think we begin to educate that out of them. At some point, we’ll say, “Oh, that’s lovely, that’s very nice.” But at some point, we probably said, “Well, you know, actually, you know, your tadpole analogy doesn’t really hold up. Get serious, get real, grow up.” And that capacity to be innocent and open, for want of better terms, ignorant again …
MS. TIPPETT: To see unexpected likenesses, metaphors.
MR. MULDOON: That’s right. And we continue to do that. But we tend — whether or not we write poetry, we continue to see these unexpected connections. And that, of course — it’s odd that it doesn’t have more of a place in the world, because that idea of the connection is quite central, of course, to who we are and how we operate. We love to make connections.
MR. MULDOON: And it’s what makes us feel good in the world. It’s what sends our endorphins buzzing around or whatever they do.
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MULDOON: So, somehow, in the poetry business, let’s say, other things begin to push in. One of them is that poetry of a certain kind is introduced into the head. What passes for poetry tends to end up as merely Dr. Seuss. Now, I love Dr. Seuss. I think he’s fabulous. I think he’s fabulous. But if you ask an eight-year-old to write a poem, she’ll come up with the tadpoles. You ask a 15-year-old to write a poem, and it’s sort of sub-sub-sub-Seuss.
MS. TIPPETT: Interesting.
MR. MULDOON: And something has happened. And I think a large part of this falls on the shoulders of educators in the broadest sense — the parents, the teachers. “This is poetry.” And of course it’s one form of poetry. But my own view is that children should be — insofar as we have any [laughs] control over them at all, and of course, as parents, we know we have less and less, as it should be — but in some sense, I think we should be introducing them to Robert Frost, and Lord Byron, and Tennyson, and Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop, and Emily dinkinson, and John Donne. We should be giving them not, quote-unquote, children’s poetry, but poetry.
MR. MULDOON: I think it’s much, much more effective to give them Mozart and Handel and whoever. I mean, is that grown-up music, children’s music? It’s music.
MR. MULDOON: Give them music. And I do think that we are what we eat. And if you are given a completely Seussian diet — as I say, I love Seuss, but if that’s all you’re eating, there are going to be problems. And that compounds the problem. There are other aspects. Again, poetry is, perhaps, often overly taught. When the teacher comes around to teaching poetry, I think in many schools, not all, she herself is actually quite nervous about poetry. She has to show the child the intricacies of the poem, the great unknown territory of the poem that, without the teacher, the child would get lost and wouldn’t last a day, would die of exposure in the poem…
MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Right, right, right, right.
MR. MULDOON: …without this fantastically prepared guide through the poem. And I think as teachers we all run the risk of wanting to show how smart we are, and it’s part of what happens, then, is that the child is convinced that a poem is never about what it seems to be about. It’s always about something else. It’s always encoded in some way.
MS. TIPPETT: Inexplicable.
MR. MULDOON: Inexplicable. It’s never about what it is, what it seems to be about.
MS. TIPPETT: And it’s beyond us.
MR. MULDOON: It’s beyond us. And the fact of the matter is it is not beyond us. It’s right there. And what has tended to happen, and one of the reasons why there may be a little difficulty with the reading of poetry — in most cultures, actually, not only this — is that we have neglected to accept that to listen to music, you have to learn to listen to music. Now, we learn to listen to music by having the radio on 24 hours a day, by being bombarded by it in the mall, everywhere. So we’re actually quite au fait with how music works.
MR. MULDOON: We’re absolutely au fait with how film works. When we go to see the new, whatever, blockbuster, we are very well equipped to watch it, and we know what it’s alluding to, if anything. We know its structure. We recognize a flashback. We are able to come out of it and say, “You know, along with Rotten Tomatoes, I give that 80.”
MR. MULDOON: “Along with Siskel and Ebert, it’s two thumbs up.”
MR. MULDOON: Or “two thumbs down.” With poetry, we have not had that exposure. It’s as simple as that.
MS. TIPPETT: And you’re the poetry editor of The New Yorker.
MR. MULDOON: So I’m told.
MS. TIPPETT: Which infiltrates poetry in along with other kinds of writing and thinking and reviewing. As you said, it’s next to the film review.
MR. MULDOON: It is, and that’s one of the great things about that magazine.
MS. TIPPETT: Yes. It’s very rare in America.
MR. MULDOON: It’s a fabulous magazine in many ways, including that way, and — we have a difficulty, though. We have a difficulty. And the difficulty is that we’re able to carry only 100 poems a year.
MS. TIPPETT: What does “able” mean? Because of room constraints?
MR. MULDOON: Yes. And, you know, there are two poems a week in the magazine usually. I’d say 100 a year. And we know all too well that there are more than 100 good poems being written in this country. Many more. Many, many more. So what I think would be fabulous would be if The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the L.A. Times, whatever, The Boston Globe, if these newspapers were able — if they could just have at least a poem, if not every day, every couple of days, once a week. It would — actually, they wouldn’t have to pay anything for it. They’d need to pay somebody to keep an eye on it, I suppose. But it would be — to get the sense that poetry is not special.
MR. MULDOON: That it’s there as a — just another feature and factor and fact of life.
MS. TIPPETT: Amidst all of our other ways of communicating, writing …
MR. MULDOON: Amidst all of — or being.
MS. TIPPETT: And being.
MR. MULDOON: It would be lovely to think that people might be discussing the poem in the paper the way they’d be discussing the Mets score.
MR. MULDOON: You know?
MR. MULDOON: Having said that, I really don’t want to be part of too many more discussions of, you know, the demise of poetry, the poor state that poetry is in. I mean, frankly, there are a lot of people writing poetry. There aren’t enough reading it. But it’s not necessarily an art form that is at death’s door. I just don’t subscribe to it.
MS. TIPPETT: I don’t think so, either. My experience, when we put poetry on the air in this radio show, is that people respond to it like they were starved for it all along, and they didn’t know it. It’s not even just — it’s not a discovery. They understand it wasn’t even optional.
MR. MULDOON: Well, I think that’s why it’s really a responsibility of the media outlets, as we call them, I guess — it seems like a crass term — but it’s our responsibility to give people that opportunity.
MS. TIPPETT: You know, I want to tell you, I’m one of these people who cannot abandon the printed page. I still do all my reading in books.
MR. MULDOON: Same here.
MS. TIPPETT: However — and even my magazines. But I stumbled upon the fact that when you read The New Yorker on the iPad, you can listen to the poet reading the poem, which is brilliant. So it’s one of the few places I’m now going, to this mobile device, for the reading, because it’s both of those layers of the poem, which is so wonderful.
MR. MULDOON: Well, you know, it’s — I’m delighted you enjoy that. And that, indeed, is the ideal way to experience a poem is a combination of being able to read it and being about to hear it. Because there’s always something of interest in how, in particular, the person through whom it came into the world delivers it into the world. There’s something revelatory, again, about having that experience. And we’re — our first experience of poetry was, if we were lucky, was an auditory one. And while not all poems absolutely function as aural experiences — of course they don’t, there are many that operate more for the eye — most of them do. And, mostly, there’s something rewarding to be had from that experience, I think.
[music: “My Funny Valentine” by Ahn Trio]
MR. MULDOON: One good turn deserves a bird in the hand. [laughter]
A bird in the hand is better than no bread.
To have your cake is to pay Paul. [laughter]
Make hay while you can still hit the nail on the head. [laughter]
For want of a nail the sky might fall.
People in glass houses can’t see the wood
for the new broom. [laughter]
Rome wasn’t built between two stools.
Empty vessels wait for no man.
A hair of the dog is a friend indeed. [laughter]
There’s no fool like the fool
who’s shot his bolt. There’s no smoke after the horse is gone. [laughter]
Thank you. [laughter] [applause]
[music: “Silk Tears” by Simon Shaheen & Qantara]
MS. TIPPETT: Find Paul Muldoon reading this poem, “Symposium,” and others at onbeing.org.
MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, a conversation with verse with the poet Paul Muldoon. He’s the poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine, and a professor at Princeton University. He spent a day of conversation, food, and public reading at our studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis.
MS. TIPPETT: I lived for a while in divided Berlin in the 1980s, when the wall divided the city, and experienced a place where poets were heroes. People didn’t have a lot of what makes life meaningful or comfortable handed to them, but they did carve out lives of dignity and beauty and integrity. And in those spheres, poets were such important people. Poetry had a — it was cherished, and it was also dangerous, and these poets sometimes got expelled. And I know that — I was last year at a gathering where there were poets from places like Sierra Leone. I mean, it’s true across human history that in dark times, often, that this need in us for poetry, I think, rises to the surface, becomes more evident. Now, you are often called a poet of “the Troubles,” that you came out of Northern Ireland’s trauma. I wonder how this might speak to where this country is right now, in this early 21st century with so many large, open questions.
MR. MULDOON: I’m glad you think so.
MR. MULDOON: Not everybody thinks that.
MS. TIPPETT: Oh.
MR. MULDOON: A lot of people think the deal is done here, that America has arrived at the condition of being America.
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, well, we’re human beings, so the deal is never done, right? [laughs]
MR. MULDOON: Well, I think so.
MR. MULDOON: But other people — for example, on the poetry front, I think a lot of people continue to think, well, poetry actually happens in one of these more interesting places.
MS. TIPPETT: Right. Well, so my question to you is — and you’re working with students, you’re working with young people, so here. How do you think about the role of poetry in hard times and in moments of upheaval, because this is a moment of upheaval, whether we are reckoning with it or not?
MR. MULDOON: Do you mean in the U.S.?
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, in the U.S., it’s true.
MR. MULDOON: Well, yes, I mean, as I say, for people to recognize that it is, I think, is probably — I think a lot of people are reluctant. Despite all the evidence, despite what they see on the TV news, if they watch the TV news — and there are many reasons why they could do well not to watch the TV news, because so much of it is bunkum, and so little of it is …
MS. TIPPETT: And demoralizing and paralyzing.
MR. MULDOON: So little of it is news. But one would like to think that poetry and the other arts would help us, to some extent, make sense of these things. And I’m sure there is actually a certain amount of writing now that represents, for example, the black experience in this country in a way that is very refreshing, and is very welcome. Will that stop policemen shooting black men at will, it seems, in some cases? I don’t know. One of the interesting things about poetry and poets is that we are often called upon to do the work, put crudely, that should be done by other agencies. You know, we don’t necessarily — generally, at least — ask painters, or philosophers, or composers, or many other forms of artiste to help us solve our societal problems.
MS. TIPPETT: Right. [laughs]
MR. MULDOON: And it’s partly because, of course, we think there’s — and understandably so — that poets are, indeed, special cases, and that they have some kind of extraordinary insight into how things work, which in ways they do. But I don’t know if we should be expected to come in and solve society’s problems. It’s part of an idea that’s been presented by poets themselves, of course, as well as readers, that, somehow, poetry may be a form of salve, of salvation, that it’s a form of succour, S-U-C-C-O-U-R…
MS. TIPPETT: O-R.
MR. MULDOON: …succour, in the world.
MS. TIPPETT: Yes, but I wonder if that moment of desperation where literalistic, can-do, pragmatic Americans come into that moment of acknowledging one’s helplessness and ignorance…
MR. MULDOON: I’d love to see it.
MS. TIPPETT: …and turn to poetry as one of the resources.
MR. MULDOON: As one of the resources?
MS. TIPPETT: As one of the resources for courage, and bringing some beauty, and perhaps some playfulness, and some reflection of the unconscious.
MR. MULDOON: I think that’s right. It would be great if that were to happen. There’s a little bit of a problem, though, which is, in the popular imagination, poetry is all salve. It’s all beauty, things of beauty, beauty in the world. And unfortunately for those who hold that position, if one actually looks at poetry, one realizes that, more often than not, it’s a representation of ugliness, of the difficulties of the world.
MS. TIPPETT: The complexity …
MR. MULDOON: The complexity of the world. And I think it is necessarily so, because that, unfortunately, is the larger part of what we meet. And, again, I think it’s too much for us to go to poetry, or any of the other art forms, expecting them to bring us merely beauty.
MS. TIPPETT: Right, or to be merely uplifting.
MR. MULDOON: And to be merely uplifting.
MR. MULDOON: I read somewhere recently about — I think it was Bruce Springsteen who was talking about how many of — I hope I’m not misquoting him — I think was himself talking about how many of his songs are constructed, and they begin with some sense of desolation, and then some sense of uplift, or whatever. But desolation is part of the deal.
MS. TIPPETT: I think that’s a good example, too, because I don’t think this — whatever the uplift is doesn’t negate the desolation, right? It’s still there.
MR. MULDOON: That’s right. That’s right. And I think, as human beings, we have to live amidst this terrific morass, mess of information, and these various upheavals in the world, the various assaults on us — physical, intellectual — that push in on our lives. And to find ways of — a phrase I use sometimes — being equal to that, being equal to that pressure. It’s very difficult. But we have to do it.
[music: “The Crow in the Sun” by Daithi Sproule]
MR. MULDOON: In Armagh or Tyrone
I fell between two stones.
In Armagh or Tyrone
on a morning in June
I fell between two stones
that raised me as their own.
MS. TIPPETT: Paul Muldoon with an excerpt from his poem “The Outlier.” I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.
MS. TIPPETT: Song and music are important to you. You have a rock band, is that right?
MR. MULDOON: Well, I do try to write lyrics, and I’ve tried to write lyrics for various bands. Bands come and go. And I just, I love music. And I was — like many of a certain age, 64 now — when I heard “When I’m 64” from the Beatles, it’s, I suppose, like everyone else, perhaps, themselves, they were thinking, that’s a long way down the road.
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. [laughs]
MR. MULDOON: But the truth is that has been part of our — part of our being, actually. And, in fact, rock ‘n’ roll is as much, I would imagine — I would be surprised if it weren’t the case, if it’s not as much an inspiration to my writing life as Theodore Roethke, or any of the other writers whose names begin with R, [laughs] Robert Frost. We’re almost indivisible from it. It’ll be very hard to distinguish oneself from all those noises that have been in the air for so long.
MS. TIPPETT: I think you make such an important point that poetry and song are so much — to the extent that there’s a border between them, it’s very porous. And, in fact, that — here I am quoting you at yourself again.
MR. MULDOON: That’s all right. Go ahead.
MS. TIPPETT: But someplace else, you talked somewhere about the fact that there’s kind of a modern disdain of poetry that rhymes. It’s not necessarily in fashion, or it goes out of fashion again and again. But that, in fact, in song, what we have is rhyming poetry, and that that continually keeps humanity in touch with that, whether the official world of poetry is doing it or not. It’s so interesting. It’s a way to think about how poetry is, in fact, woven into our lives in ways that we don’t imagine.
MR. MULDOON: Of course it is. And poetry comes in all sorts of forms, all kinds of forms, all shapes, all manner of ways. And I think if we take into account all the manifestations of poetry in the world — including some in prose fiction, by the way, and nonfiction — with the ways in which it goes back to some of its earliest sources, the riddle, the prayer, the charm, the incantation, which, of course, were all forms of poetry in some societies, and continue to be, I think, in many. If one accepts, in one’s expansiveness, rock ‘n’ roll, and rap, and country music.
MS. TIPPETT: This is wonderful. I want to just ask a couple more questions. It’s …
MR. MULDOON: Do you think you have stuff? I have no idea what…
MS. TIPPETT: Absolutely, absolutely.
MR. MULDOON: …if you have stuff you might like. I have no idea.
MS. TIPPETT: So much. I wanted to — you can see I always have far too many notes.
MR. MULDOON: No, no, not at all, that’s good.
MS. TIPPETT: I reached out to a friend who is in Northern Ireland, who actually heads the Corrymeela Community.
MR. MULDOON: Oh, yeah.
MS. TIPPETT: And he’s a poet, in addition to being a peacemaker. And I wanted to read you — where is it — what he said to me. I told him I was interviewing you, and he said — and this, I think, goes back to what you said a moment ago about what the poet can be expected to do and shouldn’t be expected to do. He said, “Muldoon has never been a poet that I turn to to soothe the heart, more to trouble the waters and to electrify the possibilities of form and limits.”
MR. MULDOON: Well, he’s a wise man because…
MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Obviously.
MR. MULDOON: …if he wants something to soothe the heart, he needs to go somewhere else.
MR. MULDOON: Perhaps to the scriptures, or any of the great texts of the great organized religions.
MR. MULDOON: They’re in the business, some of the time, of doing that. Though I’d say that vast tracts of the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, as some refer to it, are hardly likely to soothe the heart.
MS. TIPPETT: Right. Well, desolation is big in those texts, as well.
MR. MULDOON: Absolutely, yes, absolutely.
MR. MULDOON: I wouldn’t go there for comfort, necessarily, either.
MS. TIPPETT: No.
MR. MULDOON: I’d go for a cup of cocoa.
MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] He was telling me that in the Irish language, the words for poem and poet have different etymologies.
MR. MULDOON: Yes, I mean, the word for file — the word for “poet” is file.
MS. TIPPETT: Right, for “poet,” right.
MR. MULDOON: Of course, the word “poet,” itself, from the Greek, means “a maker.” So it’s possible that the “f-” bit of it is related to “fact,” “factoring,” or something, “making,” “fabricating” as a kind of Indo-European — I don’t know. I’m probably making that up. But the word for a poem is dán, D-A-N. And there’s another word in Irish, dán, which means fate. And it could be that there’s a connection between those two.
MS. TIPPETT: Between the poem connected to fate, having a fatefulness …
MR. MULDOON: Fate, or being — you know, one of the things I’m fascinated by — and as I say, I’m not certain of this etymology — but I am nonetheless interested in the idea of that sense that we have when we read a poem that there’s something inevitable about it, that it was fated to be like this. It was never meant to be any other way. This is the only way it can be. It can’t be translated. We can’t give a précis of it. We can’t really describe it in terms other than its own. It was always meant to be. It came to us through a poet, and it’s like this. And so that sense of the fatedness, the inevitability, and perhaps even the eternity of the poem.
MS. TIPPETT: Let me just ask you …
MR. MULDOON: Sure.
MS. TIPPETT: This is a large question…
MS. TIPPETT: …and I’m not asking you to answer it, but …
MR. MULDOON: I’ll give you a little answer.
MS. TIPPETT: OK. The question is, how would you think, how would you start to talk about — because this is an answer that would have no end — what your life as a poet, now that you’re 64, as the song predicted, [laughs] but you never thought it would be about you — what has your life taught you about, revealed to you, about what it means to be human? How would you start to start to think about that? Maybe what you’re continuing to learn.
MR. MULDOON: What it means to be human?
MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. That large, existential question.
MR. MULDOON: Well, of course when one’s 16 and looking at the 64-year-old, one imagines that he knows something, is certain of something, that his experience really adds up to something, that his experience may be brought to bear on some — not any task, particularly whatever area of focus might be, if he has one. And in my case, the thing I know now, and I’m sure this is true of many, is how — not even how little I know, but how I know nothing, in fact. You know? And I thought, I know nothing about anything. And the things that we thought indeed were verities, I think I’m right in saying that, you know, ranging from Pluto being a planet…
MR. MULDOON: …through E equalling MC squared, about which there seems to be some question, never mind the notion of the universe, which is a phrase we used when we were — from time to time. In fact, I think there was a Catholic newspaper called The Universe. At that stage, I’m pretty sure I’m right in saying we had no idea that it should really be called “the universes,” the millions, or is it billions, of universes. So I think to try to take that in is almost impossible, yet, I suppose, we must try, on this tiny planet, which I have sailed around, circumnavigated — to be set down here, however, to try to, one would hope, do our best while we’re here. And I think, really, our impulse is to do our best, however often we might lose sight of it, and try to be kind-ish to one another while we’re still here.
[music: “Hypnotized” by Ani DiFranco]
MR. MULDOON: The day our son is due is the very day
the redknots are meant to touch down
on their long haul
from Chile to the Arctic Circle,
where they’ll nest on the tundra
within a few feet
Of where they were hatched.
Forty or fifty thousand of them
are meant to drop in along Delaware Bay.
They time their arrival on these shores
to coincide with the horseshoe crabs
laying their eggs in the sand.
Smallish birds to begin with,
the redknots have now lost half their weight.
Eating the eggs of the horseshoe crabs
is what gives them the strength to go on,
forty or fifty thousand of them getting up all at once
as if for a rock concert encore.
[music: “Fitzcarraldo” by The Frames]
MS. TIPPETT: Paul Muldoon reading his poem “Redknots.” You can hear or watch him reading this and other poems at onbeing.org.
Paul Muldoon holds the Howard G.B. Clark chair in the Humanities at Princeton University. He’s been poetry editor of The New Yorker since 2007. And he is the author of 12 major collections of poetry, including Horse Latitudes, Hay, and his latest collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.
MS. TIPPETT: On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Maia Tarrell, Annie Parsons, Tony Birleffi, Marie Sambilay, and Tracy Ayers.
Special thanks this week to Mark Conway and the College of St. Benedict’s Literary Arts Institute, and to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for permission to use Paul Muldoon’s poetry.
Our major funding partners are:
The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide at fordfoundation.org.
The Fetzer Institute, fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness to transform our world. Find them at fetzer.org.
Kalliopeia Foundation, contributing to organizations that weave reverence, reciprocity, and resilience into the fabric of modern life.
And, the Osprey Foundation — a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.
One Thousand Things Worth Knowing: Poems
Author: Paul Muldoon
Hay: Poems
Horse Latitudes: Poems
Moy Sand and Gravel: Poems
Lullaby For My Favorite Insomniac
Artist: Ahn Trio
The Crow in the Sun
Artist: Daithi Sproule
by Paul Muldoon
How Can I Say This So We Can Stay in This Car Together?
Download Transcript
The poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine says every conversation about race doesn’t need to be about racism. But she says all of us — and especially white people — need to find a way to talk about it, even when it gets uncomfortable. Her bestselling book, Citizen: An American Lyric, catalogued the painful daily experiences of lived racism for people of color. Claudia models how it’s possible to bring that reality into the open — not to fight, but to draw closer. And she shows how we can do this with everyone, from our intimate friends to strangers on airplanes.
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Research and Business Contracts Manager / Trainee Manager
We are seeking an experienced Research and Business Contracts Managers to join the team within the Research Office. This is an exciting opportunity to work in a prestigious, research-intensive university alongside colleagues in research support, Knowledge Exchange (KE) and RVC Business – the College’s commercial arm. The latter operates the London BioScience Innovation Centre (LBIC) and has close ties to pharmaceutical, animal health and biotechnology businesses internationally, providing scope for considerable variety in the day-to-day work of the appointee.
The appointee will also be responsible for the review and negotiation of contracts covering grants from UK Research Councils and awards for contract research and consultancy as directed by the Head of Research Contracts and Due Diligence, and will act as the dedicated College’s Research and Business Contracts Manager. The Research and Business Contracts Manager will also assist the Head of Research Contracts and Due Diligence in the training of staff and students in relation to effective practice in the protection of intellectual property, consultancy, commercial research, and the building of sustainable relationships with the RVC’s strategic partners in business, government and the third sector.
The post is full-time open ended, if the candidate is appointed at Trainee Manager level (Grade 6) it is expected that the post holder will complete training within a minimum period of a year and be appointed to the Business Research Contracts Manager role at Grade 7 subject to successful completion of training and satisfactory performance.
Applicants will be educated to first degree level in a life science or legally related discipline and have experience in a contract negotiation or academic KE position. A good grasp of UK contract law, including its structure, terminology and practice, is essential. Demonstrable skills in the delivery of professional presentations and representing the organisation externally will also be valuable in this role.
Closing date: 27 August 2019
Interviews will be held on: 9 September 2019
Salary: £45,794 to £58,601 per annum, inclusive of London weighting, (£34,650 to £44,315 if appointed at Trainee Manager level)
Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact Zareen Saleem, Head of Research Contracts and Due Diligence, on (020) 3905 4779 or email: zsaleem@rvc.ac.uk
For further information and to apply on-line please visit our website: www.rvc.ac.uk
Job reference: RVB-0109-19A
(Candidates are advised to indicate whether they are applying at Manager or Trainee Manager level)
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FERERRO
Located at the Podere Pascena, about halfway between two small villages on the southern slopes of Montalcino, Fererro has become a household name at K&L over the past decade. Pablo Härri is a Swiss-born winemaker who graduated from enology school in Switzerland and sent out resumes to a number of wineries all over Europe, but only got back one response. It was from Banfi, the world-famous Tuscan producer. Pablo became the second in charge at Banfi for twelve years, before leaving to make wine at Col d’Orcia. While working at Banfi, however, he purchased the Fererro estate and eventually left Col d’Orcia around 2010 to make wine at his Fererro estate full time. The label is named after his wife Claudia Fererro and allows for a small production of wine each year, about 450 cases of Brunello. The Podere Pascena property has deep, rich soils and a warm, dry climate. The wines are plumy, ripe, and fruit forward but also have a savory character. Frererro also has a second property across the southern boundary of Montalcino where they grow cabernet, merlot, alicante, and multipulciano which are blended into one wine under a Toscana IGT label.
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Transformers: The Last Knight – Thoughts and Review (sorta)
26/06/2017 PaxCybertron Age of Extinction, AoE Dinobots, Autobots, COMBINERS, Conventions, Dinobots!, G1, Hasbro, Movie-verse, Old Guy Ramblings..., Optimus Prime, Petecon, The Last Knight (TLK), Transformers, travel! 2 comments
So I’m back from “Petecon” and I wanted to write about part of the experience: a private viewing of Transformers: The Last Knight.
I’m….frustrated. Those of you who know me personally, and some of you who follow me on other social media, know that I’m a very strong advocate of the Transformers Brand. I mean, let’s be honest, I love this brand. It’s been a part of my life since my childhood, I’ve always found fun and admiration in the toy line, I grew up with the cartoon. Back in 2007, I was enamored with the first film. There was substance to it. Humor, Sadness, Hope, Anger, genuine substance. When Bumblebee spoke to Prime at the end of the movie I legitimately teared up. The 2007 movie ushered in a new age of kids who could grow up with a franchise STEEPED in layers and layers of lore and history.
When Revenge of the Fallen came out, it suffered from the Writer’s Strike. While the overall story was concise, there were copious amounts of oddities that didn’t quite add up to the brevity of the first film (*cough the twins, Jetfire’s cane cough*). Still there was a lot to enjoy in the movie. The addition of Sideswipe, Ravage and Soundwave was a particularly nice touch. When Dark of the Moon arrived, it seemed to continue the trend of shifting the focus from the Transformers, to the human cast. To me this was what led to the film being overly drawn out. With a franchise like The Transformers, humans, in my opinion, should always take a back seat to the Cybertronian cast. They should be anchor points to keep the plot grounded. Dark of the Mood seemed like a solid conclusion to the movies. Megatron lay defeated, the Earth was saved. Sure there were some issues with the plot, it was an adaptation of “The Ultimate Doom” of sorts and some things didn’t really line up, but over all it would have been a fine stopping point.
DOTM wasn’t the end though. All of a sudden, we get a fourth installment with Age of Extinction, which was stated to be a “Reboot”, even though that doesn’t really seem to be the case; other than the cast of human characters being switched out from the Witwicky folks to Cade “Marky Mark” Yeager and his 17 year old daughter as well as a complete star studded cast of heroes and villains that once again took up an absurd amount of screen time for a movie about transforming robots. Still…there were the Dinobots. Hyped for over a year with commercials featuring Optimus Prime RIDING a massive robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex, Grimlock and his crew were FINALLY showing up to movie universe. While AOE was over all a messy, oddly paced, weirdly dark and often creepy story about humans occasionally being helped (or hunted) by robots, the last 30 minutes of the movie still give a chill of excitement…you know, when the robots are actually doing stuff. Optimus Prime capping Frasier then jumping to space in his Nikes left a lot of people scratching their heads however.
My point is, despite the three follow up movies never coming close to reaching the substative level of the 2007 movie, there were, for all the many faults, redeemable and truly enjoyable aspects to the films. I did not leave the theater after seeing them thinking I had wasted my time, or felt entirely unsatisfied. Which is why I’m so frustrated.
I saw The Last Knight. I mean I SAW The Last Knight. I did not understand it. I don’t understand any of it. I mean that on a meta level as well as the over-all plot. I’m frustrated because with a franchise that has LAYERS upon LAYERS of lore and source material to use, the little that was touched upon in the past seems thrown out the window. What’s more the new universe that’s been chiseled out of to make the past movies ALSO seems thrown out the window. I cannot begin to understand the decisions made in making this movie by the crew in charge. It’s lazy to simply state “Michael Bay hates Transformers and the fan base” because 1.) he doesn’t do every thing, there are others in charge of script and production. 2.) Hating something implies there is emotion present. There is no emotion with this film. Literally and figuratively. An important death scene (the only important death scene) is underscored by a joke. And not a good joke. There is no substance here. The excitement I felt seeing Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Iron Hide, Jazz, and Bumblebee in the 2007 movie all standing together seems like a distant, fading memory when watching this movie. The Transformers in this film are used as props at best. Not a single robot has any actual effect on the plot, nor do their actions make any difference until the absolute very end of the film and by then it’s irrelevant. If you’re still paying attention it’s out of morbid curiosity. There is no pay off. There is no heart to this film. It stands as a perfect metaphor to the “Transformium” Transformers from AOE. It’s a husk with a sleek appearance but no “Spark”.
If the hollow plot wasn’t bad enough, and believe me, it’s unforgivably bad, the film also strives to mimic other hyped movies like Force Awakens and Suicide Squad (BB8 is Sqweeks & The Prison Gang scene respectively) without the good sense of masking what’s happening. It’s literally “look I can do this too”, with all the conviction of a three year old copying their parent’s movements. What frustrates me more is that there could have been a lot of substance here. There were clippings of genuinely good stories, stories I would like to see play out, littered all throughout the film that simply fizzle out and are left in the dust of the next barely comprehendible action sequence.
I don’t mean the “shaky cam” either. I’m used to that. 2007’s movie had a LOT of shaky cam, but I was still able to understand and comprehend what I was seeing. The others had more, and I struggled to keep up sometimes, but I still could follow along without problem. When I say barely comprehendible, I mean I literally didn’t understand some of the sequences in this movie. The editing seems haphazardly placed so that what would normally be a full sequence feels chopped and staggered like watching Netflix on a crappy wifi signal. Typically I avoid reading reviews but I did manage to catch one critic stating the movie felt “loud” and I found myself cynical of that until, while watching the movie, I said quite out loud in the theater, “This is so *#$%ing loud!”.
Moreover, once again the focus of the film shifts, almost entirely to the human cast at this point. I don’t mean that as hyperbole, I mean literally the majority of the movie focuses and revolves around the humans. Mark Wahlberg, who I actually do enjoy on the big screen, becomes the prime focus of the film, with an unforgivable amount of the plot dedicated to his relationship with the lovely Laura Haddock, who I adored in “The Inbetweeners” movie. But here’s the thing: I don’t give a crap about Cade Yager or Vivian Wembly (Laura’s character). I really don’t. I’m not here to see a love story. I’m here for the robots. I think most of us are. Why is that so hard to understand? What’s more, the newcomer Isabela Moner, who you would think after the focus she received in the commercial plugs, would be the true star of the film, plays a role with absolutely no impact on the story. She shows up, she takes a back seat, she disappears, she shows up briefly at the end and that’s it. For some reason, the people in charge of this film also decided to bring back Josh Duhamel’s Colonel Lennox character, as if that would add some sort of legitimacy to the character roster, but he’s left playing a generic version of his once charismatic character and understandably phones in most of his lines (I’m honestly not sure why he even agreed to this film). Finally there’s Sir Anthony Hopkins. An actor who’s respect knows no bounds in the roles he’s spectacularly brought to life. He is a revered and honored master of the craft. I hope and pray this is not his last role. While his acting is of course the highlight of the human cast, even his reassuring voice doesn’t do anything for the utter nonsense he is asked to speak in this film; One liners and jokes that land on indifferent ears.
I’m frustrated by this film. I’ve defended the others more times than I can count. I don’t know what I can defend in this movie. I honestly don’t feel it deserves defending. I’ve re-watched the other four many many times. I really don’t even want to see this movie again. I can’t point to one aspect of it that I’d like to see again. Well…okay, there’s a 30 second part where the combiner Infernicus battles Optimus Prime, and decombines in a really neat way….but you already know how that fight ends. I’m frustrated by the complete and utter lack of any kind of answers to anything that actually happens in the film. Why does Bumblebee shatter like he has a serious case of GPS and then reassembles himself right after? WHY ARE THERE BABY DINOBOTS?! Why are all the Autobots complete jerks to everyone? Why do the ads say it’s the “Final Chapter” when the ending is a cliff hanger?! I can’t..I just can’t…I could write pages upon pages of questions. There are no answers. There are no answers because the people in charge of this film do not “hate” Transformers and the fans, they genuinely don’t care. And that’s what frustrates me the most. There’s so much source material to work with and there are so many reasons to work that material into a film. But you need to care. You need to care about Transformers. You need to care about the Transformer’s motivations. You need to care about thier names and not just make them up (Nitro Zeus??). It’s abundantly clear those in charge of this film don’t care about any of it.
There is a small glimmer of hope though. The toys specifically created for this film are and look to be quite amazing. While the Premier Edition price point is catching heat, I would offer that the new molds from Wave 1 and 2 have been a delight (Barricade and Squeeks specifically), and the knight-character toys being produced look to be really fun (I haven’t opened my Steel Bane yet, but he looks fantastic). Megatron’s leader and voyager class toys look incredible and the voyager class Optimus Prime is a brand new mold that really does a great job of resolving a lot of the kibble from the AOE toys. Of course these toys are produced by a design team that actually cares about the franchise so it shouldn’t be surprising that the toys are great.
In the end, I’m not sure what the solution is here. I think, in all honesty, I would like this to actually be the final chapter of the films and let things settle for a few years. Like the Batman movies, that started with the amazing ’89 and ended with he dreadful Batman & Robin, I think Transformers could stand to rest a while and perhaps then we can get a Batman Begins-esque reboot that the fans deserve. I will watch the movie again at some point and perhaps my edges will soften a bit. Only time will tell I suppose. Maybe it’s time for a new teen-adult directed cartoon. I would certainly enjoy that.
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PC Record Times
Death penalty foes prepare for another repeal campaign
By Nick Reynolds
Casper Star-Tribune
Via Wyoming News Exchange
CASPER — Eight states have abolished the death penalty in the past two decades. Capital punishment opponents in Wyoming have tried many times to follow suit, with a repeal bill having been introduced in the state legislature nearly every year this decade.
Each time, the effort has failed.
Most bills are dead on arrival, failing introduction by committee vote. In the 2018 budget session, Laramie Democrat Charles Pelkey attempted to bring a death penalty repeal bill to the floor, but failed to achieve the two-thirds margin required for introduction.
Something different happened this winter. Backed by Cheyenne Republican Jared Olsen, a death penalty repeal bill – for the first time in history – slowly gathered the momentum it needed to clear the House, eventually passing onto the Senate by a healthy 15-vote margin.
But despite that unprecedented level of support, the Wyoming Senate shot down the bill as it neared the finish line.
Olsen, however, is not discouraged. In a Thursday interview with the Star-Tribune, Olsen said he will be doing all he can to ensure that 2020 will be the year Wyoming finally repeals the death penalty.
“We will bring a bill during the 2020 budget session to repeal the death penalty,” Olsen said. “We’re hoping between now and then to build more consensus and more support through education – we believe that is a missing component between failure and success. Those legislators who took the time to learn about the cost, learn about the moral considerations and really think about their decision, made the right choice. And those we maybe didn’t get – whether it was the full education component or who we didn’t spend the right amount time with – we think we can change a lot of those hearts and votes.”
Efforts to change those minds, he said, will begin next week.
At noon Tuesday on the steps of the Wyoming Supreme Court, Olsen – joined by ACLU of Wyoming Director Sabrina King – will be kicking off a statewide education campaign to gain support for ending the death penalty.
The 2019 repeal effort bore a number of notable differences from years past. In hearings and in the halls of the temporary capital in Cheyenne, lawmakers were lobbied by a mix of individuals from legal experts to religious representatives and, at one point, an exonerated inmate from Illinois’ death row. Those efforts, however widely supported, were largely confined to the Wyoming Legislature – one of the reasons King said the effort wasn’t ultimately successful.
“There is always a need for a good public discussion for the mobilization of people on the ground and in legislators’ districts to really make the eventual repeal of the death penalty a statewide-supported effort,” said King. “That’s what we’re trying to put legs to. We feel we know that support is in, but we want to bring people in and give them the ability to voice their opinion and say to their legislators, to say to the governor, ‘we want to repeal the death penalty. This is something we support. So let’s do it now.’”
King said on Thursday that the effort would focus on educating local leaders and Wyoming residents from the town and county level all the way up the ladder. In addition to receiving assistance from various religious and civil groups, the effort would have a dedicated social media campaign, a website and, further down the road, a campaign organizer with the explicit purpose of spreading the message of repeal statewide, King said.
“Our hope is, by launching the campaign and really moving this work forward, we can help formalize that coalition and really bring together a broad base of people around Wyoming who are interested in ending the death penalty and really try to shift the money, time and resources involved in that to other things,” said King. “It’s very rare when you have an issue so many people are behind where you could actually make that happen.”
Meanwhile, Olsen has planned other means of eliminating the death penalty, including prospects of introducing a bill within the Joint Appropriations Committee to eliminate a chunk of the roughly $1 million in funding it costs to keep the law on the books each year.
“I can’t say right now that my immediate strategy will be to reduce it to zero, but we will take a really hard look at making some adjustments to the funding during the 2020 budget session,” Olsen said.
Other options remain as well. Though a ballot initiative – a difficult prospect in Wyoming – is not on the table, Olsen pointed to a recent moratorium on the death penalty that was unilaterally implemented by California Gov. Gavin Newsome, something Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon could pursue if he chose to do so.
The legislative option, however, remains the most realistic one, and the only means of permanently eliminating the death penalty. In budget years, lawmakers need to gain a two-thirds majority on the floor to have non-committee bills heard. Olsen, given this year’s level of support, believes he can make that happen.
“Based on our sponsorship alone and our votes, we have the two-thirds we need, and there were some missing members who were committed ‘aye’ votes this year,” Olsen said. “We know we have the votes, and I feel we’ve grown the votes through our efforts.”
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Eight states have abolished the death penalty in the past two decades. Capital punishment opponents in Wyoming have tried many times to follow suit, with a repeal bill having been introduced in the state legislature nearly every year this decade. Each time, the effort has failed.
1007 8th Street Wheatland WY 82201
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Meaning of Antimetabole with Examples
Priyanka Athavale Feb 15, 2019
There are many figures of speech in English literature that serve the purpose of making a said word more interesting. An antimetabole is one such example, that has the power to make any sentence more effective and memorable.
Antimetabole Example
"In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, Party always finds you!" - Yakov Smirnoff
Antimetabole is a rhetorical literary device which is used to give words and phrases an artistic angle. The etymology of this term is that it is derived from the Greek words anti, meaning 'opposite', and metabolē, meaning 'to turn around'.
Hence, it means that one clause is turned around or transposed to obtain its opposite meaning, and then both the clauses are used in the same sentence. This is a very common figure of speech, and we come across its examples many a time. Although these two terms are very similar, there are some technical differences that set them apart. They are as follows.
Antimetabole vs. Chiasmus
A chiasmus uses one clause in its original and opposite form in a sentence. However, it does not always use the exact words of the clause to create an opposite meaning; it can arrange the words in a different order or skip some of the words in the clause.
An antimetabole uses the exact words of the same clause to change its meaning to the exact opposite. It does not replace or omit any of the words. Thus, we can come to a conclusion that all antimetaboles are chiasmatic, but not all chiasmatic sentences are antimetaboles.
A Bit Tricky
Unlike chiasmus, antimetabole is tricky to use because the sentence has to make sense when the words in the clause are interchanged to create the opposite meaning. There are more chances of a brand new, made-up-on-the-spot antimetabole to not make much sense.
Getting the hang of this figure of speech takes some time. Just remember, it also follows a word scheme like chiasmus. A word scheme is like a rhyme scheme, only that it denotes a repetition of one word.
For example: "We say (A) what we mean (B), and we mean (B) what we say (A)." Here, the word scheme is A B B A.
Why Use It?
An antimetabole is used to give a sentence a creative twist. It is also a figure of speech that has a higher chance of impacting the audience because of its artistic nature. You must have noticed that it is found in motivational speeches, when addressing public (speeches by a Government candidate standing for an election), and even extensively in literature.
Sentences using antimetaboles sound nice to the ears, and are thus more memorable. It has the capacity to make people laugh, or at least smile, which means that the message that was to be conveyed has been, and successfully.
Popular examples
Antometabole is used extensively in literature; but not just that, it is found in many songs as well. Some of the examples mentioned here are words said by famous people.
❖ "You stood up for America, now America must stand up for you." -Barack Obama
❖ "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." -Benjamin Franklin
❖ "We do what we like and we like what we do." -Andrew W.K., Party Hard
❖ "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." -Billy Preston
❖ "When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." -Frederick Nietzsche
❖ "He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions." -The Sphinx, Mystery Men
❖ "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." -Carl Sagan
❖ "Women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget." -Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
❖ "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us." -Malcolm X
❖ "It is not how old you are, but how you are old." -Jules Renard
❖ "I don't throw darts at balloons. I throw balloons at darts." -Joe Montana
❖ "We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." -Benjamin Franklin
❖ "I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better." -A. J. Liebling
❖ "It is not even the beginning of the end but is perhaps, the end of the beginning" -Winston Churchill
❖ "One for all, and all for one!" -The Three Musketeers, 1844
❖ "If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested." -Thomas Wolfe
It is now quite evident that antimetabole is a very popular literary device that is used extensively in literature, and in real life as well. It certainly is an effective method to get a message across, as it makes the words memorable.
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H. Adam Harris
H. Adam Harris is the Associate Director of Programming at Penumbra and a Penumbra Company member (The Dutchman, The Owl Answers, Ballad of Emmett Till, The Amen). He is a core artist with Ten Thousand Things (Unsinkable Molly Brown, Dirt Stick, The Seven). H. Adam has also performed at the Children’s Theatre Company, the Guthrie Theatre, History Theatre, Pillsbury House Theater, and more. He is a resident teaching artist with the Children’s Theatre Company and The Guthrie Theater. H. Adam is a faculty member of the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and has led master classes for many youth organizations including Project Success, the Wilder Foundation, the Minnesota Thespian Society, College Possible, the University of Minnesota’s Urban 4-H program. He received a B.F.A from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program along with a minor in African American Studies.
“Penumbra Theatre is a classical, historical and, cultural mecca that allows for a platform for Black people to work, create...to thrive as artists.”
—PaviElle French, Emmy Award-Winning Artist
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Raichu
Sandslash
Pokemon Ruby Walkthrough
Pokemon Ruby is a GameBoy Advance video game, following in the footsteps of it’s massively popular predecessors, such as Pokemon Red, Blue, Gold and Silver. Pokemon ruby features and all-new storyline, and along with Pokemon Sapphire, is the first game in the third generation of Pokemon games. Released in 2002, it blew the world away with its updated set of graphics, meaning Pokemon battles were now clearer and more amazing than ever. The game also features many more puzzles than you might be used to in this kind of game, and you’ll need to use your head in order to succeed.
By far the biggest addition to Pokémon Ruby is the all-new two-on-two battle system. This allows you to play a two-on-two battle with three other friends, by using the link-up facility. Another new feature are the contests, which allow you to show off you best Pokemon and win prizes.
The area in which the game is played is called Hoenn, and has never been seen before in any previous game in the series. The Pokemon ruby walkthrough states that there are 8 badges to collect before you can take the famous march up Victory Road and battle the Elite Four. The Pokemon ruby walkthrough also says that the Elite Four are tougher than ever, and will cause a few surprises, especially when you find out who their leader is!
Many have called this game the finest of the series so far, and when paired with Pokemon Sapphire, it’s hard to argue. With over 250 different Pokemon to capture, collect and train up, it’s easy to get lost in the world completely, and for the hours to float away. For most people this is a dream come true, but for others it will require immense patience, and may even result in a bit of frustration, because catching them all is such a big task.
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Constitutional Supremacy and Judicial Reasoning: Doctrinal Difficulties in Canada and Abroad
Thursday, 18 October, 2018
A lecture from The Hon Justice Bradley W Miller, Court of Appeal for Ontario, on: Constitutional Supremacy and Judicial Reasoning: Doctrinal Difficulties in Canada and Abroad
With a Vote of Thanks by The Rt Hon Lord Sumption, Justice of the Supreme Court.
Judicial reasoning often takes place in circumstances of uncertainty, in which the acts of law-making that are to guide judgment – case law, statutes – are underdetermined. The problem can be particularly acute in constitutional adjudication, where the settlement achieved in constitutional texts may be only partial, and stated at a high level of generality and abstractness that perhaps papered over profound underlying disagreement. Keeping the constitution supreme is a challenge in the difficult circumstances of incomplete constitutional settlement.
Courts play an important role in taking the commitments that a political community has made through the constitution making process, and using them to craft legal rules that can be applied to particular disputes. But some constitutional doctrines created by courts, in Canada and elsewhere, are prone to misapplication and provide unintentional support for an outsized role for judges in making constitutional law. This lecture considers two doctrines that have become close to constitutional bedrock but which warrant a closer look: (1) the practice of interpreting a constitutional or quasi-constitutional text as a “living” instrument; and (2) the two-stage structure of constitutional rights, which defines rights broadly and invites states to justify their “violation”.
The Hon Justice Bradley W. Miller was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario in January 2015 and was elevated to the Court of Appeal for Ontario in June 2015. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and practiced commercial and constitutional litigation in Canada with Lerners LLP and Miller Thomson LLP in Toronto. From 2005-2015, he was a law professor at the University of Western Ontario and His published work includes the collections The Challenge of Originalism (2011) and Proportionality and the Rule of Law (2014), as well as the co-authored monograph Legislated Rights (2018).
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PRG NEWS WITH WENDY OSHER
LATE BREAKING (1)
Lingle Proposes Structural Reform of Hawaii School System
Posted on January 25, 2010 by Wendy Osher
By Wendy Osher
Governor Linda Lingle is calling for structural reform of Hawaii’s school system. In her State of the State Address, Lingle announed a proposal to introduce a constitutional ammendment calling for the transition of the Department of Education into a cabinet level department. Under the plan, the superintendent of schools would be hired by the next governor, “…so all of us will know clearly ‘where the buck stops’,” said Lingle.
“It is time for Hawai‘i to make the Governor accountable for public education,” Lingle continued.
A press release issued by the Governor’s office today said, “The current school system lacks clear lines of authority, responsibility and accountability. Because the Governor, the Legislature, the Board of Education, the Department of Education, and the Superintendent of Education all have roles to play, the public does not know who to hold accountable for consistently mediocre performance.”
Specifically, this bill amends the State Constitution to make the Department of Education into a “principal department of state government” (i.e., a cabinet department). The State Constitution provides generally that a principal department has its leadership (whether an executive officer or a board/commission) nominated and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointed by the Governor. According to the measure, a board of education becomes unnecessary under the proposed structure.
Lingle said the measure would make the Governor directly accountable for the condition of public education within the State, as the Governor will be held accountable for his or her selection of superintendent, and the subsequent educational performance under that superintendent.
The measure states, “This will improve the State’s ability to effectively and expeditiously manage educational resources and execute policies and procedures.”
A companion measure is being introduced to make the necessary statutory amendments that set out the specific structural details of the proposed new relationship between the Governor, the superintendent, and the Department of Education.
Provisions in that measure would repeal the powers and duties of the publicly elected Board of Education; establish the Department of Education within with state administration to serve as a cabinet-level department; and authorize the Governor to appoint the superintendent of education, subject to confirmation by the State Senate.
Filed under: GENERAL | Tagged: 2010, Board of Education Hawaii, cabinet, constitutional ammendment, Department of Education, DOE, Hawaii Department of Education, Hawaii governor, Hawaii Superintendent of Education, Linda Lingle, Lingle State of the State, Maui, Maui News, Maui Now, Maui today, Maui tv, Maui video, mauinow, Pacific Radio Group, school superintendent, Stste of the State Adderess, Wendy Osher | Leave a comment »
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Review. Peter Mittelstaedt. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process. Cambridge University Press, 1998 [Book Review]
Douglas Kutach
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (4):649-651 (1998)
Book review of The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process
Keywords quantum mechanics
Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, Misc in Philosophy of Physical Science
Measurement Problem in Philosophy of Physical Science
DOI 10.1093/bjps/49.4.649
bjps.oxfordjournals.org (no proxy)
bjps.oxfordjournals.org [2] (no proxy)
academic.oup.com (no proxy)
The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.Daniel M. Greenberger - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (1):127-129.
Peter Mittelstaedt, The Interpretation of quantum mechanics and the measurement process.[author unknown] - 2000 - Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 53 (2):319-320.
The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process.Peter Mittelstaedt - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (4):649-651.
Does the Minimal Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Resolve the Measurement Problem?Nicholas Maxwell - 1975 - Methodology and Science 8:84-101.
Quantum–Matter–Spacetime: Peter Mittelstaedt’s Contributions to Physics and Its Foundations. [REVIEW]Paul Busch, Joachim Pfarr, Manfred L. Ristig & Ernst-Walther Stachow - 2010 - Foundations of Physics 40 (9-10):1163-1170.
The Measurement Statistics Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Possible Values and Possible Measurement Results of Physical Quantities. [REVIEW]Gianni Cassinelli & Pekka J. Lahti - 1989 - Foundations of Physics 19 (7):873-890.
A New Look at the Quantum Mechanical Problem of Measurement.Nicholas Maxwell - 1972 - American Journal of Physics 40:1431-5..
On the Theory of Measurement in Quantum Mechanical Systems.Loyal Durand Iii - 1960 - Philosophy of Science 27 (2):115-.
On the Theory of Measurement in Quantum Mechanical Systems.Loyal Durand - 1960 - Philosophy of Science 27 (2):115-133.
Individualistic Versus Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.Peter Mittelstaedt - 1999 - In Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara (ed.), Language, Quantum, Music. pp. 231--239.
On the Theory of Measurement in Quantum Mechanical Systems.I. I. I. Durand - 1960 - Philosophy of Science 27 (2):115-133.
An Axiomatic Formulation of the Montevideo Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.Rodolfo Gambini, Luis Pedro García-Pintos & Jorge Pullin - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 42 (4):256-263.
Five Formulations of the Quantum Measurement Problem in the Frame of the Standard Interpretation.Manuel Bächtold - 2008 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (1):17-33.
The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: An Interactive Interpretation.Richard A. Healey - 1989 - Cambridge University Press.
The Information Interpretation and the Conceptual Problems of Quantum Mechanics.Miguel Ferrero - 2003 - Foundations of Physics 33 (4):665-676.
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Danal Blessis: Expanding Hong Kong Rail
Manager of knowledge management at MTR Corporation
The most important skill I gained was working with people. I learned how to better work in groups and how to plan ahead.
For most of his life, Danal Blessis was rooted to the East Coast of the U.S. He lived in North Carolina since the sixth grade, graduating from Duke in 1982 with a civil engineering degree in 1982, followed by 13 more years in his first career stop.
Back then, the School of Engineering had not yet been named for Edmund Pratt, and during an introduction to computer course, Blessis created computer programs by punching out holes on a sheet.
A lot has changed since then, especially Blessis’ unexpected road to working in Hong Kong.
He is now the manager of knowledge management at MTR Corporation, a public transportation railway. Blessis is involved with planning all the company’s future railway projects and expansion work. He helps manage the construction and expansion plans so that they go smoothly.
There is great importance for railway transportation in Hong Kong, since the mountainous terrain limits the amount of roads that can be constructed, Blessis said. Also, railways provide a much more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to the area. Currently, he is working on a 60-kilometer expansion of the railway that will connect Hong Kong to the high-speed network in China.
Blessis credits Duke for providing him with a very broad education, which helped him find his future career.
“The most important skill I gained was working with people. I learned how to better work in groups and how to plan ahead. Those are the sorts of things that become most important once you get out into the work field.“
After college, Blessis worked for 13 years and moved up through the ranks at Carolina Power and Light, until he and his wife decided to move to Hong Kong. The big change in location came down to three deciding factors—“to have a chance to gain an international experience, continue to pursue our careers and save money, and to be able to travel.”
Even though Blessis is halfway across the world, he is now more involved with the Duke community than ever before. He remains connected with the university by working with the Alumni Academic Admissions Council chair and by serving as president of the Duke Club of Hong Kong, where he interviews prospective students. Blessis said he’s benefited a lot through his involvement with Duke.
“I’ve gained a lot of friends and a lot of meaningful personal relationships. Seeing such smart high school seniors applying to Duke, and being able to stay in touch with them is really rewarding.”
Although Blessis’ career is rooted in new technology, he believes that face-to-face interaction will always be the best method of communicating. Although technologies like smart phones, e-mail and social media sites help keep everyone connected from a distance; in-person communication will always be the best way to maintain meaningful relationships.
“People are getting sick of sitting at a computer; it doesn’t replace the face-to-face communication. It is important for schools to continue to teach valuable people skills. And it’s critical for us to share our knowledge.”
Originally published Summer 2011. Written by Eric Lawrence.
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Karna Vishwas: From Startup to Google
Master of Engineering Management
I look back to a lot of things I learned at Duke—specific classes like marketing management and leadership management, and even just the skill of time management and how to prioritize—and they are extremely relevant to what I do now.
When Karna Vishwas finished his Pratt master’s degree in engineering management in 2009, the job market was bleak for most graduates. But Vishwas’ blend of technical, business, and management expertise landed him a position at a Silicon Valley internet advertising startup – a company so promising that Google snapped it up just seven months later.
The startup was called Teracent, and Google wanted not only its technology but its talent, including Vishwas.
“The whole team was really excited about going to Google,” he remembers. “There was a little bit of fear about whether we would just get swallowed up completely. But a year after our acquisition, we were still operating as a unit.”
Vishwas has since emerged as a leader, now promoted to running a Google team using the acquired technology to help to make Internet display advertising as targeted as the ubiquitous Google text ads.
“I manage the U.S. team of five people for that particular product,” Vishwas says. “We have folks on the West Coast and on the East Cost. The key responsibilities are to service some of our top ten advertisers who spend tens of millions of dollars with Google. We’re developing the product further and integrating it in more parts of Google’s platform.”
His group’s technology can make smart guesses about the profile of a person viewing certain online content and tailor the advertising to that person’s interests and tastes. For instance, the software might show a 38-year-old father a Toyota ad featuring a Camry sedan, while it would show a 22-year-old single man an ad for a sporty Scion coupe.
Because privacy concerns prevent websites from using personally identifiable data to target ads, the software must make demographic guesses based on the content the person chooses to view. The technology is so dynamic that it can swap out several elements of an advertisement on the fly depending on the assumptions it has made about the consumer.
“When you search for something, (text) ads are extremely relevant to the search performed,” Vishwas explains. “We’re taking that customization to image-based, Flash-based ads.”
The technology is used on YouTube and the consumer automotive sites Edmunds.com and Yahoo! Autos, among others. It also allows advertisers to test many different advertising approaches against each other to identify the ones that generate the most clicks – and the most and sales – from various types of customer. Vishwas aggregates complex sets of data from such testing and puts it into visual formats that are easy for clients to use in decision making.
“The cost of trying multiple things online is just so much less than traditional media,” he says. “It’s not like you’re printing a million newspapers. Even if something goes just really wrong, the client has only spent a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. The level of experimentation is something our clients really like.”
Vishwas might come across as introverted and all business at the office, but there’s another side to him – he’s a heavy metal rock guitarist and a serious fan of the genre, attending 15-20 concerts a year. He particularly loves Iron Maiden, which he regularly travels to see in concert. Several times a week, he pulls out his Gibson Les Paul Custom, his favorite of his several guitars, to unwind after work. He also collects single-malt scotch, and he is planning a visit to the Glenkinchie and Glenmorganie distilleries.
Vishwas grew up in India, where he completed high school and a bachelor’s degree in engineering. After working a little over a year at an American firm’s office there, he took a position as a program planning and control analyst with Honeywell in Arizona.
“I was considering going back for an MBA around then,” he recalls. “Then a friend showed me this program at Pratt, which was a good mix of business and technical engineering programs. I wanted something management-based, but I knew I wanted to stay on the technical side. I was just looking at a couple of schools and decided that Duke was the best school to go to.”
Entering the Master of Engineering Management Program with his work experience in mind was invaluable, Vishwas says:
“When you have experience, you can tailor the course of study to meet your business needs. One of the things that really did help was that it was case-study based. What I did like about the program was that the faculty were pushing you to be more practical and to think about real-life situations. The two practica I took, faculty members were actual consultants for those companies. And so you feel like you’re ready for the real world when you do that kind of work with external clients.”
His career at Google is more impressive when you consider that early in his time at Pratt, Vishwas was planning for a career in construction management. When the real estate market crashed, he began to formulate Plan B, a career in online advertising, and both he and Pratt were agile enough to make such a drastic switch successful.
His Pratt experience has taught him to “serve as a translator of technology into business terms,” he says, an essential and rare skill in the workplace. “You can figure out how to work with engineers. You can turn that into something that’s a value-add for the client.”
Pratt also gave Vishwas a set of disciplines that continues to guide his work, he says.
“There are a million new things to learn here at Google,” he says. “Yet I do look back to a lot of things I learned at Duke, specific classes like marketing management and leadership management. And even just the skill of time management and how to prioritize. Extremely relevant to what I do now.”
Originally published Summer 2012. Written by Bryan Glimer.
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Hutton): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
"welcomes the steps the Government is taking to remove unnecessary regulations and rationalise inspection arrangements in both the public and private sectors; acknowledges the additional freedoms given to high performing schools, hospitals and local councils; notes the lead the Government has taken in driving forward the better regulation agenda in Europe; recognises the benefits that well-targeted and proportionate regulation can bring in driving up standards; and further notes that the UK is seen by international observers as a leader in the field of regulatory reform and that the success of the UK economy reflects the approach the Government has taken.".
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) on his speech. I enjoyed his peroration. I do not know whether he will put his hat in the ring for the soon-to-be-declared vacancy in the leadership of his party. He certainly pulled in a decent crowd tonight, so it looks as though he might be in with a shout. All the best to him, because I think it is true to say that all my right hon. and hon. Friends would welcome him as Leader of the Opposition. If he were to inherit that jewel in the British constitution, we might see a little more of him in general elections than we did in the one that just took place.
I want to say a few words by way of introduction. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the motion. For a fleeting moment, I thought that I, too, could be prepared to lend my support to it. However, I prefer my words to his and I am sure he will understand why. Although he made a good speech, and I congratulate him on that, the problem with it was that there were four fundamental flaws.
First, the right hon. Gentleman really needed to establish that the UK economy was performing badly because of the Government's approach to regulation. Sadly for him, the facts do not support his arguments. They suggest the opposite. To give him creditI always want to be fair to himhe certainly did his best; in fact, he tortured the data until they eventually confessed to him. But as we all knowand the lawyers in the House will know better than anyone elseevidence obtained under duress is never admissible to prosecute a case. He will have to find some more supportive evidence.
Ed Balls: Does my right hon. Friend remember speeches made by Conservative Members, when they were in government, about the threat to jobs if a national minimum wage were to be introduced? Does he remember the claims that it would cost between
4 Jul 2005 : Column 99
1.5 million and 2 million jobs? Does not the fact that we have 2 million more jobs, not 1.5 million fewer, show that it is possible to strike a balance between reducing regulation and setting good, sound minimum standards so that people are properly protected at work?
Mr. Hutton: I agree with my hon. Friend. I understand that, only a few months ago, the right hon. Gentleman said that he thought that his observations and calculations about the minimum wage were spot on. They were notthey were completely off the target. There are 2 million new jobs in the UK economy, not 2 million fewer, as he and his hon. Friends predicted.
David Taylor: Did my right hon. Friend hear, as I thought I did, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) cite Germany with some approval towards the end of what passed for a peroration? Research paper 05/53, produced by the economic policy and statistics section of the Library, uses three key figures to show, first, on the output per hour measure, that Germany lags behind the United Kingdom; secondly, on the labour market figure, that the level of employment in Germany is significantly less than in the UK; and, thirdly, on the tax burden, that the UK figure of 37.1 per cent. is significantly below that of Germany. How does he account for those three figures if Germany is doing so well in its deregulated idyll?
Mr. Hutton: I am not sure how the right hon. Gentleman can account for that obvious discrepancy. I want to return to the UK's relative position vis-à-vis the other member states of the European Union. The British economy is certainly outperforming on most of those comparators in the EU.
Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): Will the Minister enlighten us? We keep hearing about how many jobs have been created. I would be interested to know how many of the 1.5 million to 2 million jobs that have been created by the Government are jobs for bureaucrats, and how many of those individuals are regulators?
Mr. Hutton: I think about two thirds of those jobs are in the private sector. As for the additional jobs in the public sector, I do not know what the hon. Gentleman's definition of "bureaucrats" is, but I remember that, when I was in the Department of Health, he and his hon. Friends who sit on the Front Bench used to describe porters, cleaners and other staff who play a very important role in the national health service as "bureaucrats" and "pen-pushers". That is simply not the case. Perhaps he wants to make that point in his own speech. My job is to enlighten him, as he rightly said, and if he will bear with me, I intend to try to.
The second problem with the right hon. Gentleman's speech is that he needed to show that his own record and that of his party supported the case that he made this evening. Frankly, it does not. His own and the Conservatives' record in government fail to match the rhetoric that he deployed in his speech tonight, and I want to return to that point in a minute.
4 Jul 2005 : Column 100
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): Even the Minister would not argue that farm businesses have prospered under this Government. Farm businesses have been faced with ever-greater regulation, ranging from fallen stock to controls on livestock markets. Farm incomes have fallen consistently. The number of people in farming has also declined since 1997. What assessment has he made of the impact on farming of the Government's activities and, in particular, regulation since 1997?
Mr. Hutton: We are certainly working to support farming. As for the hon. Gentleman's point about regulation, to be fair him, too, I am sure that he would be prepared to acknowledge that many of the regulations he complains about were introduced to try to sort out the mess that the Conservative Government left on BSE and other such problems. Many of those regulations were introduced by that Government.
Mr. Hayes: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hutton: No. The hon. Gentleman has had his go.
I want to come in a second to the wider issue about sectors, but there is a third fundamental flaw in the right hon. Gentleman's case. He needed to demonstrate that the UK's position in relation to regulatory matters was getting worse vis-à-vis our international competitors. In that respect, too, he had a major problem. There is plenty of evidence from this country and abroad that the UK is making good progress on better regulationevidence that he conveniently failed to mention. In fact, he overlooked the views of the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Heritage Foundation and the International Monetary Fundall of which he is usually keen to pray in aid. Sadly for him, no such succour or support was available to him from those sources tonightand again it showed.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman completely failed to present a sensible analysis of European regulatory issues. He was again overcome by his visceral hatred for everything that originates from the European Union. In fact, he got his best cheers when he was ranting at his very best about the evils of the European Union. I got the sense that he wanted to rerun some of the arguments that we had during the recent general election. Of course, I am very happy for him to do so: Labour won that election. In rehearsing all the failed policies that the Conservative party put before the British people in May, he has only served to remind Labour Members why the British people chose to return Labour for a record third term in office.
Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): I think that it was in 2000 or 2001 that the EU had the Lisbon summit, at which those involved pledged to create 20 million new jobs by 2010. Will the Minister explain in his own words why it is so palpably clear to all hon. Members that we will miss that target? In fact, Europe collectively has not created one new job in that period.
Mr. Hutton: I certainly want to deal with Europe in a second, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, but we are doing very well, thank you, in this country because of the policies that we are pursuing.
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You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Hansard > Commons Debates > Commons Debates by date > Commons Debates - previous sessions > Bound Volume Hansard - Written Answers
9 Feb 2006 : Column 1431Wcontinued
Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the cost to his Department of sending Christmas cards in 2005. [45917]
Mr. Charles Clarke: For 2005 the Home Office sponsored an official Christmas card produced by, and in support of, the charity Victim Support.
The cost of the design and production of the 20,000 copies of the card was £11,641.
9 Feb 2006 : Column 1432W
The Department does not hold separate costs of postage from its overall postage costs.
All expenditure incurred in the purchase and postage of the official Christmas card was made in accordance with the departmental guidance on financial procedures and propriety, based on principles set out in Government Accounting.
Citizens Juries
Mr. Wills: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions his Department consulted citizens juries on departmental policies in the last five years; in how many of those consultations the recommendations of the citizens' jury differed from existing departmental policy; and on how many occasions departmental policy was changed to reflect the recommendations of the citizens' jury. [46236]
Mr. Charles Clarke: The Home Office has no central policy for consulting citizens' juries on departmental policy and therefore this information is not stored in one place. To check practice over the last five years with every policy area would incur a disproportionate cost.
The Home Office consults the public on policy using a wide range of other methods, including policy consultation papers. A list of current open consultations is available on the departmental website.
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many violent crimes were committed (a) in Romford, (b) in Havering and (c) by illegal immigrants in (i) Romford and (ii) Havering in each of the last five years. [48551]
Hazel Blears: It is not possible to identify violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants from the recorded crime statistics. The available data are at basic command unit (BCD) level and are provided for the London borough of Havering only in the following table.
Recorded offences of violent crime for Havering basic command unit
Violence against the person 2,787 3,225 3,901 3,922 4,191
Sexual offences 158 173 178 181 159
Robbery 392 549 479 512 442
1. The National Crime Recording Standard was introduced on 1 April 2002.
2. Figures are therefore not directly comparable with those for earlier years.
Departmental Estate
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what (a) land and (b) property is owned by his Department in Forest of Dean constituency. [47254]
Mr. Charles Clarke: My Department does not own land or property in the constituency of Forest of Dean.
David T.C. Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the items valued at over £100 that have been reported as stolen from Home Office buildings in the past 12 months. [43436]
Mr. Charles Clarke: The items valued at over £100 stolen from Home Office buildings relate specifically to a robbery from Graeme House, Liverpool on 9 December.
The items stolen were (i) right of abode receipts totalling £120, (ii) citizenship ceremonies receipts totalling £14,288 and (iii) nationality receipts totalling £35,991.
Total items recovered were (i) right of abode receiptsnone, (ii) citizenship ceremonies receipts£12,036 and (iii) nationality receipts£30,494.
The net loss stands at £7,869.
Departmental Staff (Castle Point)
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many staff employed by his Department live in Castle Point. [42818]
Mr. Charles Clarke: The Home Office (including the Immigration and Nationality Department) has no staff residing in Castle Point. However, Her Majesty's Prison Service has thirty staff living in the area (rounded to the nearest ten staff).
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make it his policy to reclassify methamphetamine as a class A drug pending further report of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs; and if he will make a statement. [49352]
Paul Goggins: I asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to keep the classification of methylamphetamine under close review when accepting its recommendation, in November 2005, that it should remain a class B drug. I will await the Council's further advice, which I requested within 12 months, before making any further decisions on classification.
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will refer methylamphetamine to the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs for review as a matter of urgency. [49353]
Paul Goggins: The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recently reviewed the classification of Methylamphetamine under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act and published its report in November 2005. I accepted its recommendations that it should remain classified as a class B drug, but I have asked the Council to keep the matter under close review and report back to me within 12 months.
Mr. Streeter: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the waiting time is for access to residential drug treatment for heroin addicts in Plymouth. [48405]
Caroline Flint [holding answer 6 February 2006]: I have been asked to reply.
The waiting time, provided by the Plymouth drug action team, for access to residential drug treatment for drug users accessing rehabilitation is three weeks. Waiting time data is not collected for patients in terms of an addiction to a specific drug.
In December 2001, there was an overall average waiting time of 9.1 weeks in England. This had reduced to 2.4 weeks in September 2005.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which body is responsible for ensuring standards in forensic science laboratories; and if he will make a statement on its work. [49164]
Andy Burnham: There is currently no national body responsible for the setting of national standards for forensic science laboratories. However, forensic science organisations can be accredited to the international standards for general testing of laboratory processes, such as ISO 9001: 17025. The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the body available to the government for assessment and verification audits against these standards.
UKAS is a commercial non-profit distributing company limited by guarantee, and operates under a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Trade and Industry. UKAS employ 130 technical professionals and contract the services of an additional 260 external assessors and technical experts as required. UKAS have an explicit duty to act in the public interest.
Mr. Malins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have been convicted of possession of (a) a Class A drug, (b) a Class B drug and (c) a Class C drug in each of the last five years; and what percentage received a custodial sentence in each case. [44140]
Hazel Blears: The number of people who have been convicted for possession of class A, B and C drugs in the last five years is shown in the table. The table includes the percentage of people given a custodial sentence for the possession offences.
The number of people found guilty or cautioned for drug possession offences
Type of offence
Percentage of custodial sentences
Offences under Drugs Acts:
A 45500 3 5,450 8 20,900 13
B 5230 8 82,950 3 83,540 3
C 45,500 3 560 4 630 3
A 18,520 16 19,990 14
B 73,180 3 75,976 4
C 410 15 14 <0.5
(21) Cannabis was reclassified in January 2004. There were 45,390 cannabis possession offences in 2004 where the offenders were found guilty of cautioned as compared with 77,500 in 2003. However, there were 27,520 street warnings for cannabis possession since the street warnings were introduced nationally in April 2004 and this is likely to have reduced cautioning figures for cannabis possession.
Mr. Malins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were convicted of possession of (a) a Class A, (b) a Class B and (c) a Class C drug with intent to supply in each of the last five years; and what percentage received a custodial sentence in each case. [44143]
Hazel Blears: The number of people who have been convicted for possession with intent to supply a class A, B and C drugs in the last five years is shown in the table. The table includes the percentage of people given a custodial sentence for the possession offences.
The number of people found guilty or cautioned for drug possession with intent to supply offences
Percent receiving custodial sentences
A 2,200 39 440 66 3,730 77
B 520 63 2,940 43 2,900 45
C 2,200 39 0 0 10 0
A 3,230 77 3,634 68
B 3,020 49 4,365 44
C 0 0 0 0
Cannabis was reclassified in January 2004. There were 2,200 possession with intent to supply cannabis offences in 2004 and 2,500 in 2003.
Mr. Malins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the percentage of police time spent on drug-related crime in the last period for which figures are available. [44645]
Hazel Blears: This information is not collected centrally.
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A brief history of PwC
PricewaterhouseCoopers was created on 1 July 1998 by the merger of two firms - Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand - each with historical roots going back some 160 years. Set out below are some key milestones in the history of both firms.
Samuel Lowell Price sets up in business in London
William Cooper establishes his own practice in London, which seven years later becomes Cooper Brothers
Price, Holyland and Waterhouse join forces in partnership 1874 Name changes to Price, Waterhouse & Co.
Robert H. Montgomery, William M. Lybrand, Adam A. Ross Jr. and his brother T. Edward Ross form Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery
Cooper Brothers & Co (UK), McDonald, Currie and Co (Canada) and Lybrand, Ross Bros & Montgomery (US) merge to form Coopers & Lybrand
Price Waterhouse World Firm formed
Coopers & Lybrand merges with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in a number of countries around the world
Worldwide merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand to create PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers UK adopts Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) status
The trading name of the firm was shortened to PwC, along with the adoption of a new visual identity
Our UK website has more information on who we are, including our latest Annual Report and details on our Leadership. For additional information on PwC, please contact Emma on the details below:
Emma Thorogood
PwC | Head of Communications
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Calgarian Laval St. Germain summits Everest without air tanks
Jen Gerson Calgary Herald
Laval St. Germain promised his teenage daughter he would climb Mount Everest with a tank of oxygen, just in case.
He didn’t need it.
The climber and sports enthusiast reached the top Monday mid-morning, Nepal time, and climbed back down to safety, to the relief of his wife and children in Calgary.
He is believed to be the first Canadian to successfully climb the globe’s highest peak without the supplementary air that keeps the mind sharp and circulation intact.
“I talked to him last night just as he had come down,” said his wife, Janet St. Germain, on Tuesday.
“He sounded a little slurry. I think it’s because he’s oxygen-deprived.”
In short, she said: “He sounded terrible.”
St. Germain, 41, told his family he didn’t want to rely on air tanks during the final 10-day trek to the top.
“My daughter wasn’t comfortable with it,” she said. “Neither am I, actually.”
Janet admits she doesn’t entirely understand why her husband pushed himself to that extreme.
“He just thinks it’s turned into such a commercial venture,” she said. Sans added air is “the way the mountain is meant to be climbed. It’s back to nature.”
Although a Sherpa did bring an oxygen tank along, he didn’t use it. Janet said she’d be happy to hear the speed of his speaking return to a normal pace. The climber suffered frost bite on the tips of his now blackened fingers, a consequence of the oxygen-deprived environment, which cut circulation at the tips of his limbs.
Fortunately, he won’t lose them, she said.
A father of three children between the ages of 8 and 17, St. Germain left Calgary at the end of March. Typically, climbers will climb up and down lower portions of the mountain several times
acclimatize the thin air
frigid conditions before attempting to reach the summit.
Janet said she began to get worried about
days ago when reports from her husband became
and she knew he was attempting to reach the top.
“I began to keep myself really busy. Since the 15th, every day was really tough because I hadn’t heard from him and I knew he was pushing for the summit. Every day it got tougher,” she said. “I wasn’t mentioning a lot to the kids.”
When she heard from his team that he was making the final climb: “Then I was really holding my breath.” At one point, the radios briefly went dead and “nobody had heard from him.”
He was one of a handful of people in his 20-person team to try for the summit. When he returned, she was relieved and overjoyed.
“My kids have total bragging rights. It was the first thing they put on their Facebook pages,” she said.
Reinhold Messner, from Italy, and Peter Habeler, from Austria, were the first climbers to attempt Everest without oxygen in 1978. At the top of the mountain, the air is so thin that it can barely support a person at rest. The climbers became controversial figures within the medical and mountaineering communities as it was feared they were putting themselves at risk for brain damage.
They conquered the mountain and survived.
In 1994, a Canadian team tried to climb to the top without oxygen. They had to turn back due to extreme fatigue. They reached within 200 metres of the summit.
Charlotte St. Germain, Laval’s mother, said the climber went to sleep as a child reading the World Encyclopedia and National Geographic.
“I remember from about the age of five years old, Laval had such a strong determination and interest in trying out anything from climbing trees to tobogganing off of the house roof, to cycling farther than other children his age.”
She said, in an e-mail to the Herald, that she’s proud of her son. However, “I did say a prayer thank you God. It is much easier to sleep now.”
St. Germain’s interests extend beyond mountaineering: Between hours working as the director of flight operations for Canadian North, a private airline, he runs, cycles and kayaks.
Darin McBeath, a geologist who competed with Canada’s Alpine Skiing team in the 2002 Olympics, has been a family friend for more than six years. He said St. Germain is a “perfect individual. He’s incredibly motivated, passionate and kind. He’s an incredible father.”
McBeath said he was awed by the climber’s athleticism.
“The thing that scared me was that he was so damn stubborn,” he said. “He’s so driven that I could see him getting into trouble quickly there.”
McBeath knew St. Germain had promised to bring oxygen. He also knew the climber wouldn’t use it until he was “really in trouble.”
For example, during a competitive endurance race, he tore a muscle in his thigh. Eventually, he pulled out. But not before running for several hours with the injury. “He said: ‘I popped 11 Advil and I couldn’t do it any longer,’ ” McBeath said.
Between his running regime and his long-distance cycling — one trip saw him travel between Calgary and Whistler, B.C. — McBeath said he couldn’t explain what drove St. Germain to push his limits. “I have no idea. Maybe he’s a bit of a masochist.”
McBeath said St. Germain routinely trains by cycling down Highway 65 to Bragg Creek, riding up Moose mountain as far as the bike will take him and then running the rest of the way to the top. Then he runs back down and rides home.
“To most people, that would be an accomplishment. To him, it’s just a workout.”
Laval St. Germain wasn’t the only Calgarian to climb Everest in recent weeks. According to his parents, Wiktor Mazur, who climbed the mountain to raise money for World Vision, has successfully returned to civilization. He’s decamped in a hotel in Kathmandu, Nepal, and is expected to return to Calgary next week.
In the meantime, the drive that compels some to reach the highest peaks remains a mystery.
“I’m not sure that even he understands it,” Janet St. Germain said of her husband.
Albertans To Summit Mount Everest
– Calgarian Laurie Skreslet, Oct. 5, 1982
– Albertan Pat Morrow, Oct. 7, 1982
– Albertan Sharon Wood,
May 20, 1986; first North American woman to summit
– Albertan Dwayne Congdon, May 20, 1986
– Calgarian Andy Evans — May 22, 1997
– Calgarian Jamie Clarke — May 22, 1997
– Calgarian Alan Hobson — May 22, 1997
– Calgarian Dave Rodney — May 13, 1999
– Albertan Byron Smith — May 21, 2000
– Calgarian Dave Rodney — May 24, 2001. The first Canadian to summit twice.
– Calgarian Deryl Kelly — May 24, 2001. At age 25, he became the youngest Canadian to summit, record now held by Eric Otto of Kingston, Ont.
– Calgarian Esther Colwill — June 2, 2005
– Albertan Andries Botha — May 18, 2006
– Albertan Al Hancock — May 19, 2007
– Calgarian Andrew Brash — May 22, 2008
– Calgarian Hedd-wyn Williams — May 24, 2008
– Calgarian Frank Ziebarth — May 2009. Ziebarth died on the descent.
– Albertan Lucille de Beaudrap — May 7, 2010
Compiled by Norma Marr Source : Canwest Archives
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Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust – KYT (know your tenant)
QDprime
Show 3 Sectors
James Carthew
Property - UK Commercial
KYT (know your tenant)
Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust (SLI) has built a diverse portfolio of commercial property in the UK. A bias to industrial property is proving beneficial to the fund, but the manager, Jason Baggaley, is keen that all parts of the portfolio pull their weight. In an environment that is becoming more challenging, he stresses the importance of getting to know the fund’s tenants and ensuring that their needs are being met. This is one way of keeping vacancies low and the rent flowing.
A dividend yield over 5% and returns ahead of listed peers (see page 12) help to justify the premium to net asset value (NAV) that SLI currently trades at. This premium rating has allowed the fund to grow without diluting shareholders and it is reasonable to suppose that it will do so again, markets permitting.
Commercial UK property exposure
SLI aims to generate an attractive level of income, along with the prospect of both income and capital growth, by investing in a diversified portfolio of UK commercial property assets. It invests in three principal commercial property sectors: office, retail (including leisure) and industrial. SLI borrows money with the aim of enhancing returns; the board’s intention is that SLI’s loan-to-value ratio (LTV) will
not exceed 45%. The current LTV is 25% and the manager says that the intended range, at this point in the cycle is 25-30%.
Year ended
Share price total return (%)
NAV total return (%)
Morningstar UK REIT total return (%)
Peer group NAV total return (%)
MSCI UK total return (%)
1 31/03/15 20.5 22.1 24.2 12.0 5.3
2 31/03/16 5.3 13.5 (5.5) 21.6 (7.8)
3 31/03/17 8.2 3.5 (0.0) 10.0 25.7
4 31/03/18 11.7 16.2 7.5 17.1 5.7
5 31/03/19 3.7 5.9 (5.4) 9.2 (2.4)
Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust (SLI) launched on 19 December 2013. It is domiciled in Guernsey, has a premium main market listing on the London Stock Exchange and, to maintain a tax-efficient structure, migrated its tax residence to the UK on 1 January 2015, when it also became a UK Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).
SLI aims to provide investors with an attractive level of income, together with the prospect of income and capital growth. It aims to achieve this by investing in a diversified portfolio of UK commercial property. These are principally direct holdings within the three main commercial property sectors: office, industrial and retail. The board and manager’s preference is towards properties that are in good, but not necessarily prime, locations, where it is perceived that there will be good continuing tenant demand. The manager also looks for properties where it can add value using asset management initiatives. There is also a focus on tenant quality but, as part of SLI’s strategy, tenants are treated as key stakeholders and the manager works closely to understand their needs. The aim is to achieve greater tenant satisfaction and retention and hence lower voids, higher rental values and stronger returns.
Experienced portfolio manager: Jason Baggaley
SLI’s portfolio has been managed by Jason Baggaley since September 2006. Jasonhas 28 years of property management experience. He has previously worked for Legal & General as a portfolio manager. He joined Standard Life Investments in 1996. In addition to managing SLI’s portfolio, Jason manages a large segregated corporate pension fund mandate (the two combined have assets under management (AUM) in excess of £1bn). Jason gained his degree in real estate from the University of Portsmouth in 1990. He is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Benchmark index
SLI uses the quarterly version of the IPD Balanced Monthly Funds Index to assess the performance of its property portfolio. The trust also uses the FTSE All-Share REIT Index and, to a lesser extent, the FTSE All-Share Index as means of comparison in its own literature. For the purpose of this report, we have used the Morningstar UK REIT Index and the MSCI UK Index as comparators. However, we have also included comparisons against peer group averages as well as a range of cash measures.
In the decade since the end of the recession that accompanied the global financial crisis, UK economic growth, as measured by GDP, has been anaemic. Interest rates have been maintained at historically low levels, initially to help stave off bankruptcies amongst heavily indebted companies and then to encourage consumption. All asset prices have benefitted and, with property yields considerably higher in relative terms than government bond yields, property has proved an attractive asset class.
The recession burnt a few fingers, however. The ensuing decade did not see an upsurge of speculative development, and overall, this has helped maintain a reasonable balance of supply and demand. Yields in regional centres tend to be higher than in London and the South East and this is attracting the attention of some investors but the largest investors in the sector target large lot sizes and this means that they tend to focus on London, where the values of individual properties are higher. Investors in search of yield have also turned to specialist assets such as healthcare, student accommodation and specialist residential property.
Two major outside influences are having a significant impact on the sector. The first is Brexit and the second is the growth in online shopping.
The ongoing uncertainty about the shape of Brexit or even whether or not it will happen has had a dampening influence on the economy and fixed asset investment. One sector that was predicted to be a casualty of Brexit was City offices, as banks, asset managers and other financial services businesses shifted staff into the EU. There is clear evidence that this has happened, but not to the same extent as was feared. We still do not know, however, what might happen if we crash out of the EU with no deal. Anecdotally, it looks as though far more jobs would go in that scenario.
One clear effect of Brexit was a weakening of sterling, unhelpful for those overseas investors who already owned UK property, but a boon to those that were considering investing in the sector. There is a cohort of international investors who see London’s prospects as little diminished by Brexit and who have been prepared to buy City offices and other UK-based real estate. This has helped shore up prices. Nevertheless, net initial yields (the ratio of net rental income to the gross purchase price of a property) for City offices have been ticking upwards since the referendum was mooted in 2015 and
transaction volumes are depressed.
Changes to the accounting treatment of leases, in the shape of a new accounting standard, IFRS16, seem to have increased the attractions of ownership relative to leasehold for some occupiers. One example cited is that of Citibank buying its 25 Canary Wharf office. This may create some additional demand.
Ecommerce is having a material effect on the logistics market globally. Ecommerce businesses have provided significant demand for space and are helping to drive changes in the retail market (the growth of fast fashion being one example).
The UK has embraced online shopping far faster than its European peers, to the benefit of retailers such as Amazon and the detriment of all forms of physical retail, be that the high street, edge of town or major shopping malls.
The online retailers need space to service their customers – both large national distribution centres and more local ‘last mile’ facilities (the properties used to manage deliveries at the local level). The effect has been a renaissance of the once-unloved industrial sector, where yields have been falling sharply. Much new logistics space is being built, but Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI) believes that in most areas, demand exceeds supply.
On the High Street, the reverse is true. Company voluntary arrangements (CVAs – a legally binding agreement that allows a company to reorganise and reduce its debt and outgoings) regularly hit the headlines (with rents falling as well as stores closing). The vacancy rate for town centre shops is said to be 10.2%. Retailers have been hit by rising business rates and higher wages as well as falling sales. Recognising the problem, the government is legislating to better align business rates with property values (promising a revaluation of properties in 2021).
Slowing/falling rents
Whilst we would always caution about placing too much emphasis on forecasts, they do perhaps give a good indication of the current mood of the market. The Investment Property Forum (IPF) surveys a wide variety of market participants (the 27 contributors to this quarter’s forecasts comprise 13 property advisors and research consultancies, 12 fund managers and two others), including Aberdeen Standard Investments, to form a view of the health of the UK property sector. Figures 5 and 6 shows current IPF forecasts of rental and capital growth.
Rental forecasts for 2019 have been trending downwards in recent months but longer term forecasts have been revised upwards. The contrasting fortunes of the industrial and retail sectors are clear.
Estimates of capital values have been revised downward across the board recently, possibly reflecting the extension to the Brexit timetable. Figure 7 shows the net effect on total returns. Investors in retail are forecast to lose money in 2019, even after collecting rents. Industrial is the place to be.
Manager’s view
The manager makes the point that it is easy to generalise about the sector, but often the underlying story is more nuanced. For example, the portfolio includes a small holding of retail property in Rochdale – not something that the manager would necessarily buy today – but it is let on long leases and at what the manager believes is an affordable rent. Another example raised was that of a retail property held in Bradford, which is continuing to perform well. The manager says that high quality assets in good locations and let to good tenants will always be in demand.
On the subject of voids, the manager believes 5% to be a good target rate; 2–3% is considered very hard to maintain. Where voids exist, vacancies typically last 12–15 months, given the slow-moving nature of the industry.
Serviced approach now the norm
The manager says that landlords have had to significantly evolve their approach; being service-driven is pivotal nowadays. Many of SLI’s office properties now come with installed amenities such as yoga studios, showers and bike storage. The manager says it is very important to show that you care as a property owner. He adds that the frequency of communication between tenant and landlord has increased considerably. Where it was once normal not to engage with your tenants, particularly mid-tenancy, his team will speak to tenants regularly and will often travel to meet them on-site.
The manager says the service-led approach is extended to helping tenants navigate through business challenges. For example, if a tenant is downsizing and wants to sublet some of their space, SLI can work with them, using their network of agents to find a solution. This is how the manager defines ‘active property management.’
Catering to the ‘environment’
Though price remains the most important factor when companies decide on their office space, the manager says that the ‘environment’ and ‘feel’ of a building can carry great weight. Choosing where to re-locate an office used to be the purview of the financial managers. This has changed, with HR now often holding significant influence. The manager says that is very important to make the office move process as seamless as possible for companies. For example, SLI has fibre internet in all of its buildings and makes sure that it is operational before the tenants re-locate.
In addition to amenities and configured breakout and prayer rooms, the manager says that companies want to walk into a place and imagine how it will look when filled, including seating plans. SLI has designed fitouts for all its vacant space, that can be viewed in virtual reality by prospective tenants.
The majority of the portfolio is invested in direct holdings within the three main commercial property sectors of retail, office, and industrial, although SLI may also invest in other commercial property such as hotels, nursing homes and student housing. Investment in property development and investment in co-investment vehicles where there is more than one investor is permitted up to a maximum of 10% of the property portfolio.
SLI’s must abide by the following restrictions to the portfolio in normal market conditions:
Risk limits and controls
No property will be greater by value than 15% of total assets.
No tenant (with the exception of the government) shall be responsible for more than 20% rent roll.
Gearing, calculated as borrowings as a percentage of the group’s gross assets, may not exceed 65%. The board’s current intention is that the company’s loan-to-value ratio (LTV) will not exceed 45%. The current LTV is 25% and the manager says that the intended range, at this point in the cycle is 25-30%.
Making full use of Aberdeen Standard’s resource
A research-based approach is taken to buying and selling property, looking at where markets are likely to change in the short term, with changes in infrastructure seen as a key driver of market developments.
The manager has been carrying out SLI’s strategy by being open-minded as to location and lot size. When it comes to sourcing deals, SLI’s size and reputation sees it receive numerous leads from the market; these are then passed through a centralised acquisitions team. Anecdotally, the manager says the opportunity set available has increased following the merger between Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life Investments in 2017.
ASI has 270 people globally working on property. Post-merger, SLI’s manager says he has been struck by the depth of primary knowledge that is apparent during meetings. It is not uncommon for the team to have a first-hand view on potential investments when they run through leads, often by projecting google earth maps and images.
SLI typically targets a different profile of property to most other closed-end funds, which reduces deal competition and the likelihood of overpaying. SLI has often waited for the market cycle to shift prices in its favour.
ASI has a dedicated environmental, social and governance (ESG) team of three that sits within the property team of 270. The manager says that deals cannot be completed without prior consent by the ESG team. He adds that the end-goal must be a functional ESG outcome, not ‘ESG by tick-box.’
SLI’s minimises the use of agents and lawyers when it transacts, preferring a principal-to-principal approach to reduce fees. This is possible because of SLI’s existing relationships and the ASI network.
The manager considers no property to be ‘sacrosanct’ and makes the point that SLI’s asset base has been turned over three times since he took over in 2006. Realising profit at key times has been just as important as making new investments. Whilst research plays an important role in buying and selling, the manager says that in real estate, experience gives you a sense of when the market has begun to overheat.
Owning office space tends to be particularly capital-intensive, so it can make sense to sell at certain times. SLI mainly uses the firm’s transaction team and trusted agents to carry out sales.
Top 10 holdings
SLI’s portfolio is primarily allocated across three commercial property sectors: industrials, offices and retail. In the year to 31 December 2018, industrials accounted for 51.9% of portfolio value, offices 32% and retail 9.3%, respectively. This was made up of 32 industrial properties, 17 offices and seven retail units. The five largest properties are covered in more detail in the pages that follow.
54 Hagley
The acquisition of 54 Hagley, Birmingham, in late 2018 was SLI’s largest to date. It paid £23.75m for this multi-let office complex, comprising 141,436sqft. At the year-end, the property had 18 tenants paying relatively low rents, with an occupancy rate of 92.2%. The manager says the building is located in an area where rents are generally cheaper than in other parts of Birmingham, at £12–18psqft compared with £25psqft in much of the city. The building is equipped with amenities that include a yoga studio and parking docks for cyclists. Additional amenities will be invested in.
The manager believes the building offers good scope for rental growth. A new tram stop is due to be built right outside the building over the next two-to-three years, increasing connectivity. Meanwhile, the city of Birmingham is proposing a congestion charge, which the manager says 54 Hagley would sit outside of.
Why does the manager like it? The manager believes the building to be well-situated and to offer good prospects for rental growth. The level of occupancy is high and demand for office space in the area will grow as the launch of the tram station approaches.
Denby 242
Denby 242, a logistics centre located in Denby, Derbyshire, was acquired in August 2014 to support the expansion of the industrial portfolio in the midlands. The unit was built over the 2008/2009 period and was bought as part of a portfolio along with two other logistics hubs: Tetron 93 and Tetron 141, located in Swadlincote, Derbyshire, which were built over the same period. Denby 242 provides the highest income of the three – it was bought with a lease in place until 2025 (the tenant can break the lease in 2020), worth £1.032m per year. The unit covers 242,766sqft and was fully occupied as
of end-2018.
Why does the manager like it? The manager saw a shortage in the available stock of logistics assets in the midlands and saw value in these relatively new hubs. They were let out at the bottom of the cycle, which, together with the relatively shortage of these assets regionally, is suggestive of rental income growth potential.
The Symphony acquisition in October 2014, for £14.6m, included three storage units in Rotherham, covering 360,000sqft. The units were acquired with a 20-year letting agreement in place with Symphony Group, a kitchenware and bathroom furniture manufacturer. The passing rent is £1.08m per annum, making Symphony the third-largest tenant in the year to December 2018, behind Technocargo Logistics Limited (£1.24m annual passing rent) and BAE Systems (£1.26m).
Symphony Group is the UK’s largest privately-owned manufacturer in the sector, turning over more than £220m per annum, with a headcount of over 1,500 staff. It supplies private developers, social housing providers retailers and hotel operators across the UK and internationally. The 20-year lease includes a tenant break clause after 15 years, as well a provision for fixed uplifts every five years.
Why does the manager like it? The three units are located in an established manufacturing region and were acquired with a long-term lease in place with a leading firm in its sector. The lease contract includes an inflation adjustment as well.
Chester House
Located in Farnborough and coming under ‘South East Offices’, Chester House was acquired in June 2014 for £14.9m. The property is a modern grade A 49,861sqft purpose-built office block located on an established business park. At the time of acquisition, it had a lease in place with BAE Systems that had a further nine years to run. BAE Systems was SLI’s largest tenant in 2018, generating a passing rent of £1.26m. BAE Systems is one of the world’s largest defence companies.
Why does the manager like it? The acquisition price reflected a yield of 8.1% with a multi-year lease in place with a major multinational company. The unit is located in a well-established business park.
SLI bought The Pinnacle, a multi-let office building in central Reading, for £13.45m in August 2017. It was acquired as a six-storey, 41,721sqft property, that is located within 150 meters of Reading’s central train station. The purchase price reflected a yield of 6.75%. At year-end 2018, the property was 64.3% occupied (it is multi-let and the relatively low occupancy level reflects a couple of lease expirations within the building, although the manager tells us that occupancy is increasing again).
Why does the manager like it? The manager saw this as a well-located property in an area that was seeing rental growth. There was an opportunity for SLI to use its active management approach to enhance the building by building out amenities and working on the fit-out.
As illustrated in Figures 16 and 17, SLI’s NAV total return has, for all periods of one year and above, beaten that of peer group average. A similar pattern is witnessed for share price total return versus that of the peer group average, although SLI has beaten it over all of the time periods provided. For a strategy such as SLI’s, where assets tend to be held for the long term, we consider that the longer-term periods are the most relevant when assessing the effectiveness of the strategy. In this regard, it is noteworthy that SLI has markedly outperformed the peer group averages over the longer term. It has also markedly outperformed UK equities (as represented by the MSCI UK Index). Over the 10-year period, SLI’s NAV total return is behind that of the Morningstar UK REIT Index but this index is based on share prices and, as illustrated in SLI’s own 10-year share price return, this has been distorted by the global financial crisis (the starting point for the 10-year data is 31 March 2009, which was close to a multi-year low after which markets recovered strongly). Looking at the periods up to five years, SLI has tended to strongly outperform the Morningstar UK REIT Index.
For investors that are attracted to SLI for its income, and the degree of inflation protection provided by owning property assets, it is noteworthy that both SLI’s NAV total return and share-price total return have been markedly ahead of inflation (as measured by both RPI and CPI). These returns are also markedly ahead of what could have been achieved by investing at Libor. For the purpose of these comparisons, we have used RPI, RPI + 2%, CPI+3% and Libor + 5%, but in each case SLI’s performance comfortably surpasses these. The NAV has seen a relatively stable evolution and, while there has been greater variability in SLI’s returns (both share price and NAV), we think this is more than compensated for by its superior long-term performance.
2018 portfolio total return up 8.5%
SLI delivered a portfolio total return of 8.5% in 2018, driven mainly by the income return of 5%. An above benchmark capital return of 3.3% (versus 2.1% for the IPD benchmark (supplied by the manager); IPD is the Investment Property Databank) was driven by relatively overweight and underweight positions in the industrials and retail sectors. Capital growth from the industrial’s portfolio was 11.8%, while retail was down 5.8%.
Industrials accounted for 52% of the portfolio in 2018, compared to a benchmark weighting of 28%. An exposure level of 9% to retail versus 32% for the benchmark positively impacted income generation relative to the benchmark as well, with industrial rents increasing and there being fewer voids than in the structurally challenged retail sector. Even so, on aggregate, voids did increase in 2018, contributing to the reduction in EPRA earnings per share on an absolute basis in 2018 (4.22p versus 4.99p in 2017). The net effect was a reduction in the dividend cover from 104% in 2017 to 89% in 2018.
The preservation and potential growth in the cover rate is a key priority for the company over the medium term.
NAV and portfolio valuations
SLI publishes NAVs on a quarterly basis based on portfolio valuations, which are approved by the board prior to publication.
The independent international real estate consulting firm, Knight Frank, performs the valuation, in accordance with the then-current RICS guidance (RICS is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors). The fair value of properties is determined using the income capitalisation method, which begins by capitalising a property’s net income over its lease period; the valuer then assumes the property will be re-let at a pre-determined estimated open market rental value; allowances for voids are made where applicable. The yield used by the valuer to capitalise a property’s income stream reflects views on
factors that include (not an exhaustive list): a property’s location, its perceived quality, the credit quality of its tenants and its lease term profile.
SLI’s manager meets with the valuers on a quarterly basis to ensure the valuers are aware of all relevant information for the valuation and any change in the investment over the quarter. The manager then reviews and discusses the draft valuations with the valuers to ensure correct factual assumptions are made. The valuers report a final valuation that is then reported to the board.
Quarterly dividend payments
SLI’s current policy is to pay dividends on its ordinary shares on a quarterly basis. All dividends are paid as interim dividends and, for a given financial year, the first interim dividend is paid in May (2019: 1.19p) with the second, third and fourth interims paid in August, November and March. SLI does not pay a final dividend.
SLI declared total dividends of 4.76p per ordinary share for the year ended 31 December 2018, which was the same amount as for 2017 and 2016 (as illustrated in Figure 18, the quarterly dividend has remained unchanged at 1.19p per share). The total dividend is equivalent to a yield of 5.0% on SLI’s share price of 95.3p as at 3 July 2019. The underlying portfolio’s year-end income return, based on rental income, was 5%.
As illustrated in Figure 18, SLI’s EPRA earnings per share were less than its total dividend payment for two of the last five financial years (2015 and 2018). In these instances, SLI is able to draw on its retained earnings to fund any deficit. As at 31 December 2018, SLI had retained earnings of £6.16m (this equivalent to 1.51p per share), a reduction from the £8.36m SLI had in retained earnings at the end of 2017 (equivalent to 2.12p per share). However, it illustrates that SLI has still has sufficient retained earnings to cover at least one quarter’s worth of dividends.
Premium/(discount)
As illustrated in Figure 19, SLI has, for much of the last five years, traded at a premium to NAV (five-year average premium is 5.4%). This otherwise-consistent premium has been interrupted on two distinct occasions. First of all, SLI’s premium narrowed and then moved to a discount in the run-up to the UK’s referendum on EU membership in June 2016. Following the Brexit result, SLI’s discount reached a five-year high as the market became concerned about the outlook for commercial property values given the potential reduction in demand. However, this reversed out as the market reassessed this outlook (a sharp devaluation of sterling boosted the competitiveness of UK exports) and SLI was trading at a premium again by the beginning of October 2016.
Similarly, as political tensions around Brexit escalated towards the end of 2018 (along with other market concerns) SLI once again moved from trading at a premium to a discount. This uncertainty continued into 2019 and SLI’s discount continued to expand reaching a one-year discount high in January 2019 of 14.2% (one-year premium high is 10.0%). However, SLI’s discount began to narrow again as it became clear that parliamentary impasse would prevent the UK leaving on the 29 March as planned. With the deadline kicked back until October, SLI’s discount has once again closed. As at 3 July 2019, SLI was trading at a premium of 6.0%, which is broadly in line with its five-year average.
Premium/discount management
SLI is authorised to repurchase up to 14.99% and issue up to 10% of its issued share capital (renewal of these authorities is sought annually at the company’s AGM). The premium rating illustrates that there is demand for SLI’s strategy and SLI has not needed to repurchase any shares since launch. Instead, the trust has been able to issue shares to satisfy demand. The trust has only issued shares at a sufficient premium to the prevailing NAV to avoid any dilution to existing holders and, reflecting the discounts and modest premiums that it has traded at this year so far, SLI has not issued any shares year-to-date. However, SLI raised £10.2m by issuing 11m new shares in 2018, at prices above the underlying NAV.
Tiered fee structure; no performance fee
SLI’s management fees are levied according to the following structure: 0.75% of total asset up to £200m, 0.7% of total assets between £200m and £300m, and 0.65% thereafter. SLI does not pay a performance fee. The investment management agreement can be terminated at one year’s notice by either side.
Administrative, secretarial and registrar services
Administrative, company secretarial and registrar services are provided by Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited. For these services, Northern Trust is entitled to a fee of £65,000 per annum, payable quarterly in arrears. Northern Trust is also entitled to reimbursement of reasonable out-of-pocket expenses. Total fees and expenses charged for the year ended 31 December 2018 amounted to (2017: £76,150).
Portfolio valuation services
Portfolio valuation services are provided by Knight Frank LLP, who value SLI’s property portfolio on a quarterly basis. For these services, Knight Frank is entitled to an annual fee that is equal to 0.017% of the aggregate value of property portfolio paid quarterly.
The total valuation fees charged for the year ended 31 December 2018 were £91,396 (2017: £71,844). Knight Frank charges a minimum fee of £2,500 per property (2017: £2,500) for new properties that are added to SLI’s portfolio.
Allocation of fees and costs
In SLI’s accounts, investment management fees, administrative expenses, finance costs and all other revenue expenses are charged to the revenue account. The costs of property purchases and disposal are allocated to the capital reserve as are capital expenditure on properties and the capital expenditure that results in a movement in the capital value of a property (e.g. refurbishing an asset).
Capital structure and life
SLI has a simple capital structure with a single class of ordinary shares in issue and trades on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. As at 3 July 2019, there were 405,865,419 ordinary shares in issue and no shares in treasury. SLI does not have a fixed winding-up date and there is no specific measure, such as a regular continuation vote, to wind up the company.
SLI is permitted to borrow and its articles of association mandate that its gearing, defined as total borrowing divided by gross assets, cannot exceed 65%. The board’s current intention is that SLI’s loan-to-value ratio (total borrowings less cash divided by portfolio value) shall not exceed 45%. At 31 December 2018, SLI’s loan-to-value ratio was 24.4% (18% in 2017), so the company can continue to opportunistically deploy its debt facilities.
SLI has a term loan in place, which will expire in 2023, and a £35m revolving credit facility of which £20m had been drawn on at the end of 2018. The blended rate of interest at the year-end was 2.65%, comfortably below the net initial yield of 5.1% and indicative of the relatively attractive spread that persists between the rental yield and financing costs.
The trust’s year-end is 31 December. The annual results are usually released in April (interims in September) and its AGMs are usually held in June of each year. As discussed on pages 14 and 15, SLI pays quarterly dividends in May, August, November and March.
SLI’s board is comprised of five directors, all of whom are non-executive and considered to be independent of the investment manager. All directors stand for reelection on an annual basis.
Sally-Ann Farnon retired following SLI’s AGM on 13 June 2019. She was the board’s longest-serving member and its senior independent director. As part of the board’s succession planning, Jill May was appointed as an independent director on 12 March 2019. Following Sally-Ann’s retirement, Huw Evans has taken over as senior independent director and Mike Balfour has assumed the role of chair of the audit committee.
The senior director acts as a sounding board for the chairman and as an intermediate for the other directors. The senior director is also available to engage with shareholders on any concerns they may have.
Robert Peto (chairman)
Robert Peto heads the board as non-executive chairman, a position he has held since May 2014. Robert has extensive experience in real estate investing. He was chairman of DTZ UK, the real estate investment manager from 1998 to 2008, as well as chairman of DTZ Investment Management until 2017. Robert also served as a member of the Bank of England Property Advisory Group from 2007 to 2011, and serves as the non-executive chairman of GCP Student Living. Other directorships include non-executive positions at Lend Lease Europe GP and Western Heritable Investment Company.
Huw Evans (senior independent director)
Huw Evans assumed the role of senior independent director following Sally-Ann Farnon’s retirement on 13 June 2019. He is based in Guernsey. Huw qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG before building a career in financial advisory, focused on mergers and acquisitions and more general corporate strategy. Huw advised a wide range of companies in financial services and other industries.
Mike Balfour (director)
A chartered accountant by training, Mike Balfour has 30 years of experience in investment management. He has held a number of executive leadership roles, including seven years as the chief executive of Thomas Miller Investment, before which he was the chief executive at Glasgow Investment Managers. He has also held the role of chief investment officer at Edinburgh Fund Managers. Mike was appointed to SLI’s board in March 2017. He also holds non-executive directorships with Martin Currie Global Portfolio Trust, Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust, Fidelity China Special Situations and chairs the Investment Committee of TPT Retirement Solutions. Mike has assumed the role of chair of the audit committee following Sally-Ann Farnon’s retirement.
Jill May (director)
Jill May assumed her role as non-executive director with effect from 12 March 2019. Jill has spent most of her career in investment banking, where she held roles with SG Warburg & Co for 13 years (in mergers and acquisitions) and UBS for 12 years. Jill is currently an external member of the Prudential regulation committee of the Bank of England. She is also a non-executive director of Sirius Real Estate, JPMorgan Claverhouse Investment Trust, Ruffer Investment Company, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW).
Marten & Co (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) was paid to produce this note on Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust Limited.
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190708 SLI Initiation QD
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Dharavi redevelopment project
Selin Technology Corporation
Adani Enterprises
Maharashtra may consider scrapping bidding process for Dharavi redevelopment project
The bids for redevelopment of the Dharavi slum, spread over 600 acres of Mumbai, were opened on February 18 and the UAE-based Selin Technology Corporation has emerged as a front runner. It agreed to invest Rs 7,500 crore in the project. Makarand Gadgil | Mumbai Mirror | May 16, 2019, 08:28 IST
The state government is considering scrapping the bidding process for Dharavi redevelopment project due to issues related to inclusion of 45 acres of railway land in the project.
The bids for redevelopment of the Dharavi slum, spread over 600 acres of Mumbai, were opened on February 18 and the UAE-based Selin Technology Corporation has emerged as a front runner. It agreed to invest Rs 7,500 crore in the project.
The Adani Enterprises, a competitor, had quoted Rs 4,529 crore. However, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Railways and state government was signed on February 25.
Considering this fact, the state government has decided to call advocate general’s opinion whether railway land constitutes extra benefit to preferred bidder.
“Even before AG’s opinion has come there has been talks between various departments concerned with Dharavi redevelopment project to scrap it as giving railway land would be extra benefit to preferred bidder”, told a senior official from Chief Minister’s office on condition of anonymity.
However, promoters of the project objected to taking opinion from AG and said, “At every stage, there was mention of railway land in documents like the government resolution issued in November, it was also mentioned in tender document and in minutes of pre-bid conference where one of the bidders raised the issue about the land."
The project to redevelop Dharavi is on since 2004 but so far it did not find any takers. The current project is of Rs 28,500 crore and under the project 200 acres of land will be used to resettle slum dwellers, 100 acres to develop public amenities like parks, schools, hospitals etc. and 300 acres will be used for selling commercially.
Tags : Industry, Dharavi redevelopment project, Selin Technology Corporation, mumbai, Maharashtra, Dharavi Slum, Adani Enterprises
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Five Years in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry: From H3+ to DNA
azu_etd_10952_sip1_m.pdf
Pavanello, Michele
Explicitly correlated methods
Variational
Adamowicz, Ludwik
The research described in this dissertation concerns two fields of theoretical chemistry: Part I concerns applications of Density Functional Theory, and part II high accuracy calculations within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation using explicitly correlated Gaussian functions.In the first part, after a brief introduction to Density Functional Theory and Hartree Fock methods, the candidate's research in Density Functional Theory is described in two chapters. One treats the charge transport in B-DNA, specifically (GC)$_N$ oligomers solvated by water. The second chapter treats the charge transfer between the Lithium atom and Fullerene-C$_{60}$ in the endohedral complex Li@C$_{60}$. In both applications Density Functional Theory was the central quantum mechanical technique that allowed the approaching of such large molecular systems.In the second part of this dissertation, the candidate's development of a FORTRAN code using explicitly correlated Gaussian functions within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is presented.Every item of the author's research during his graduate studies has been published in co-authorship with the author's scientific advisor and other collaborators in peer-reviewed journals. A total of 8 scientific articles and one letter have been published by the author while at The University of Arizona.
Electronic Dissertation
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... develop- ment, and thus a more natural or normal state of affairs. But what is this Central Europe, in which Turkish, Vietnamese, and other immigrants and refugees are mur- dered, Gypsy or Roma people are persecuted, and anti-Semitism is manifesting itself...
Television Wars: Representations of the Vietnam War in Television Documentaries
Stephen Vlastos
... agenda of the AIM production is revealed. Vietnamese refugees and politically conser- vative veterans both have a powerful psychic stake in believing the war to have been a noble cause. By asserting that the PBS documen- tary (and by implication liberal critics of the war) hold all U.S...
Relocating Critical Pedagogy
Kevin D. Lam
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2008-003
...- tory that has never been legitimated in public school curricula or within the U.S. national memory of the Vietnam War. Critical pedagogy scholarship helped frame my own subjectivity as a working-class Asian American, as a political refugee from Southeast Asia, and subsequently as a migrant to...
... and anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research examines traffick- ing, citizenship, and asylum. His recent books include Amistad’s Orphans (2014), the collec- tion Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status (2014, edited with Galya Ruffer), Citizenship in Question (2016...
A Letter to George Bush: A Talk Presented at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Teach-In on “Art and Grief,” September 21, 2001
Lisa Brock
Radical History Review (1 January 2003) 2003 (85): 9–11.
... care of her kids and spend time with them, go to a village in Nicaragua or Mexico, or the West Side of Chicago, and look into the eyes of a refugee, a homeless person, a perpetual victim of domestic and/or sexual violence. There are people who live with grief...
... the United States and the “conflict zone” of Iraq. Bilal fled Iraq in 1991 and, after two years in refugee camps, came to the United States, where he graduated from the University of New Mexico and then obtained an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dara N. Byrne is associate...
Commemorating the Anglo-Boer War in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Bill Nasson
... comprehension of the need for Secondly, for some journalists, the Boer refugee agony of Britain’s war- time concentration camps represented ”ethnic cleansing,” a fearful 158/RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW phrase which sought to portray the war in South Africa as the Bosnian or Rwandan...
Representations of Conflict: Images of War, Resistance, and Identity in Palestinian Art
K. Luisa Gandolfo
Radical History Review (1 January 2010) 2010 (106): 47–69.
... revised, as representations of nature are placed in conjunction with religious symbols, including mosques and crosses; national symbols, such as the Palestinian flag; and emblems of struggle, including guns. In the refugee camps of the surrounding countries, the act of remembering Palestine...
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Band Of Neighbors Takes Control Of Local Shopping District
by J HERMAN
The intersection of Central and Lowry Avenues, northeast Minneapolis, is one of the busier shopping areas in the region. From bakeries to bike shops and breweries, it’s a haven for local businesses.
But it wasn’t always like this.
In fact, just four years ago, many vacant buildings and neglected storefronts littered the area as a result of decades of slow investment loss in the area.
To many, the issue was too big to tackle and so such storefronts were left to become an eyesore in the community.
But in 2011, several neighbors came together and decided to make a change to resurrect the once-vibrant shopping district. Five people in total, including Leslie Watson, a nearby resident, formed the Northeast Investment Cooperative, the first of its kind in America.
Any Minnesota resident was able to join the co-op for $1000. Word spread and the group began looking for an investment property to purchase.
A year after that, they had enough money to buy two buildings on Central Avenue, outright.
The properties were sold to local business owners, one to a bike shop and the other to a brewery. This created jobs and wealth that will stay in the region and its community.
The project has also brought together more than 200 members of the community and allowed them to see their investments bring prosperity to their local economy while they purchase from the shops, as opposed to buying from a large corporate chain that takes the money elsewhere.
“Collectively, that wealth will stay in our community,” said Leslie Watson. “If you want to take the long view, that’s the goal.”
Similar investment cooperatives have been popping up in places like Canada, where government policies are in place that encourage and help them grow.
To many residents who take part in the co-op, it fills the void left by Wall Street’s approach to investment by directly creating jobs and pooling wealth in the local community.
Although each of these co-ops are built and run independently of one another, they all share a common thread with each other and the one found in the Central Avenue area; they run on the dedication and hard work of residents.
Long before the Northeast Investment Cooperative had bought their first property, there were lawyers’ fees, real estate broker fees and architectural fees for the renovation of each property.
From their website to their paperwork, the members of the co-op pooled their own skills and made use of them wherever they could. Watson estimated that individual team members were putting in 15 to 20 hours of voluntary work every week during the first phase of the project.
This business model has quite a few different ways it could grow but already, the northeast Minneapolis community and the others throughout North America that have such co-ops are seeing significant wealth growth through investments in their communities.
Jesse Herman is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. He writes and produces video at PowerfulPrimates.com. Jesse began his alternative health journey after chronic back pain and has not looked back since. Follow him on Youtube and Facebook (also more Facebook), broadcasting out of Brazil, Florida, and in a dark distant cave (with internet).
[h/t yesmagazine.org]
[Image: Yes Magazine]
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Billy Bretherton wife and Net Worth. What Happened to Billy Bretherton where is he now?
The world was introduced to pest control expert Billy Bretherton in 2005 during the season five pilot episode of Dirty Jobs in Discovery Channel. He went on to make a few appearances on the show before starring in the reality TV series, Billy The Exterminator. For now, satisfy your curiosity about Billy Bretherton wife and net worth.
Originally The Exterminators, Billy The Exterminator was released in early 2009 and chronicled the professional life of Billy and the jobs done by his Vexcon Animal and Pest Control family business. Although the show had a huge fan base, it came to a surprising and unexplained end in 2012 just after its sixth season.
In the same year, Billy and his wife were arrested in Bossier City, Louisiana and charged with drug possession after police found synthetic marijuana and smoking equipment in the hotel room they were staying. But thanks to a plea bargain, the two were only fined and sentenced to community service. Moreover, still in 2012, Billy left Vexcon citing family differences and moved to Illinois.
Billy Bretherton is Married to Wife Mary Bretherton. Thier Divorce Rumor Explained.
Billy Bretherton Net Worth 2018.
What Happened to Billy Bretherton? Where is Billy Bretherton now?
Billy Bretherton Age, Career, and Wiki-bio
Flavor Flav Net worth, Wife, Age.
During the time Billy The Exterminator aired, the main continuing cast members were Billy himself obviously; his brother, Rick Bretherton; his parents ‘Big’ Bill and Donnie Bretherton; and his wife, Mary Bretherton.
Mary is, in fact, Billy’s second wife as he has previously married a lady by the name Pam. Pam quit during the production of the first season.
Billy Bretherton and his wife, Mary Bretherton
There are speculations that Billy and Mary, who have a son named Bryce, got a divorce. However, since neither of the two has come forward to confirm or deny the rumors, we’d like to believe they are still together.
As for the rest of the family, Ricky tried to revive the show’s ideology in a YouTube channel titled Vexcon The Exterminators. It was short lived with only 16 episodes and less than 1300 subscribers. He however currently runs Vexcon following the retirement of both Billy and Donnie.
In his glory days, Billy Bretherton net worth was about $500,000 thanks to the A&E reality TV show, his Vexcon business, and a few advertising deals here and there.
But considering he left Vexcon, hasn’t been on TV for a long time until recently, and we don’t know of any other sources of his income he had and or has, so his net worth may have reduced significantly. Although top sources still claim his net worth at 500k dollars.
Graham Ferguson Barnwood Builders Wife, Age, Net worth, Wiki-Bio
But now with new season rolling, we can expect his wealth to go up.
After disappearing on us, Billy The Exterminator star finally made a comeback on our screens in an original series titled Billy Goes North. The show first aired on CMT Canada in November 2016 and later on A&E in April 2017 as the seventh season of Billy The Exterminator. In this season, Billy goes up against more fierce and dangerous pests in the Canadian wild. Fans hope he is finally here to stay!
49-year-old William ‘Billy’ Bretherton was born on the 16th of September, 1968 to father Billy Sr. and mother Donnie Bretherton. Before being a reality tv star he enrolled in the United States Air Force at the age of 19. He was then sent to study biology and entomology after an aptitude test proved he had skills in those fields.
He began to seriously pursue an extermination career while posted at the Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. He started Vexcon in May 1996 with his family as his support. Billy’s television career would start years later with the 2012 debut of The Exterminators later renamed Billy The Exterminator.
What happened to Steve Thomas from "This Old House"? Why did He Leave? Know his Net Worth, Wife, and Wiki-bio.
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‘Floribama Shore’ star Jeremiah Buoni Height, Net worth, Girlfriend, Age, Wiki-Bio
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Cory Gardner Cites Nonexistent Entity as a Supporter of His Contraception Proposal
Trump’s HHS Pick a Member of Group Falsely Linking Abortion to Cancer
Trump: Birth Control ‘Should Not Be Done By a Prescription’
News Contraception
Sep 30, 2014, 10:22am Jason Salzman
Rep. Gardner, who's challenging Sen. Mark Udall for U.S. Senate, produced an advertisement citing the “American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists” as a backer of his proposal to sell contraception over-the-counter. But this group does not exist, and an organization with a similar name doesn’t support Gardner’s proposal.
Rep. Gardner produced an advertisement citing the “American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists”—which does not exist—as a backer of his proposal to sell contraception over-the-counter.
Cory Gardner / YouTube
An advertisement arriving in Colorado mailboxes this week promotes Republican senatorial candidate Cory Gardner’s proposal to make “birth control available over-the-counter to adults without a prescription.”
“Cory would ensure women would be able to get the medicine that they need over the counter and around-the-clock, saving you time and improving your life,” the mailer states.
The ad continues:
Supported by the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Cory’s proposal would make oral contraception: Less expensive — about the price of Aspirin; More convenient — helping women obtain The Pill on their own schedule without an appointment; More accessible — ensures women in underserved urban and rural areas have greater ability to obtain The Pill.
The American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, however, appears to be a nonexistent entity.
A Google search for the “American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists” returns references to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
After seeing the Gardner mailer, Kate Connors, ACOG Media Relations Director, told Rewire via email, “For all I know, there is an AAOG out there, somewhere, but it has certainly never come to my attention. I dare say that the mailer’s reference to it is an error.”
Connors said that it was also an “error” for Gardner to suggest that “we have supported his proposal.”
Connors pointed to a September 9 ACOG statement that over-the-counter sale of contraception is a long-term goal, not a proposal it supports currently.
“We feel strongly, however, that [over-the-counter] access to contraceptives should be part of a broader dialogue about improving women’s health care, preventing unintended pregnancies, and increasing use of contraception, including long-acting reversible contraception (LARC),” said ACOG President John C. Jennings in a statement posted on the organization’s website. “Over-the-counter access should not be used as a political tool by candidates or by elected officials.”
The mailer was marked with the logo of “Cory Gardner for Senate” and included the URL for the candidate’s official campaign website. Gardner is facing U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in what is widely considered a toss-up race, and one that could determine control of the Senate.
A person who answered the phone at Gardner’s campaign office insisted a reporter send an email seeking clarification about the mailer. Gardner’s office did not reply via email.
“Although it poses few risks and would make the pill cheaper,” states Gardner’s mailer, “Udall continues to keep bureaucrats between you and your health-care plan. … Udall will not fight for Colorado’s women.”
“But we need cost-free, insured coverage for birth control, and that needs to include IUDs,” Connor wrote. “And don’t forget that all of the Congressional candidate proposals in the world won’t make birth control available over the counter, because it hasn’t been approved by the FDA.”
Politifact.com, in a September 8 analysis, judged Gardner’s claim about the pill being cheaper if sold over-the-counter as “mostly false,” in light of various uncertainties as well as the fact that, under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies cannot charge policy holders a co-pay for preventive health care, including contraception.
Pro-choice organizations are wary of Gardner’s plan.
“We can’t trust what Congressman Gardner says about putting birth control over the counter, because he doesn’t understand the real-life implications for women,” Cathy Alderman, vice president for public affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told Rewire. “Women need to be able to talk to medical professionals about what birth control they need. A carte blanche over-the-counter approach doesn’t take that into consideration.”
Alderman added that Gardner’s proposal is not allowed under Affordable Care Act, which prohibits over-the-counter medicines from being covered by insurance plans. So under current policy, birth control that’s now available without a co-pay for most women under the ACA would cost $600 or more per year.
2014 Elections, Abortion, Birth Control, Contraception, Cory Gardner, egg as person, life at conception act, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Sen. Mark Udall
Dec 1, 5:15pm Ally Boguhn
Sep 15, 5:22pm Ally Boguhn
Commentary Contraception
Will Republican Noises About Over-the-Counter Birth Control Inadvertently Make It Happen?
Jun 11, 5:53pm
Senate Democrats Propose ‘Affordability Is Access’ Bill for Over-the-Counter Birth Control
Jun 10, 10:51am Emily Crockett
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Home Brain & Behavior Black students see themselves anew since Obama’s election
Black students see themselves anew since Obama’s election
Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008 stimulated individual and national reflection on race and changed African-American college students’ perceptions of being black, reports a new Cornell study published in Developmental Psychology (47:6).
Offers new perspective
But how these changes will shape public discourse as the 2012 presidential campaign unfolds or whether the 2012 election outcome will generate similar changes in racial identity is still unknown, say the researchers.
“Obama’s election triggered deep explorations or ‘encounter experiences’ in which these African-Americans [in our study] were challenged to think through the importance and positive value that can be associated with being black,” said Anthony Burrow, assistant professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, co-author of the study with Anthony Ong, associate professor of human development at Cornell, and lead author Thomas Fuller-Rowell, Ph.D. ’10, now a Robert Wood Johnson postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We found that those who explored these aspects more fully experienced the most profound immediate and longer-term changes in their sense of racial identity,” Burrow said.
To examine the impact of the election of the first African-American president on racial identity, the researchers surveyed more than 300 African-American undergraduate students from two large research universities in the Northeast before and after the 2008 election. They looked at the importance of race to a person’s self-concept (centrality), whether or not they feel good about being part of their racial group (private regard) and how they perceive their racial group to be viewed by others (public regard).
Racial identity is important, they say, because it influences how a person understands their experiences and can help or hinder how they navigate life’s challenges and opportunities.
The team found increases in all three aspects of racial identity immediately after the election. Their results also suggest overall enduring increases in public regard. However, long-term increases in private regard were more likely among those who explored their racial identity more following the election.
“One main message here is that important race-relevant social or political events can shift the way individuals think about their race as well as their perception of how others view their race,” said Burrow.
In daily diary entries that were assessed as part of the study, one participant poignantly observed, “Today is a day that I will remember for the rest of my life. I will remember and pinpoint the exact minute that I learned that Obama became president. Today is a day of both pride and awe for me. I am proud because I feel that we have come so far. I am awestruck by the magnitude this will have on history. Sixty years ago, this event would have been unheard of. A black president!” (Anonymous, 2008)
Alzheimer’s gene may impact cognition before adulthood
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2018 Lasker Awards for basic and clinical medical research and special achievement
C. David Allis and Michael Grunstein for discoveries elucidating how gene expression is influenced by chemical modification of histones–the proteins that package DNA within chromosomes
John B. Glen for the discovery and development of propofol, a chemical whose rapid action and freedom from residual effects have made it the most widely used agent for induction of anesthesia in patients throughout the world
Joan Argetsinger Steitz for four decades of leadership in biomedical science–exemplified by pioneering discoveries in RNA biology, generous mentorship of budding scientists, and vigorous and passionate support of women in science
(New York, September 11) The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation today announced the winners of its 2018 Lasker Awards: C. David Allis from Rockefeller University and Michael Grunstein from the University of California, Los Angeles will receive the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award; John B. Glen, formerly from AstraZeneca, will be honored with the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award; and Joan Argetsinger Steitz from Yale University will receive the Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science. Widely regarded as America's top biomedical research prize, the Lasker Awards carry an honorarium of $250,000 for each category. The awards will be presented Friday, September 21, in New York City.
NOTE: A comprehensive package of materials and resources for the press will be available September 11 on the Lasker Foundation website.
The 2018 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award
Working with yeast in the 1980s, Michael Grunstein provided the first demonstration that DNA-packaging histone proteins influence gene expression. He and his team tracked this capability to one end of a histone. Then they showed that the presence or absence of a particular chemical group–an acetyl–at certain spots within histones helps turns genes on and off.
C. David Allis discovered that an established gene co-activator can add acetyl groups to histones and that this modification is crucial for efficient gene expression. These findings sealed the connection between histone modifications and genetic regulation. Grunstein and Allis revealed a previously-hidden layer of gene control that contributes meaningfully to biological processes. From this foundation, researchers have discovered that errors in histone modifications contribute to several developmental disorders and various forms of cancer, providing new targets for potential therapies.
The 2018 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award
The ability to anesthetize patients for surgical procedures is one of the most important medical advances for human health and well-being, but side effects of early drugs complicated their use. In the 1970s, John B. Glen began testing drug candidates to find one that offered a rapid onset of anesthesia, amenability to continued delivery for long surgical procedures, and a fast, gentle recovery. Glen selected propofol, a small molecule drug with these desirable qualities.
After working through several setbacks and complications to formulate the drug for human use, Glen and his collaborators confirmed the safety and efficacy of the drug. Now the standard drug for intravenous induction of anesthesia, propofol has benefited millions of people. Propofol's quick and safe recovery profile means that patients can return home soon after their procedures, allowing for a more comfortable recovery and significantly reduced healthcare costs. Currently, propofol is administered over 60 million times per year in the U.S., and it remains unsurpassed in effectiveness since its introduction in 1989. The milky color of propofol has led anesthesiologists to refer to the drug as "milk of amnesia."
The 2018 Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science
Over the last four decades, Joan Argetsinger Steitz pioneered the field of RNA biology and became widely recognized as a passionate advocate for greater inclusion of women in the scientific community. In her research, Steitz discovered that small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) play a central role in splicing, a key step in gene expression. During this process, cells create the RNA templates used to manufacture proteins. A complicated molecular machine with a core composed of snRNPs cuts out internal sections of precursor messenger RNAs and reconnects the ends to create the final messages.
While carrying out her research, Steitz has dedicated herself to teaching and mentoring young scientists and advocating for women in science. For ten years, Steitz led the Jane Coffin Childs Fund, which grants postdoctoral fellowships to early career researchers. In 2005, she co-authored the influential National Academy of Sciences report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers." Throughout her career, she has tirelessly campaigned for the full inclusion and support of all members of the scientific community and inspired countless women in STEM careers.
About the Lasker Foundation: The Lasker Foundation seeks to increase support for biomedical research by celebrating the power of biomedical science to save and improve human lives. Through its internationally renowned Lasker Awards, educational initiatives, and public advocacy, the Foundation recognizes the most important achievements in science and public service, supports and encourages the scientific leaders of tomorrow, and raises awareness of the ever-present need for research funding. Established in 1942 by Albert and Mary Lasker, the Foundation is committed to inspiring robust and sustained support for biomedical research, fueled by Mary Lasker's call to action: "If you think research is expensive, try disease!"
About the Lasker Awards: For 73 years, the Lasker Awards, America's most prestigious biomedical research awards, have recognized the contributions of leaders who made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of human disease. Recipients of the Lasker Medical Research Awards are selected by a distinguished international jury chaired by Joseph L. Goldstein, recipient of the 1985 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Eighty-seven Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 40 in the last three decades. More details on the Lasker Award recipients, the full citations for each award category, video interviews and photos of the awardees, and additional information on the Foundation are available at http://www.laskerfoundation.org. Follow the Awards on Facebook and Twitter.
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← Catching Up With Mike Levine From Triumph
Interview- Lance Lopez →
80’s Band Strikes Chord With Diverse Crowd
Posted on May 1, 2016 by Joseph Suto
Bear’s Den Inside
Seneca Niagara Casino & Resort
The synth sounds of new wave band A Flock Of Seagulls transformed the Bear’s Den into a time machine Saturday evening. One step inside and you were transformed into the 1980s. While to an average music fan AFOS may seem like a one hit wonder, their performance proved otherwise (the band actually had four songs crack the top 40 on various charts). While keyboardist and lead vocalist Mike Score may be the sole original member remaining, his band was solid and delivered the songs as they were recorded and remembered.
Joining Score were bassist Pando, drummer Michael Brahm and guitarist Joe Rodriguez. These guys helped bring the songs to life. Although the keyboard seemed to be the bands dominating instrument, it was the guitar work of Rodriguez who seemed to steal the spotlight at times.
“Modern Love Is Automatic” from the bands debut started the evening. It turned out to be the first of six songs the band would go on to play from the self titled release. “Telecommunication” was very well received as it had many on their feet dancing to the pulsating beat. How that album never reached platinum status remains a mystery.
The band saved the best for last as “Space Age Love Song”, “Wishing” and the bands top 10 smash “I Ran” brought down the house.
The band returned with a quick encore of “The Traveller” to conclude their 80-minute set.
Anyone who loves good synthesizer driven 80s music should check this band out if they play in your neck of the woods. You will not be disappointed and may even come away with a deeper appreciation of this pioneering band.
Modern Love Is Automatic
She Won’t Let You Down
The More You Live, The More You Love
Space Age Love Song
Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)
I Ran
Special thanks to Phil Pantano from Pantano and Associates
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← Ann Wilson Caught In The Act At Fallsview Casino
Interview: Eddy Clearwater →
Benatar & Giraldo Shine In Niagara Falls
Posted on April 19, 2018 by Joseph Suto
Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo
Acoustic Show
Seneca Niagara Events Center
While the weather outside was anything but delightful, the Seneca Niagara Event Center was heating up with a fantastic evening featuring Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo. The two performed as a duo in a stripped-down storytellers-like format. With Giraldo alternating between acoustic guitars and a piano, the two delivered a mostly satisfying set that featured new songs “Shine” and “After The Fall” both which received a great response from the near sellout crowd.
The show started off with “All Fired Up” the song that usually opens up most of Benatar’s shows. From there they mixed in fan favorites such as “We Live For Love”, “Promises In The Dark” as well as a rare song “Run Between The Raindrops”. The latter was written for their daughter as Neil went on to explain. Prior to last year’s run of duo shows it had not been played since 1988.
Prior to the top-5 smash “We Belong”, Benatar introduced it as one of the Holy 14. She went on to elaborate that the Holy 14 are the 14 songs the fans will give her shit for on Facebook the next day if any of them aren’t played. This lead to a rant about Facebook by Giraldo before he settled into playing the song.
“Shine” started the encore and was a delight and sounded good mixed right in with the rest of the duo’s bigger songs. Benatar also made note that they have been working on a full-length follow-up to 2003’s Go and hope to finish over the next year or so. Judging from this evening’s performance with the strong, powerful vocals from Benatar and the great guitarwork by Giraldo, it is something many are anxiously waiting for.
As Benatar explained at one point during their 90-minute set, that they perform these shows to give the fans a chance to hear the songs the way they were written as well as delving into some deep cuts. Unfortunately, they didn’t even scratch the surface as one critical fan pointed out as he was leaving the venue. Surely you can’t please everyone all of the time. My only gripe was once again the omission of “Fire and Ice”, a song that actually won Benatar a Grammy. I can understand it is a difficult song to play in the electric setting. Since they were in acoustic format I was hoping perhaps they would slip it in. Oh well perhaps some other time. They did add “Invincible” a song they haven’t played much during the duo shows and kicked out “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”.
Overall the show itself was better than I had anticipated. Not only did Benatar sound very strong alongside Giraldo’s impressive guitar and piano work, the duo accomplished exactly what they wanted to and more. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for their next full band show.
Order by Default Filename Size Random
All Fired Up
We Live For Love
Promises In The Dark
Run Between The Raindrops
We Belong
You Better Run
Love is A Battlefield
Heartbreaker/Ring Of Fire
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A few laps, lay-ups, and complete passes and I’m Done
Adam Duerson contemplates the current status of the sports movie in the December 17, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.
Asking whether or not “the perceived need to appeal to women–and overseas markets [has] doomed the sports flick,” Duerson begins his piece, “Endangered Species,” by remarking that “Will Ferrell! On Figure skates! For better or worse…is how sports movies in the year 2007 will be remembered” (26).
After providing some box office numbers, he wonders, “where are the HoosiersRaging Bulls? and the ” and then adds, “the reality is that it’s not nearly as easy to make a sports movie as it used to be. With movie attendance in the U.S. dropping, the new Hollywood business model relies more heavily on foreign receipts.” The problem with this method is that according to Mark Ciardi, “there’s no foreign [earning] on sports movies” overseas.
In addition to how unenthusiastic other countries are for American sports movies, Duerson argues that “there’s the prevailing notion in Hollywood that women choose which movies couples see together but that only men are drawn to sports films.” Duerson gets veteran sports film marketing man Jeff Freedman to comment on the situation, which is basically that a sports film can only be made if the sport is secondary to thematic and other narrative elements. In other words, “the first thing a studio decides…is to say it’s a love story, or a father-son story.”
He includes an unnamed Hollywood marketing professional’s observation that “if somebody wanted to make Raging Bull today, I don’t know that it could happen” because “it’s too dark.” Duerson’s article then implicitly criticizes Hollywood’s multiplex complex as a limitation to the production and wider distribution of sports films that possess artistic qualities on par with dramas and action films. To get funding or a distribution deal, filmmakers are “plugging away with the same old sports comedy-drama-romance hybrids.” He then cites the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro and George Clooney’s period comedy Leatherheads as 2008’s sports film offerings.
Duerson closes his thoughts by pointing out that independent sports cinema may inspire the critics and are received well at film festivals, but distributors aren’t convinced the general public will buy it.
As a one-page article, Duerson understandably doesn’t have the space to delve deeper into the issues and examples he brings up as indicating the steady decline of the sports film. I’m going to attempt to contextualize or offer some more points to ponder. Duerson’s three concerns are profits, audience, and distribution. Ultimately, though, it’s one issue: money. Whether or not a movie is to be made depends on how much money it could make. Hollywood is a business and has always operated along the paradigm of telling stories the audience will purchase (with or without encouragement from the studios). Artistic innovations and creating the impression or building the mythology that making movies (and any art form for that matter) privileges the art above else is realistically speaking wishful thinking.
The example of Raging Bull as a sports film of quality and not just a guilty pleasure (entertainment) needs a bit more background explanation. Kevin J. Hayes articulates in the introduction of Cambridge Film Handbooks’ edition on the film that “superlatives abound whenever people talk about Raging Bull. Not only is it an exemplary cinematic work, it is also a cultural icon representing a rich cross section of themes, issues, and characters that reflect American culture in ways that typical Hollywood films do not” (1). Wouldn’t you say that the bulk of commercial, mainstream American films today don’t come close in this respect? Hayes later adds, “Raging Bull owes an important debt to the heritage of the boxing film genre” and boxing itself (10).
Culturally, Scorsese’s film was conceived in an atmosphere that allowed it to be brought into the world. Its examination of masculinity, violence, and the notion of loss isn’t what would keep a studio head or a distribution company today from a greenlight. Instead, it’s about the way the entertainment industry has changed post-highspeed internet and DVD. The idea of diversification of markets isn’t new to advertisers. Merchandising of characters in films and books aren’t limited to the movies and the publishing industry. Dialogue and images from a film can be found in all consumer markets (ahem, George Lucas). Cross-stitching the music with the movie industry isn’t new either. Elvis. Frank Sinatra. Louis Armstrong. Barbara Streisand.
The difference now is that the internet is a new medium through which music, moving images, and literature can circulate. The behaviors and the tendencies (and preferences) of the buying public (which is primarily teenagers) is devastatingly significant in determining how to make the most amount of money (over a short or long period of time). If the sports film (as a drama) today can’t narratively or thematically be similar to those of earlier generations for reasons of economy rather than artistry, it’s happening across the board. Outside independent cinema, studios have little motivation to make movies–they want to make franchises (that include video game tie-ends).
And, if you want originality in content and form, you might not find it in a movie theatre. You might have to turn to Youtube or an art gallery.
I don’t think it’s that unfortunate that studio heads have to view sports films as not being sports films. Thematically, they’re about more than whatever sport is involved. These films are about relationships between people, self-discovery, and hope, or, in other cases, defeat. Instead of employing the motif or metaphor of a soldier or an artist, these movies elect the athlete.
Adam Duerson, if you’re reading this entry, when I make my football movie, it should be a sign of better things to come. Mine won’t be a sports romantic comedy.
I’m cognitively wiped out right now. I’ll revisit this post again.
Originally published at Century Fille.
This entry was posted in Basketball, Films, Football and tagged Adam Duerson, art, hollywood, Martin Scorsese, money, Raging Bull, sports illustrated, sports movies, Will Ferrell, youtube on December 18, 2007 by sittingpugs.
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Turkmenistan: industrial enterprises provided with gas
A number of enterprises in Turkmenistan’s Lebap province are provided with fuel as a result of commissioning a high-pressure Bagtyyarlyk-Garlyk gas pipeline with a length of 250 kilometers, said the message from the country’s oil and gas complex. Natural gas is the main source for operation of the cement plant and recently commissioned Watan state…
Uzbekistan: implementation of 43 investment projects completed in H1 2016
Uzbekistan completed realization of 43 projects within the investment program in the first half of 2016, a publication of the Ministry of Economy and State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan said. The publication said that realization of 43 production objects with the total cost of $1.9 billion was completed within the investment program in the first…
Tajikistan: external debt-GDP ratio up
Tajikistan’s external debt-to-GDP ratio has reached 35.9%, Tajik Finance Minister Abdusalom Qurboniyon announced at a news conference in Dushanbe. “As of June 30, Tajikistan’s external debt amounted to $2.27 billion, or 35.9% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)”, the minister said. Qurboniyon attributed increase in the external debt to implementation of a number of…
Kyrgyzstan: EBRD and Switzerland finance new wastewater plant
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) together with the Government of Switzerland provided financing for the new wastewater plant in the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan. The EBRD extended a 3 million euro sovereign loan and Switzerland a 5.05 million euro grant for the project, undertaken by the Osh Water Company, a municipal…
Kyrgyzstan: Centerra transfers $14.2 million dividends
Centerra transferred $14.2 million dividends to Kyrgyzstan, the press service of KyrgyzAltyn JSC reported. The site of the Canadian company noted that on July 26, its board of directors declared the payment of a quarterly dividend of $0.04 Canadian dollars per share. On the same day the company’s largest shareholder accounts – KyrgyzAltyn JSC –…
Belarus: Belavia’s first aircraft in World of Tanks livery lands in Minsk National Airport
The first Belavia aircraft bearing the World of Tanks livery has landed in the Minsk National Airport. Tanks represent the key component in the game. One tank is painted on the aircraft as an ornamental pattern. The aircraft itself is black with orange insets, a rare sight as well. Organizers of the event underlined that…
Belarus: turn-key construction services to Russia’s Stavropol Territory offered
Belarus is interested in implementing turn-key construction projects in Stavropol Territory. The press service of the Belarusian Architecture and Construction Ministry released the statement after Deputy Architecture and Construction Minister Dmitry Semenkevich and Director General of the civil engineering holding company Belstroycentr Alexander Studnev visited the Russian region. During the meeting representatives of Belarus and…
Belarus: external state debt up in H1 2016
As of July 1, Belarus’ external state debt totaled $13.1 billion, up by $637.1 million, or 5.1% since the beginning of the year (taking into account differences in currency exchange rates), representatives of the Belarusian Finance Ministry said. In January-June external state borrowings totaled $943.8 million, including $500 million borrowed from the Eurasian Fund for…
Belarus: China to set up center to develop innovative technologies
Belarus, ChinaBy admin 01.08.2016 Leave a comment
Belarus and China intend to set up a center to develop innovative technologies in the area of industrialization of scientific and technical achievements, the press service of the State Science and Technology Committee of Belarus said. The sides intend to sign an agreement on establishing a Belarusian-Chinese center meant to develop innovative technologies for industrializing…
Russia: bank agreement on financing hydropower project signed with Argentina
The Argentine Finance Ministry and Russia’s Vnesheconombank signed an agreement on financing construction of the Chihuido I hydropower plant in the amount of $1.9 billion, the ministry said in a press release. This covers 85% of the project’s estimated cost of $2.23 billion. In April 2015, Russia and Argentina signed about twenty agreements during President…
Kyrgyzstan: Abramovich invites Chinese investors to mine gold
Gold mining company Highland Gold, whose major shareholder is Primerod International Ltd. of the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and partners (32% stake), has invited Chinese investors to develop its deposits at Unkurtash in Kyrgyzstan. Statement of willingness to work with the Chinese investors was made at an industry conference in Beijing, the representative of Highland…
Azerbaijan: 14,000 pipes delivered for TAP construction
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) Consortium said that 14,000 pipes had already been delivered to Greece and Albania for the construction of the Trans Adriatic gas pipeline. This amount accounts for about 30% of all pipes that will be used for the pipeline’s construction. TAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas…
Azerbaijan: 12 projects receive investment promotion documents
Twelve more entrepreneurs have received investment promotion documents worth a total of 106 million manats for their projects. The documents were handed to the entrepreneurs during the event organized by Azerbaijan’s Economy Ministry on July 29. Azerbaijan’s Deputy Economy Minister Niyazi Safarov said that despite the difficult economic situation in the world, Azerbaijan took systematic…
Ukraine: Cabinet approves of inventions and production for 2016
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved of the state order for 64 scientific and technical (experimental) inventions as well as scientific and technical production in 2016. The corresponding decision has been taken at a government meeting. Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Liliia Grynevych said the inventions would be launched in 2016…
Ukraine: government approves of 1.21 billion UAH project for upgrading another section of Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers has approved of the project on modernization and overhaul of the section 3,364.5-3,391.2 km of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline. The corresponding decision is outlined in the Cabinet resolution No. 523-r dated July 22. The total cost of repairs of the section 26.7 km long was approved at 1.21 billion UAH, in…
Tajikistan seeking investors to resume operations at the loss-making fertilizer plant
Tajikistan is seeking investors for resumption of operations at the debt-ridden and loss-making fertilizer plant, which is located in the southern province of Khatlon. Tajik Minister of Industry and New Technologies Shavkat Bobozoda noted that some Chinese and European companies had shown interest in TojikAzot, the fertilizer factory located in the Tajik southern city of…
Uzbekistan claims 61st place in the world on GDP based on PPP
The World Bank issued a rating of countries on the volume of gross domestic product (GDP) based on purchasing power parity (PPP) for 2015. The rating includes 188 states. According to the rating of the World Bank, Uzbekistan was on the 61st place on the size of the GDP based on PPP with the $187.66…
Uzbekistan: 6 million square meters of habitations commissioned in H1 2016
Uzbekistan commissioned 6 million square meters of habitations in January-June, a publication of the Ministry of Economy and the State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan said. According to the publication, about 4.4 million square meters of habitations were commissioned in rural areas. About 856.7 km of water networks were also launched across Uzbekistan in the first…
Uzbekistan keeps the 43rd place in the world on population
The World Bank published the rating of countries on number of populations in 2015. The rating includes 217 countries. According to the World Bank’s data, number of population of Uzbekistan made up 31.3 million people in 2015. In 2014, Uzbekistan also was on the 43rd place in the rating with the population of 30.74 million…
Uzbekistan: localized goods output up in H1 2016
Uzbekistan produced 2.3 trillion soums worth of goods within the program of localization of production of ready goods, spare parts and materials in the first half of 2016, a publication of the Ministry of Economy and State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan said. From start of the year the country produced localized goods valued at 2.3…
Turkey completing construction of its BTK railway section
87% of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway has been constructed in Turkey, Ahmet Arslan, Turkish minister of transport, shipping and communications, said. “The BTK is being constructed on schedule”, the minister said, adding that two bridges were being built over the Kars river. The minister stressed that the BTK railway project was of particular importance for…
Uzbekistan: $1.8 billion of foreign investments used in H1 2016
Uzbekistan used foreign investments and loans for $1.8 billion in the first half of 2016, up by 17.2% YoY, a publication of the Ministry of Economy and the State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan said. About 23% of total sum of used investments in the first half of 2016 were foreign investments and loans, the publication…
Uzbekistan: share of small businesses in GDP up in H1 2016
Share of small businesses in the gross domestic product of Uzbekistan grew from 44.7% in the first half of 2015 to 46% in the first half of 2016, a publication of the Ministry of Economy and the State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan said. At the same time, share of the sector in industry rose from…
Uzbekistan: Qishloq Qurilish Bank’s assets reach 4.861 trillion soums in H1 2016
Total sum of net assets of Qishloq Qurilish Bank reached 4.861 trillion soums as of June 30. In the result of the second quarter of 2016, total size of the bank’s capital reached 462.4 billion soums, the bank press release said. The credit investments of the bank made up 4.258 trillion soums, of which 203…
Azerbaijan: Qatar Airways flight from Tbilisi to Baku delayed for 8 hours
The Qatar Airways plane operating the flight from Tbilisi to Baku has been delayed for almost eight hours due to technical reasons, the Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport said. The plane was due to take off from the Tbilisi International Airport at 13:40 (GMT+4 hours) and land at the Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport at…
Tajikistan: Pakrut Gold Project production to start in August 2016
Production of gold at the Pakrut Gold Project is expected to start next month, according to the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies (MoINT). An official source at MoINT says the first samples of affinage gold were received at the Pakrut Gold Project in the autumn of 2015 and that was done for the purpose…
Azerbaijan: Shah Deniz field output up in H1 2016
The consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas and condensate field development produced 5.4 billion cubic meters in the first half of the year, Natural Gas Europe reported citing Azerbaijani top energy official. That figure indicates a 3.8% growth YoY. Daily production hit a new record above 30 million cubic meters. The current output was on…
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spacesofidentity.net is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary international web journal that was operational from 2001-2008. spacesofidentity.net was dedicated to issues of tradition, cultural boundaries and identity formation in Central and Eastern Europe. Articles were peer-reviewed and make contributions to debates in cultural studies, scrutinizing the post-Soviet symbolic geographies that emerged during the last decades of the twentieth century. Objects of analysis were the histories and narratives in which often conflicting forms of identification are negotiated. Feelings of territorial cultural belonging, of Heimat and exile were analyzed, for example, through the prisms of migration patterns, diasporic experiences and urban lifestyles. Essays and scholarly articles came from a number of disciplines: history, sociology, and political science, as well as literature, linguistics, ethnology, cultural anthropology, cultural geography, cultural studies, film studies and gender studies.
spacesofidentity.net was launched by the team of the research project “Tradition, Cultural Boundaries and the Construction of Spaces of Identity: Case Studies for Central Europe" (1999-2001, led by Markus Reisenleitner), which was located at the Centre for Austrian and Central European Studies (now Wirth Institute) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta and funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science as part of the Cultural Studies program launched in 1998 by Christina Lutter. spacesofidentity.net was a collective effort and the responsibility of a team of editors (Wladimir Fisher, Susan Ingram, Srdja Pavlovic, Markus Reisenleitner, and Andriy Zayarnyuk).
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An interview with David Gray
The adored and decorated English singer-songwriter explains how he found his way from folktronic to electro-experimental, without losing a crumb of the emotion.
A few years ago, electronic music was an intriguing but out-of-reach endeavour to multi-award-winning singer-songwriter David Gray; at the time, he said that it’d be difficult to make such a stylistic shift and ensure that it still rang true, and authentic. With Gold In A Brass Age he’s found his secret path in. “I think the pitfall is, there’s a classic kind of ‘slap a beat on something to make it sound hip’ – these window-dressing techniques,” he explains. “I’m not interested in that.
I’m interested in getting inside the music myself, and finding, perhaps, some of the playufulness and bravery that you get in experimental music, as a guide.
The fact that there are no rules and you can be anything you want – that’s one of the things that’s so refreshing about electronic programming in general – just how cheeky and irreverent and creative it is.”
Gray sought an accomplice who had the guts to step blithely into that electronic garden. “I found the perfect ally and collaborator in my producer Ben [de Vries] – from the moment we hit it off, it was just a real joy. It was finding someone who could really tune into my music, and what I was trying to do.” De Vries proved himself a devotee to the experimental approach. “I would play my guitar, he’d record it, then he’d chop it up into a cubic version of itself; or he’d get a piano part and chop off the actual chord hit, and leave the after-flow of the sound hanging in the strings,” Gray enthuses. “It would take a long time. But you end up with a sonic world that you haven’t been in before. It sounds refreshingly unfamiliar and yet somehow it’s yours – you’ve created it.”
All across the album, soundscapes have been carefully arranged; single Sapling has many interconnecting parts of brass, banjo, and percussion; the title track is as intricate as a forest ecosystem (right down to the whines of its mosquitoes); and A Tight Ship contains harp, something like a tiny bird’s heartbeat, and many little interwoven knocks that don’t sound artificially constructed because they’re not vacuum-sealed: you can still hear the air around the sound.
“That’s exactly what happened,” Gray says. “The wonderful thing about technology is you can so easily create your own instruments. For example: we were working on Hurricane Season and my daughter came in, and when she left in a huff, she slammed the door. I said ‘Actually, that sounded quite good,’ so we kept slamming the studio door and we sampled it and put it in the song. One time I was hitting the rhythm on my knees with an empty coffee up and Ben said ‘I think that sounds really good, why don’t we record that?’ You can start from any point. You need to be disinhibited and very sort of free about what you’re doing.”
His primary point, though, is always to serve the melody and lyrics which are the heart of his material. “Ultimately I want to get the lyrics across. The vocal’s quite dry, generally, on this record – I kept it quite close to the mic. It’s not big, glorious reverb. It’s quite intimate – that’s the scale I was trying to work on.” At the same time, even this fundamental instrument can be bent in new ways. Gray explains that when his friends first heard the album’s title track, they didn’t recognise his voice. “My voice is hanging almost in falsetto, it’s out of my natural range – that Marvin Gaye sort of place, where you’re straining just to hold that note. I was really delighted when they didn’t recognise that it was me.”
The pinnacle of the vocal experiments can be found in stunning penultimate track Mallory, which sounds like a colossal, slow waterfall in reverse. “It’s about as out there as I think I’ve ever managed to get,” Gray laughs. “I said, ‘I’ve got this feeling of building a vocal mountain at the end of the song.’ I had to hold that note, and rise it up, and I had to do that about 60 times from different starting points: low to middle, middle to high. Then I did ones that went down, and we did synth parts that went down in the same way the voices were coming up, to create this crazy vertigo sound. It was massive. I was absolutely f–ed after that. Live, that song has become a monument already – it’s nuts.”
Gold In A Brass Age is out now via Inertia.
David Gray is touring in April 2019:
Sun 14 April, Riverside Theatre, Perth – tickets
Tue 16 & Wed 17 April, Enmore Theatre, Sydney – tickets
Fri 19 & Sat 20 April, Palais Theatre, Melbourne – tickets
Posted by Zoë Radas | Mar 5, 2019 | MUSIC INTERVIEWS |
Tags: David Gray, guitar
PreviousNew release vinyl giveaway: Angus & Julia Stone, ‘Down The Way’
NextR.I.P. Luke Perry (1966–2019)
Interview: Austra
Interview: Thundamentals
Hope, regret and absurdity: A chat with Frank Iero
Saluting 20 years of ‘The Captain’: A Q&A with Kasey Chambers
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Stella Morabito
On Relationships, Power, and Freedom: How you and your friends can turn the tide.
" . . . his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings, and because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination."
-- Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"
Excerpt of Marshall McLuhan Interview in 1977 — “The Medium is the Message” — Part III
July 27, 2018 | Culture, Media, Philosophy, Society
In the last of this little series on Marshall McLuhan, I offer for the curious a video excerpt of a 1977 ABC (Australia) interview with Marshall McLuhan. It’s about 14 minutes. Again, his main focus is how the environment created by a medium has more of an effect on us than the content itself.
Bookcase: McLuhan and “The Medium is the Message” — Part II
July 26, 2018 | Books, Education, History, Philosophy, Society
Marshall McLuhan, 1945. (Wikimedia Commons)
What did Marshall McLuhan mean by “The medium is the message?” I think the idea is clearer today than back in 1962 when he published his landmark book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He argued that it was not the content within the media that affects us the most, whether the media be radio, TV, newspapers, or anything else. Rather, it is the actual medium itself that changes us, that transforms our minds. To try to unpack this concept, just think about your average teenagers today with their smart phones. (Or yourself!) Is it mostly the content on that phone that influences them as they ceaselessly tap and slide their fingers across the screen? Are they really looking for the latest news? What’s more addictive — the content or the process? McLuhan would likely argue that it is the environment of the medium itself that has us transfixed. It is the technology that is transforming us.
This is a also a theme in Nicholas Carr’s 2011 book The Shallows, in which he posits that the internet actually is changing how we think and even the very structure of our brains as we allow ourselves to get pulled into its clickholes that never seem to end. As an aside, I’ll add that is why it’s critical that we step back from communications media and re-learn how to connect with people one-on-one and face-to-face. The forces of these technologies have become way too powerful, as have the tech titans who are controlling social media.
It is the way in which we use a technology that causes it to become an “extension of man,” as McLuhan subtitle implies. Interestingly, he means that he sees technology as extensions of our bodies, extensions of our natural functions. For example, he has a chapter on clothing as a medium — an extension of our skin. And transportation such as cars and bicycles are media that are extensions of our feet. Those that affect our minds in terms of audio-visual media are, likewise, extensions of our central nervous systems. If you are interested in the development of language — and especially how the phonetic alphabet impacted human society — that’s another reason for extending your eyes to read this amazing book.
By the way, five years later (in 1967) McLuhan coined another phrase: The Medium is the Massage. This is the idea that a medium –whether TV, radio, the internet, a photograph — actually massages our senses and changes our perceptions in ways we don’t realize. So rather than the content of the message itself, it’s the medium — the presentation of the content, if you will — that affects us most. I tend to agree. And I think awareness of this point is key to building self-awareness today.
Bookcase: Looking at “The Medium is the Message” 56 years Later — Part I
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was a communications professor in Canada when he published his landmark book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in 1962. It is an absolutely fascinating read, though convoluted at times.
You may know that McLuhan coined a lot of well known phrases, such as “The medium is the message” and “global village.” But his theories are amazing and prescient. Some of what he writes is all over the map and I don’t agree with all of it. But he predicted with uncanny accuracy that with the information explosion due to hit later in the 20th century, our society would not really experience pluralism.
Quite the contrary. At the time, he wrote about how the medium of television was affecting us. His general thesis was that the effect of a medium itself — the environment it creates — is far more vast than the content of any particular program on it. His verdict: we were actually undergoing an implosion of the Western society. In other words, television was causing us to regress, to return to tribalism and divisions as opposed to becoming a more cohesive and open society. Consider also how the internet is affecting thought processes — causing a loss of clarity with all the noise and scatter that accompanies the technology. Well, McLuhan seemed to foresee that. He warned that newer communications technologies would only further expedite the implosion.
I’m certain this was very counter-intuitive when he wrote the book. After all, what could seem more mind-opening than having more avenues of expression that would come with more avenues of information? And more people chiming in? My personal conclusion is this: Well, it depends on how aware we are of how media plays on our minds. Are we more open to reason and logic, or have people become more emotional? And it also depends on who controls the media. We as individuals who believe in self-governance? Or power elites directing a media that drive us more into a collective mindset?
Part II tomorrow . . .
(Book cover above is the MIT Press 30th Anniversary Edition)
Food for Thought: Today’s Two Political Camps are really just Pro-Thought or Anti-Thought
July 22, 2018 | Culture, Education, Free Speech, Freedom of Association, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Society
“The Thinker,” Auguste Rodin, 1904. This cast is in the Palace of the Legion of Honor in (Ha! Today’s Belly of the Anti-Thought Beast!) San Francisco (Wikimedia Commons)
Last month I wrote a Federalist piece in which I elaborate on a conclusion I reached some time ago. There are really only two political camps: Pro-Thought and Anti-Thought. Think about it. The tired old labels of Left and Right and Conservative and Liberal and so on don’t really mean anything. It’s time people learn — or re-learn — how to think clearly and for ourselves. And realize that our basic choices in self-identifying are either as a Free Thinker or a Thought Policer.
Here’s a novel idea: Let’s teach kids — and everyone else! — how to think independently of what the media and Hollywood and Academics on their high horses tell us to think. (Those folks aren’t really thinking on their own, anyway.) Let’s stop being slaves to propaganda.
You can read the article here: “Today’s Two Main Political Camps are Pro-Thought and Anti-Thought.” And here’s an excerpt:
“Let’s remember that all of the other First Amendment rights follow in logical order from the first: freedom of religion/belief/conscience/thought. Freedom of speech is the right to express what you think and believe. Freedom of press means the right to record those expressed thoughts in writing or other media. In this vein, freedom of association would mean being able to deliver your ideas to anyone willing to listen. It means the right to peaceably assemble and have open conversation with other people.
“The heavy hand of the state has no right to cut off or interfere in our ability to spark thoughtful conversations. If the state violates our First Amendment rights, the First Amendment also gives us the right to petition as a means of fighting back against that abuse of power.”
“Once the Mass State starts manipulating language by legislating everyday expressions, such as forcing every citizen to adhere to unfamiliar pronoun protocols under the guise of anti-discrimination, it builds walls between people. That’s exactly what it’s designed to do.
“We’ve probably all observed how political correctness controls speech and thought by inducing self-censorship. How does this happen? Through manipulating the primal human terror of being socially isolated for non-compliance. People comply with political correctness in order to avoid that perceived isolation. Yet political correctness is designed to isolate us socially through our compliance with it! Heads, they win; tails, you lose.
“The only way to avoid that Catch-22 is to stand up to political correctness before its illusions root too deeply. The First Amendment is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. And it’s all or nothing.
“The only way the bubble of political correctness can pop is if all free thinkers are inclined to follow through with the First Amendment. Thinking will only remain free as long as we express our thoughts by speaking them, recording them, and cross-pollinating them through peaceful assembly. Nothing less can insure against the de-humanizing effects of thought policing.
“Let’s think about that. And talk about it constantly.”
Let’s Build More Awareness of Mob Psychology
July 21, 2018 | Community, Culture, Freedom of Association, Friendship, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Society
Zombies from 1968 horror film “Night of the Living Dead.” (Wikipedia Commons)
The weird thing about mobs is that they tend to be made up of individuals with little or no self-awareness. Participation in a mob mentality strikes me as a way of compensating for that loss. People tend to lose themselves — and get a false sense of purpose — from taking part in mob action. For example, consider the persona of “social justice warrior.” Those who adopt the SJW persona pretend to be aware of inequality. Why? My guess is that’s because they are so unaware of what true inequality is — that it stems from ignorance and a lack of experience in dealing with real people on a real level. They resist honest interaction, honest relationships. And nothing could be more self-destructive than that. It’s a zombie-like attitude that actually perpetuates inequality.
Take the case of “Barrett Wilson” — a pseudonym. He recently wrote a piece for Quillette, entitled “I was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me.” He provides a chilling picture of mob behavior. Having been a part of the “social justice industry” Wilson participated in ganging up on others and smearing them as “racists” and “sexists.” Why? Because it felt good. He explained that he got an emotional rush from behaving that way: “For years, I was blind to my own gleeful savagery.” Of course, at a certain point the savage mob turned on him. That’s the nature of the beast. He lost his well paying job because of the accusations and total lack of due process in the social justice industry. Now he delivers food for a living. He’ll lose that job too if the mob finds out who he is.
The silver lining is that Wilson realized that getting off the mob train — and doing honest work — has allowed him to recover some sanity in life, and best of all, appreciation for others: “It’s led me to rediscover how to interact with people in the real world. I’m a kinder and more respectful person now. . . ”
I wrote up a piece about this in the Federalist last week. You can read it here: What to Learn from the Social Justice Warrior Who was Eaten by His Own Mob.” The more aware we become of mob psychology, the more able we are to think on our own and relate to others.
Soviet Defector Yuri Bezmenov’s Love Letter to America
May 29, 2018 | Books, Freedom of Association, History, Propaganda, Society
In 1970 a Soviet KGB agent stationed in India disguised himself as a hippie and blended in with a crowd. He managed to escape detection and found his way to the West where he defected. Yuri Bezmenov took the name Tomas Schuman, and wrote a short book entitled “Love Letter to America.” In it he describes how he fell in love with the goodness of America and couldn’t go on promoting the deceptions and inhumane tactics that poisoned so many lives. Below is a 1984 interview with him “Deception was my Job” in which Bezmenov tries to warn Americans about the ideological subversion that is practiced on them by totalitarian actors, such as the Soviet KGB:
It’s a fascinating interview in so many ways. Bezmenov was a member of the privileged elite in the Soviet Union. He had nothing to gain materially by defecting, and certainly nothing to gain in terms of prestige. It was the weight of conscience that caused him to break free of a life of practicing deception — and to take the great risks involved in making a break for freedom. In his new life he resolved to do the best he could to help us understand how totalitarians play the game of ideological subversion, in which they push open societies to become closed societies. You should look at his book in the link above to get the full story. On page 22 of his book, he includes a chart to show the four stages of Soviet ideological subversion: 1.) Demoralization, which takes about a generation’s time, 15-20 years; 2.) Destabilization, which takes about 2-5 years; 3.) Crisis, which is a matter of months; and finally 4.) Normalization, basically the mopping up operation once an authoritarian system is in place.
It’s interesting that the demoralization phase in America began a whole lot longer ago than 20 years. I would guess at least 50 years or so. If Bezmenov’s theory is correct, I think there are several reasons why America would still be standing as a free nation with an intact — though much threatened — Constitution. A lot of unpredicted forces seem to have disrupted the demoralization and destabilization processes. The election of Ronald Reagan would be one disruption, especially with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Many would also put the election of Donald Trump into this category of an unpredictable black swan event. And there are a whole lot of cross currents in a free society that can foil the plans of even the most calculating totalitarians. Chief among them, in my opinion, are freedom of association and freedom of speech that serve to cross pollinate ideas and feed a ripple effect of freedom.
The Link between Mass Schooling and Mental Instability in Kids
February 25, 2018 | Bureaucracy, Culture, Education, Political Correctness, Society
High School Hallway. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
The other day I wrote a piece for the Federalist in which I explore the ways mass public schooling actually cultivates mental instability in children. You can read it here: “13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability in Kids.”
In the wake of another school shooting – and now the ways children are being used to serve as mouthpieces for PC agendas, including (but not limited to) gun control — I think it’s high time we take a good hard look at the institutions that are shaping them for most of their waking hours. The schools teach abject conformity in so many ways, that I believe they are literally making kids ill. In my piece I list 13 ways this happens in today’s government mega-schools. They include the hierarchy of cliques, status anxiety, relational aggression, hostility towards family and faith, politicization, and enforced conformity.
I’m sure you can add many more ways today’s schools feel oppressive, and even prison-like. And yet there are now places called “school refusal clinics” for children to be psychologically “treated” if school becomes so alienating and lonely for children that it literally makes them sick.
Below is an excerpt on just one of those 13 points. In it, I reflect on how the sheer size of today’s schools have grown exponentially. I think this in itself promotes an alienating environment that’s not conducive to mental health.
Back in 1929-30, there were about 248,000 public schools in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. How many today? Far less than half that. By 2013-14, the number had shrunk to 98,000.
When you consider that the U.S. population nearly tripled in that timeframe, there’s no question this factory model of schooling has grown exponentially. The numbers speak to the intense bureaucratization of a public school system that is becoming more centralized with less local control, packing ever-larger numbers of students in one place.
The natural effect for a young human being is an emotional malaise that fuels a sense of confusion and detachment. I believe the sociologist Emile Durkheim coined the term “anomie” to describe this state of isolation. Even the physical architecture of public schools is getting more estranging. They tend to be larger and more looming, almost blade-runner-like in their effect of shrinking and sequestering individuals to irrelevance.
My FRC talk about Social and Emotional Programming, the latest fad in Education
February 23, 2018 | Bureaucracy, Children, Community, Culture, Education, Family, Freedom of Association, Language, Law, Loneliness, Persuasion, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Religion, Society
I recently spoke at the Family Research Council about a new fad in mass public schooling called “social and emotional learning” (SEL.) Those who advocate for SEL claim the program will give children critical life skills, such as empathy, getting along with others, and making good decisions. An organization called the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) wants a government mandate that will bring this program into every school. You can watch my FRC policy lecture here:
In this talk I give my perspective on SEL. While good teachers are always a godsend, bureaucrats can never achieve what they promise in such programs. Especially since their framework is mass schooling. Such values and attitudes need to be taught in intimate settings of trust, such as families. Not in hyper-bureaucratized mega-schools. I see the SEL program as a bait-and-switch operation, because it demands universal compliance with its methods, with its content, and with its monopoly. By its very monolithic nature as program driven by a government monopoly, it is coercive. In the video, you’ll see a clip in which a representative for SEL tells us that they “need the WHOLE child.” And if you delve into this more, you can see that the SEL program is really all about enforcing conformity: Conformity of feelings, attitudes, emotions, speech, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. When such things are directed by a centralized State mandate, rather than by de-centralized mediating institutions — institutions of family, faith, and voluntary associations — there can be no freedom, nor can there be real diversity.
Staged Hate in Charlottesville? In War, Perception is Everything.
August 26, 2017 | Language, Persuasion, Political Correctness, Politics, Propaganda, Society
“All the world’s a stage; And all the men and women merely players . . . ” — Shakespeare, As You Like It
Below is an excerpt from my latest Federalist piece: “America’s Post-Charlottesville Nervous Breakdown was Deliberately Induced.” I hope you’ll have a chance to read it in full.
“Wars are won or lost based mostly on perceptions of events, not on what actually happens. This is true for any given battlefield, whether it’s the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam or the ideological battlefield over the future of the First Amendment as played out in Charlottesville in 2017. The reality of what takes place in the public arena is always secondary to any projected illusion.
So let’s never forget this: Whoever has the power to dictate public perceptions of reality is in a position to dictate public opinion and behavior. Abusing language and images to stir up emotions is an ancient trick of power-mongers. And once journalism turns into unchecked propaganda, we become trapped in its dangerous illusions.”
The social turmoil we are witnessing today has largely been manufactured through the combination of three elements: 1. the manipulation of our language; 2. the deliberate use of such loaded language to cultivate extreme emotions in people, particularly anger and resentment; and 3. the role of mass media as a nuclear device to impose those perceptions on a mass scale.
Here’s another interesting sidelight to consider. Public Relations firms such as Crowds on Demand provide actors for protests and rallies and run ads on Craigslist to recruit and pay for that purpose. So it’s very easy to create illusions of riots if you can rent a mob for it. The blog Gates of Vienna ran an interview recently with an eyewitness who was in Charlottesville on the day of the riots and reports that protesters from both sides — attired both in “counter-protester” clothing such as Antifa or BLM shirts AND neo-Nazi/KKK shirts — were dropped off from the same bus. And this happened with a line of chartered buses, both sides apparently sharing the same vehicles. The story is here: “All the World’s a Stage.” Whether or not you believe this, the fact that politicized officials ordered police to stand down lends credence to the scenario of a staged riot.
Gratitude for the Devotion and Labor of Fathers
June 17, 2017 | Children, Family, Feminism, Gender, Marriage, Society
Saint Joseph, patron of fathers and workers. Guido Reni c. 1640. (19th c. photograph by James or Domenico Anderson, Wikimedia Commons)
My Father’s Day piece at the Federalist is a meditation on the contributions of fathers to the labor of their households. You can read it here: “Rather than Judging Fathers’ Household Labor, Let’s Appreciate It.”
One of the recent feminist complaints is that men should contribute more to housework — as in laundry, dishes, and child care. Rarely do we hear anything about “gender equity” when it comes to the sort of household labor that is traditionally masculine. But Dads who take on projects to add sweat equity contribute a lot to their families, though those things are little noted in the culture. When I think of all my husband has done to promote the little homestead, I’m grateful. And I’ve always preferred doing the housework if it frees him up for such big ticket projects.
And when I think back on my own father who actually did a lot of housework, grocery shopping, and caregiving, I am very grateful for all he contributed both as a breadwinner and on the homefront. He was an amazing man who had a hard life. But he always appreciated his blessings, especially his family. He was cheerful,, and truly a delight to be around. Remarkable. In my Federalist piece, I reflect on the many things he did for his family, quietly and without complaint.
I think trying to keep score in household chores is a lose-lose situation in any relationship, assuming both are contributing according to their gifts. Fathers in particular should be more appreciated for their efforts, whether the labor is “gendered” or not. Everyone has something to offer, and it’s up to the team to work out a system without fixating on 50-50.
On this Father’s Day, let’s appreciate the devotion of fathers and their unique gifts, whatever they might be.
"You can observe a lot by watching." -- Yogi Berra
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The Sun Will Shine
by Bill Overton
© Copyright - Bill Overton / Bill Overton (888295148337)
Tenor sax, alto flute, electric and acoustic baritone guitars and soul-toned vocals presenting great songs whose only connection is that they are not heard often enough, recorded along with two veteran trios.
Genre: Jazz: Mainstream Jazz
1. Dream Dancing
2. Two for the Road
3. The Lamp Is Low
4. Born to Be Blue
5. So Many Stars
6. Twilight World
7. Sophisticated Lady
8. My Baby Just Cares for Me
9. You Don't Own Me
10. Falling in Love With Love
11. Fools Rush In
12. Wichita Lineman
13. Harlem River Blues
14. A Case of You
Bill Overton was born in Memphis in 1954 and grew up there immersed in its blues, jazz and soul music. After receiving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana, he moved to New York City in 1981 where he performed with such artists as Mel Lewis, Doc Cheatham, Mickey Roker, Major Holley, Vic Dickinson, Rosemary Clooney, Vince Giordano's Nighthawks, Howard Alden, Bo Diddley, the Temptations, the Spinners, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and many others while teaching at the Brooklyn Conservatory, William Patterson College, and the Aebersold Jazz Clinics, as well as in the public schools. He has recorded extensively and conducted clinics, master classes and seminars throughout the U.S. and abroad. Bill and his family moved to Libertyville, Illinois, in 1998, and, for the past fifteen years, taught band, guitar and music technology at Oak Grove School in Green Oaks, IL. Bill is now fully focused upon his playing career and continues to perform with the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, his own quartet, and many others. His debut recording as a leader, "The Sun Will Shine", has just been completed and released.
“Music is a blessing and a gift and I am so proud and thankful to be a musician. I’ve had so many great experiences with music throughout my life and I’m glad to be able to share my joy with others through music. There are many people who have been kind to me and I want to thank them: My family (Marilou, Roseanne, George, Nellie, and Sissy). Bobby Newton, Billy Crouch, my true brother who has always reminded me, over the years, when I got distracted or discouraged, that “Always remember, you are an ARTIST!”. Larry Raspberry, Randy Sandke, Art Davis, Dave Huber, Jeff Lindberg, Jeff Stitely, David Onderdonk, Vince Giordano, Jason Overton, Travis Rosenthal, Douglas Lemmon, Bill Conway, Jeanne O’Connor, Ron Dewar, Jerry DiMuzio and all of the wonderful musicians with whom I’ve had the good fortune to play. The music contained here is about faith and hope. No matter how bad things may seem to be, one day soon “The Sun Will Shine”.
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Browse by Author or Creator
Prazeres, L. and Kim, Jae Min and Hand, Jon (2009) Improving communication in building simulation supported projects. In: 11th International IBPSA Conference, 2009-07-27 - 2009-07-30.
Clarke, J.A. and Hand, J. and Kim, J.M. and Prazeres, L.M.R. (2007) Delivering building simulation information via new communication media. In: 10th IBPSA Conference on Building Simulation 2007, 2007-09-03 - 2007-09-06, Beijing.
Prazeres, L.M.R. and Clarke, Joseph Andrew and Hand, Jon and Kim, Jae Min (2007) Delivering building simulation information via new communication media. In: Building simulation 2007 proceedings. Tsinghua University Press, Beijing. ISBN 9780977170630
Clarke, J.A. and Johnstone, C. and Lever, M. and McElroy, L.B. and McKenzie, F. and Peart, G. and Prazeres, L.M.R. and Strachan, P.A. (2003) Simulation support for the formulation of domestic sector upgrading strategies. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Building Performance Simulation Association Conference, Eindhoven. IBPSA, pp. 219-226.
Prazeres, L.M.R. and Clarke, J.A. (2003) Communicating building simulation outputs to users. In: 8th International Building Performance Simulation Association Conference, 2003-08-11 - 2003-08-14.
Prazeres, R. and Glotin, F. and Jaroszynski, D.A. and Ortega, J.M. and Rippon, C. (1999) Enhancement of harmonic generation using a two section undulator. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 429 (1-3). pp. 131-135. ISSN 0168-9002
Prazeres, R. and Glotin, F. and Insa, C. and Jaroszynski, D.A. and Ortega, J.M. (1998) Two-colour operation of a free-electron laser and applications in the mid-infrared. European Physical Journal D: Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics, 3 (1). pp. 87-93. ISSN 1434-6060
Prazeres, R. and Ortega, J.M. and Glotin, F. and Jaroszynski, D.A. (1998) Observation of coherent and self-amplified spontaneous emission with the clio free-electron laser. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 407 (1-3). pp. 474-479. ISSN 0168-9002
Prazeres, R. and Glotin, F. and Insa, C. and Jaroszynski, D.A. and Ortega, J.M. (1998) Two-colour operation and applications of the clio fel in the mid-infrared range. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 407 (1-3). pp. 464-469. ISSN 0168-9002
Ortega, J.M. and Prazeres, R. and Glotin, F. and Jaroszynski, D.A. (1998) Coherent and self-amplified infrared synchrotron radiation emitted by a 50-mev electron beam. Physical Review E, 57 (1). pp. 1053-1060. ISSN 1539-3755
Prazeres, R. and Ortega, J.M. and Glotin, F. and Jaroszynski, D.A. and Marcouille, O. (1997) Observation of self-amplified spontaneous emission in the mid-infrared in a free-electron laser. Physical Review Letters, 78 (11). pp. 2124-2127. ISSN 0031-9007
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Tracking students’ progress and achievement throughout their college careers, regardless of the path taken, puts the focus where it belongs, on individual success. Being a part of the Student Achievement Measure (SAM) also provides UIS with the data needed to continually improve retention efforts for all student populations, and build on a long history of valuing transfer students. More than 5,000 students enroll each year, seeking a University of Illinois degree in the friendly learning environment of a smaller university. Located in the state capital, UIS has a special mission in public affairs and has graduated thousands of future leaders in the public and non-profit sectors.
www.uis.edu
admissions@uis.edu
The SAM Full-time Bachelor's Degree model tracks a group of students who started a bachelor's degree program at University of Illinois at Springfield in the Fall of 2011. The students' progress toward a degree is reported within 4, 5, and 6 years. The same group of students is included in the results for every year.
Students who started at and graduated from University of Illinois at Springfield are represented by the darker purple bar with the solid black bar underneath (). (This section of the chart Within 6 Years is approximately the same as the federal graduation rate, but it may differ slightly for each institution.)
Students who started at University of Illinois at Springfield and then transferred to and graduated from another institution are represented by the lighter purple bar with the white stripe underneath ()
Students who started at and are still enrolled at University of Illinois at Springfield are represented by the darker aqua bar with two white stripes underneath ().
Students who started at University of Illinois at Springfield and then transferred to and are still enrolled at another institution are represented by the lighter aqua bar with the bottom white stripe ().
University of Illinois at Springfield | Bachelor's Seeking Model - First-Time Full-Time
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT SPRINGFIELD IN FALL 2011 BY SUMMER 2017
Bachelor's degree from University of Illinois at Springfield 0% 0% 5% 36% 46% 49%
+ Associate and/or Certificate degree from University of Illinois at Springfield 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
= Total Graduated from University of Illinois at Springfield 0% 0% 5% 36% 46% 49%
Enrolled at University of Illinois at Springfield 99% 70% 56% 21% 9% 4%
Enrolled at another 4-year institution 0% 13% 21% 16% 5% 3%
at another institution 1% 18% 27% 21% 9% 5%
Current Status Unknown 0% 9% 9% 14% 18% 22%
University of Illinois at Springfield | Bachelor's Seeking Model - Full-Time Transfer
Bachelor's degree from University of Illinois at Springfield 1% 29% 51% 57% 59% 60%
= Total Graduated from University of Illinois at Springfield 1% 29% 51% 57% 59% 60%
Enrolled at University of Illinois at Springfield 90% 46% 18% 7% 3% 3%
at another institution 0% 8% 8% 6% 5% 4%
Current Status Unknown 5% 13% 17% 22% 23% 23%
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The Honourable Ken R Handley AO C STJ QC
E: hoolahan@tenthfloor.org
Ken Handley retired as a Judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal in January 2012 after 22 years on that Court. This included the maximum possible time as an Acting Judge between 2007 and 2012. While on the New South Wales Court of Appeal he also served as a part time Judge of the Fiji Court of Appeal from 1996 to 2003, and as a part time Judge of Fiji’s Supreme Court from 2003 to 2009.
Prior to his appointment to the bench he practised at the Sydney Bar for 30 years, 17 as Queen’s Counsel. He was also a member of the English and Fiji Bars. He had a general commercial, equity and appellate practice and appeared in intellectual property, banking, insurance, and shipping cases. He appeared frequently in the High Court of Australia, and in many cases in the Privy Council between 1967 and 1986 in appeals from Australia and Fiji. He also acted as an arbitrator and appeared in domestic arbitrations.
He is the author of three legal text books published in London and many articles and case notes in legal journals. These have ranged over estoppel, election, res judicata, bribery, fraud, tracing, and negligence. His publications and decisions have been cited by the High Court of Australia, the English Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, the Privy Council and appellate courts in other jurisdictions including Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cyprus, and South Africa.
Click this link to visit Ken Handley’s website –www.handleykenqc.com
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Worker’s Compensation and Genetic Testing
New technology provides opportunities for greatly enhanced safety in the workplace, and employers are taking advantage of this to the benefit of workers. Unfortunately, some employers are misusing new technology in efforts to undermine their employees as well.
In March 2000, the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) began secret DNA testing on employees who filed worker’s compensation claims for carpal tunnel syndrome. The program was stopped before BNSF had the opportunity to use the information gathered in the genetic testing, but those opposed to the program believe that this testing was intended to be used to deny claims. BNSF says they were, “trying to determine whether the injuries were work-related so that we could fix it.” However, they refused to reveal what action they would have taken based on the results.
A medical examination to determine the extent and cause of injury is a normal part of the worker’s compensation claims process. In addition to the routine medical examination, BNSF requested that the 125 employees seeking compensation for carpal tunnel syndrome submit to a blood test to screen for Chromosome 17 deletion. Studies have shown a link between Chromosome 17 deletion and the potential for developing certain types of carpal tunnel syndrome. Twenty workers submitted to the blood test.
Genetic testing can only determine a predisposition, or a potential, for developing any certain condition. It cannot predict who will actually develop the problem. “Environmental factors can contribute to disease whether someone has a genetic predisposition or not,” said Dr. Paul Billings, co-founder of GeneSage and Co., a San Francisco-based genetic information company and advisor to lawyers representing the railroad workers.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) initiated a lawsuit in protest of the program, and on April 6, 2001 a settlement was reached in which BNSF agreed to stop the testing, destroy all blood samples and related to the testing, refrain from disciplining any employee who refused to comply with the testing, and compensate the affected employees.
It has been suggested that genetic testing could be used not only to fight worker’s compensation claims, but also for employment screening. In other words, potential employees could face discrimination due to a genetic pre-disposition to a condition that the employer finds undesirable whether they ever develop the condition or not. Since current physical examinations can determine if a condition is present, and genetic pre-disposition does not mean that a person will actually develop any condition, genetic testing would be meaningless in determining whether or not a person can safely and effectively perform job duties.
Genetic predisposition is just one of many factors which can lead to injury, and environmental factors play a larger role for both those who are genetically pre-disposed for a condition and those who are not. It is not a reasonable way to determine if an injury was caused on the job. For instance, a person may have a family history of back injuries, with an underlying genetic link, but never develop a back injury unless they participate in improper lifting practices. At the same time a person who has no genetic pre-disposition to back injuries will still injury his or her back when lifting heavy objects in an unsafe manner. If an employer requires a worker to lift an object in an unsafe manner and that results in a back injury it would be unreasonable to argue that genetics, rather than the manner of lifting, caused the injury.
Currently the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is being considered in congress. This bill prohibits discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment. It is unknown at this time how the final version, if passed, will affect worker’s compensation.
If you have questions about how workers compensation affects you in your particular employment situation or if you have a workers’ compensation claim, please contact an experienced workers compensation attorney today, such as The Stipe Law Firm of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
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The Importance of Centering Consent in Sexual Ethics
July 24, 2013 Miribdsm, bestiality, cheating, consent, ethics, homosexuality, kink, lgbtq, morality, polyamory, sex, sex education, sexting, sexual assault24 Comments
[Content note: sexual assault]
A week and a half ago I gave a talk about sex education at the Secular Student Alliance annual conference. In the section on creating a better sex education program, I mentioned that we need to center consent in the way we teach healthy sexuality to kids and teens. Rather than defining “right” and “wrong” in terms of what your religion accepts and what it does not, or what social norms approve and what they do not, we should define right and wrong in terms of what hurts other people and what does not, to put it simplistically. Sexual assault is wrong, then, because it means doing something sexual to someone else without their consent. By this definition, then, homosexuality or premarital sex or polyamory cannot be wrong by default (as long as they are consensual).
It’s become really apparent to me that when most people talk about the ethics of sex, they do not talk about consent.
For instance, premarital sex is wrong because sex is for marriage. Homosexuality is wrong because sex is for straight couples. Polyamory is wrong because sex and relationships should only involve two people.
Even things that are considered unethical from a consent-based point of view, such as pedophilia and bestiality, are often talked about as being wrong because people “shouldn’t” be attracted to children or animals, not because children or animals cannot give consent. The “sick” part of it is that someone could’ve wanted to do that, not that someone disregarded a child’s or an animal’s inability to consent.
To illustrate what I mean, consider one common argument against same-sex marriage: the slippery-slope fallacy that it’ll lead to people marrying and/or having sex with animals. Republican Senator Rand Paul, for instance, recently hinted at this. He claimed that if we start allowing same-sex marriage, then “marriage can be anything.”
No, it can’t.
People like Paul seem to think of sex as one person “taking” something else, that may or may not belong to them. A person of the opposite sex? Sure. A person of the same sex? No. An animal? Hell no. Laws concerning sex and relationships exist to prevent people from “taking” what they’re not supposed to have, based on moral standards we have set as a society.
If Paul switched to a consent-based sexual ethic, then he would realize that there’s absolutely no reason legalized homosexuality would lead to legalized bestiality. Another adult of the same sex is capable of consenting to sex; an animal is not. And that’s that.
Likewise, the conversation around Anthony Weiner’s sexting habits has largely revolved around whether or not it’s “appropriate” for someone in an elected position to be doing such things. Should a politician be sending dirty photos to women? Can we trust a man who cheats on his wife?
At least one of the times that Weiner sexted in the past, the woman did not solicit the photos. They were unsolicited. It was a nonconsensual encounter. That means that Weiner committed sexual harassment.
Accordingly, the problem with what Weiner did is not–or not primarily–that it’s “stupid” for a politician to send dirty photos or that what kind of a perv would even do that. It’s that he imposed himself sexually on someone else without their consent.
And while his latest dalliance appears to have been consensual, the fact that he sexually harassed someone in the past was not something for which he was ever truly held accountable.
Another example. Polyamorous people and/or people in open relationships or marriages are often accused of cheating despite the fact that what they’re doing is not defined as such under the parameters of their own relationships. Recently, the Frisky wrote a story about Brooklyn Nets player Andrei Kirilenko, who has an open marriage with his wife. However, the story framed this as “being allowed to cheat on his wife.”
First of all, that’s nonsensical. If you’re being allowed to cheat, then you’re by definition not cheating. Second, as long as Kirilenko is following the terms that he has set together with his wife and not keeping anything from her that she has requested to know, then he can’t be cheating.
The fact that people so often persist in viewing consensual non-monogamy as “cheating” suggests that they do not center consent. To them, certain things are verboten in relationships no matter what the people in the relationship have and have not consented to. The point, to them, is not that people in relationships should mutually agree on boundaries that work for them; it’s that people in relationships should just not do certain things because those things are wrong for people in relationships to do–such as sleeping with other people.
One final example: BDSM. Although BDSM can be used as a mechanism for abuse, and abusers obviously exist in the BDSM community as they do in any other, there are also plenty of practitioners of consensual, risk-aware BDSM who are happy and healthy through their choices. Yet some people, from sex-negative conservatives to certain feminists, insist on referring to all BDSM collectively as sexual assault, or at least as unhealthy, dangerous, and abusive.
They claim that because BDSM can resemble “real” violence, therefore it is violence and it must be ethically wrong, because hurting another person is wrong. But they divorce the content of a BDSM encounter from its context–a conversation about desires and boundaries, the setting of a safeword, the aftercare that takes place, well, after.
Interestingly, they often restrict this literal interpretation of things to sexual matters only; many people understand that while walking up to a stranger and tackling them is not okay, playing a game of football and tackling an opposing player is okay. They understand that while choking the crap out of a random person is wrong, practicing judo with a fellow judoka is not wrong. The difference is, of course, consent. A football player consents to being tackled; a judo student who shows up to class consents to practicing judo*.
But with sex, for some reason, this ethic falls apart, and many still believe that BDSM is, if not morally wrong, at least a sign of mental sickness or brokenness. (It’s not.) The fact that the participants consent to it, create mechanisms to withdraw consent if necessary, and make sure that everyone feels safe and satisfied afterward seems not to matter.
Failing to center consent in one’s own thinking about sexual ethics is a problem for several reasons. First of all, it conveniently allows for bias, stigma, and discrimination against queer, poly, kinky, and otherwise sexually non-conforming people. It allows people to dismiss others’ lived experiences by naming them something other than the participants themselves wanted it named. Consensual BDSM becomes sexual violence, consensual nonmonogamy becomes cheating, and so on, despite the protests of the people actually doing these things.
Second, painting any sex other than heterosexual monogamous (perhaps married) sex as Bad blurs the lines between consensual and nonconsensual sex and makes it easier for abusers and assaulters to get away with abusing and assaulting. For instance, if teens are taught that all sex before (heterosexual monogamous) marriage is wrong, they have little reason to be suspicious if their first partner manipulates or coerces them, because they know that Sex Before Marriage Is Bad and this must just be the price they have to pay. If people think that having sex with someone other than your spouse is Bad, they may not realize that it’s unreasonable and abusive for their partner to adamantly refuse to tell them anything their other partners, including their STI status.
There are, of course, issues with consent, too. Consent can be coerced or otherwise given non-freely. Viewing all consensual sex as Completely Good obscures the fact that even consensual sex can perpetuate systems of sexism, racism, and so on, no matter how much its participants enjoy it. Consensual sex can, of course, be risky health-wise, and while people are free to choose to contract STIs if that’s what they for whatever reason want to do, their other partners and their children do not always have that choice.
However, consent can be a great framework for sorting out what is definitely ethically wrong, and what is not. Consensual sex may not be flawless, but nonconsensual sex is absolutely not okay. The examples I provided–of bestiality, of sexting, of open marriages, and of BDSM–show that basing sexual ethics on consent works better than basing it on oughts and shoulds.
* The sports examples here are also good examples of the limitations of consent that I mentioned. A judo student who feels pressured to engage in exercises they’re not comfortable with isn’t really consenting. A football player who isn’t informed of the traumatic and permanent physical consequences that football can have on the body isn’t really consenting either. Sports, like sex, can promote racism, homophobia, and all sorts of other crappy things.
How You Know They've Run Out Of Arguments
December 13, 2012 Miriarguing, bigotry, culture, history, homosexuality, lgbt, sexuality, sexualization31 Comments
Steven over at WWJTD informed me of this nonsense:
The newest argument against homosexuality has arrived. It turns out it prevents straight dudes from being friends. Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition explains:
“But there is no such thing as absolute freedom when it comes to sexuality. The moment we celebrate or endorse certain behaviors, we curtail freedom in other areas. This is the nature of freedom.”
Wax then lists a few examples of platonic affection between straight men which have fallen out of vogue, such as lovingly written letters, holding hands and sharing a bed.
Wax attributes this lack of affection between men as the result of gay people being accepted into society. Because if there are gays, you don’t want to risk being mistaken for one of those people. He then goes on to talk about how a hypothetical pro-incest movement would damage his ability to be affectionate with his daughter.
As Steven points out, Wax nearly stumbles upon a good point:
Where I do agree with Wax is that I think it does suck that hetero men feel they can’t be affectionate with one another. And a good chunk of the reason for that is people fear being seen as gay.
That’s where we stop agreeing, because society moving toward acceptance of gay people won’t hinder hetero same-sex affection. It will bolster it. The less of a big deal being gay becomes, the less people will care if people mistake them for gay.
Where Wax screws up is that he makes a huge correlation-is-not-causation error. Yes, it used to be acceptable for men to be very affectionate with each other (platonically). It also used to be unacceptable to be gay (although, it’s worth noting that there was no such thing as “gay” back when romantic friendships were in vogue). Nowadays it is much more acceptable to be gay, and much less acceptable for men to be affectionate with each other. Therefore one must’ve caused the other, amirite??
No, I am not right. While this isn’t really my field, my hypothesis would be that the cultural stigma we’ve placed on (straight) men being affectionate with each other is largely a side effect of the way our culture sexualizes everything. Think about it. Women often can’t even breastfeed in public anymore because it’s “inappropriate” (read: too sexy). Women can’t be topless in public, not even on beaches, even though in many other Western countries they can. Fathers being affectionate with their daughters and teachers hugging their students are often looked upon with suspicion, because why would an adult want to touch a child if not sexually? (Maybe because touch is a universal way to express all kinds of platonic, romantic, and familial love, as well as friendly affection and reassurance, but whatever.)
The most amusing thing about Wax’s argument to me, though, is how blatant a sign it is that the bigots have truly run out of arguments to use against homosexuality.
After all, haven’t we rehashed all the usual ones hundreds of times by now?
“YEAH WELL HOMOSEXUALITY DOESN’T PRODUCE CHILDREN”
“Yes it can, and anyway, neither do infertile or voluntarily childfree straight couples.”
“YEAH WELL GOD SAID IT’S WRONG”
“Even if that’s true, you can’t make the rest of the country live by your religion.”
“YEAH WELL IT’S UNNATURAL”
“Homosexuality is found in hundreds of animal species; homophobia is only found in one.”
“YEAH WELL THEY’LL CONVERT KIDS INTO BEING GAY TOO”
“No, there’s no evidence for that.”
“YEAH WELL THEY CHOSE TO BE GAY”
“No, they didn’t, here are all the studies showing that sexual orientation is not a choice.”
“YEAH WELL THE BEHAVIOR IS A CHOICE”
“So do some people not deserve to have love and sex in their lives?”
“YEAH WELL IT’S A MENTAL DISORDER”
“Then why can’t it be ‘cured,’ why did it get removed from the DSM decades ago, and why can gay people live happy and healthy lives?”
“YEAH WELL IT’S GROSS”
“So is Jersey Shore, but that’s legal.”
“YEAH WELL NOW STRAIGHT DUDES CAN’T HUG EACH OTHER”
“Wut.”
There you have it. They are out of arguments, and now they’re doubling down and reaching for the most inane ones they can think of.
Why Homosexuality is Not Analogous to Murder
December 11, 2012 Mirichristianity, homosexuality, lgbt, morality, murder, religion, scalia, supreme court13 Comments
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is clearly very worried about the pervasive immorality that’s taking over America these days. First gay sex will become okay, then murder.
Yes, he really said that. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”
Here’s the context: Scalia was speaking at Princeton University and a student asked him about his decision to dissent in the landmark ruling of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down that state’s ban on sodomy as unconstitutional. Scalia believes that the Supreme Court has no place in this “culture war” and that the activists who wanted to overturn anti-sodomy laws were advocating a “homosexual agenda” (his words, not mine).
When asked about this decision, Scalia used a slippery slope fallacy to suggest that if we can’t have “moral feelings” about homosexuality, then we can’t have them about murder, either.
Yes, yes, I get it. He’s not really saying that homosexuality is like murder. He’s making an analogy. But it’s a terrifically bad one.
Scalia, like many people who enthusiastically infuse their political opinions with religion, seems to think that murder is morally wrong cuz god said so–and, therefore, so is homosexuality. He seems not to realize that most people nowadays think that murder is wrong not because they’ll go to hell for it but because an innocent person is being deprived of their life.
Who is being hurt by someone having gay sex? Who is being hurt by a same-sex couple getting married and living out their lives together? Who is being hurt when kids are discouraged from (and disciplined for) bullying a classmate for being gay?
Honestly, I think this is why religious conservatives started spouting all that stuff about gay people “converting” children to homosexuality. This is the reason for all those initiatives there used to be to ban openly gay people from teaching in public schools, and the reason why, even today, organizations like the Florida Family Association accuse Office Depot of turning kids gay by selling products saying things like “Be Yourself.”
Even though there is no evidence for the theory that homosexuality is some sort of infectious disease, religious conservatives insist that it is, because that allows them to claim that it actually harms people. And that makes the morality argument a very different one.
I’m also shocked that Scalia (and so many other people) really don’t see any difference at all between having “moral feelings” and legislating those moral feelings upon the rest of the country. These are probably the same people who go around wailing about “Christian persecution” because, guess what? You have the right to say and believe whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to force others to live by it. Making sure you don’t have the latter right doesn’t mean you’re somehow being discriminated against.
In short, yes, you can have “moral feelings” about homosexuality. And murder. And whatever else you want. We just don’t have to live by your moral feelings.
I’ll grant that when someone says something like, “I don’t care if the gays can get married or not but I still think homosexuality is Bad/Unnatural/Gross/Sinful/Wrong,” I will argue with them. I still think they’re wrong. But I care a lot less about these people than about the ones who do care whether or not same-sex couples can get married, and especially the ones who by some twisted logic claim that there is anything at all acceptable about laws banning sodomy.
And, of course, in these debates, someone who thinks they’re really smart always shows up and asks things like, “But aren’t you legislating your morality upon others by saying that they can’t legislate their morality upon others?”
No; this is asinine. The default in a free, just society should be having rights rather than not having rights. So if you’re going to take away someone’s right to do something, you’d better have a damn good reason.
So why can we ban murder but not gay sex?
Well, even if homosexuality were wrong, it would still be wrong in a completely different way than murder. If homosexuality is wrong, it’s wrong because we (or god) just don’t like it. Murder is wrong because it infringes on the rights of others to live.
And, really, if we’re going to base our legal system on religious scripture, I’m still waiting for the laws banning gossiping, lying, speaking ill of one’s parents, working on Sundays, and refusing to love thy neighbor.
[Guest Post] How I Was Indoctrinated into the Gay Agenda
August 1, 2012 Mirifamily, homophobia, homosexuality, lgbt, personal12 Comments
My friend Seth writes about growing up with four gay uncles and how they’ve shaped his views on gay rights.
I never stood a chance.
I was indoctrinated at an impressionable young age—so young that I can’t even remember what age it was. I have four gay uncles; two related by blood, and two more because I don’t give a shit what the law says, they’re family. Regardless, it was these four who indoctrinated me, using the typical insidious and underhanded homosexual tactic of being kind, funny, upstanding and just all-around decent people. Before I knew it, I had been brainwashed into thinking that these four men were human beings just like any other, and just as deserving of my respect and love as any other member of my family.
One more poor soul lost to the gay agenda.
Of course, I can’t place all the blame on my uncles. Some must go to my father, who always loved them unconditionally, apparently considering the fact that they were his brothers more important than their sexual orientation. Still more must go to my grandparents, who failed to respond to the news that their sons were homosexual by disowning them, instead welcoming their chosen partners into the family with as much warmth and fondness as if they were heterosexual spouses. With such weak moral examples from my elders, how was I supposed to know that the proper response to having gay uncles was to shun them as abominations regardless of whether or not they had ever done anything to offend me personally?
All right. I should probably turn the snark off before it makes your computer explode.
In all seriousness, though, this is not a story of redemption, wherein the protagonist starts out thinking that all homosexuals are icky hedonistic perverts who are out to destroy our families, and then has a transformative personal experience that teaches them that, oh hey, homosexuals are actually living, complex people who are not defined by their sexuality. Those are great stories, and I’m all for them, but I was lucky. I never needed that experience. I had a chance to learn, at a young age, that the people who society considers “different” are actually…not so much. (Spoiler alert: growing up with all these gay men in the family also completely failed to turn me gay.)
Well, hooray for me and all that, but what does that mean for the big picture, the larger debate about gay rights? Not everybody is going to have the experiences I had. It would be nice if they did, but it’s understandable if your close relatives didn’t obligingly orient their sexuality in a manner that allowed you to learn an early lesson in equality. Nonetheless, my story and others like it are still a significant factor in the debate over gay rights.
Because here’s the thing: the people who want to deny homosexuals the right to get married, who want to live in a world where somebody can be fired because their employer doesn’t like their orientation, who want to “pray the gay away,” have made the debate very, very personal. This is against our religion, their arguments go. This is something that our God has told us is wrong. These are our traditional values under attack.
To which I say, if you think it’s personal for you, come spend Thanksgiving with my family sometime.
Anti-gay leaders sometimes seem honestly baffled as to why they’re losing ground in the so-called culture war, especially among the younger generations. Is it because the church’s image isn’t hip and cool enough? Is it all this media garbage, driving the young ones away from the one true faith? Is it because those godless Democrats are in office? Please. It’s a lot simpler than that.
It’s because people like me are becoming more and more common. When somebody talks to me about “the gays” or “homosexuals,” I don’t think about some flamboyant stereotype engaging in round-the-clock orgies. I think about the two uncles who run a car repair shop out in rural Colorado, with a house done up in the finest of 50s retro décor. I think of my cousin and her partner, who run a cafe that serves some of the most amazing pizza I’ve ever tasted. I think of the friend who’s a constant fixture at our college house’s game nights, dances, and movie events. I think of the uncle, not related by blood but my uncle nonetheless, who drove me home in his truck through a blizzard so that I could make it to school the next morning. (Spoiler alert: despite being alone in a truck with a young boy for nearly three hours, he utterly failed to molest me. Shocking, I know.)
These are the people I love and cherish. These are the people whose lives I want to improve. These people are my personal stake in the gay marriage debate. So if you were hoping you could win me over to the side of righteous discrimination, I’m afraid that I have to inform you that you’re too late.
I’ve been indoctrinated.
Seth Wenger is a senior neuroscience major at Earlham College and a practicing Buddhist. He can usually be found on Facebook, snarking about life, current events, and politics.
Is Homosexuality "Unnatural"?
January 12, 2012 Miribiology, genetics, homosexuality, language, lgbt, nature, research, science/skepticism, sexuality6 Comments
Spoiler alert: no.
First, let’s define “natural.” Here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say:
“being in accordance with or determined by nature”
“having a specified character by nature”
“occurring in conformity with the ordinary course of nature : not marvelous or supernatural”
“existing in or produced by nature : not artificial”
For something to be “unnatural,” then, it would have to be the opposite of these things.
And now here are some facts about homosexuality:
Same-sex attraction exists among humans all over the world.
Although there’s no such thing as the “Gay Gene,” plenty of research has suggested that ties do exist between genetics and sexual orientation.
While some research has shown that one’s environment can influence their sexual orientation–for instance, a study showed that gay men report less positive interactions with their fathers than straight men–such factors aren’t exactly up to the individual to choose. (Also, one can’t really determine causation in cases like that.)
In general, psychological authorities agree that homosexuality is caused by an interaction of countless factors, usually develops in early childhood, and is not a choice.
There is no evidence that sexual orientation can be forcibly changed through “conversion therapy” or any other methods. (However, one’s orientation may be fluid and can sometimes change on its own over time, just like other types of sexual preference.)
Even animals can be gay! Homosexual behavior has been documented in tons of different animal species, such as penguins, pigeons, vultures, elephants, giraffes, dolphins, lizards, sheep, and, curiously, fruit flies and bedbugs. Bonobos, meanwhile, are almost entirely bisexual.
Compare this list to the definitions of “natural” above. Could it be that homosexuality is just a part of nature?
Some people like to claim that because homosexuality is “unnatural” because it’s maladaptive in terms of evolution–after all, how are you supposed to pass on your genes if you can’t have biological offspring?
First of all, for various reasons that I may elaborate in a future post, I don’t believe we need to let evolutionary concerns dictate our behavior. Second, there are plenty of other conditions that people are born with that aren’t evolutionarily adaptive–albinism, for instance. Nobody goes around railing about how albino people are “unnatural.” (Except perhaps in parts of Africa, where the condition is heavily stigmatized. But it goes without saying that what happens to albino people in some cultures is deplorable.)
That’s not even to mention the fact that, last I checked, it’s not anybody’s business whether or not particular individuals want to pass their genes on to the next generation or not.
The reason I’m writing about all of this is because homosexuality’s supposed “unnaturalness” is a common justification given by bigots for why they oppose gay rights. (For some examples, see here, here, and here.) As usual, however, their arguments have nothing to do with the meaning of the word “natural” or with current research on homosexuality. (At least among Christians, the idea that homosexuality is “unnatural” comes from bible verses such as Leviticus 18:22, which refers to same-sex relations as an “abomination.” There’s a vague line of reasoning if I ever heard one.)
Therefore, I wish they’d just give the real reason they don’t support gay rights–that they don’t like gay people, don’t wish to examine why they feel this way, and would rather the LGBT community just shut up and stop making their lives so difficult.
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How to Get Away with Murder ‘Call It Mother’s Intuition’ Review
Uve Escribano·
Culture Reviews
More truths start coming out as the snitch is revealed in ‘Call It Mother’s Intuition’, but is it really all there is to it?
“It’s always the quiet ones”. Those words muttered by Annalise might finally become relevant now (that is, if this isn’t all part of her plan in the first place). In this week’s flashforward, we find out that Analise has been charged with arson and first degree murder. The evidence comes from a source that turns out to be Wes (one more character to cross off the ‘Under the Sheets’ list). It had been spelled out to us all season really. For starters, Wes disobeys Annalise’s commands and lies about seeing his step-brother(?) in the Mahoney crime scene (even Laurel who complains about being her puppet keeps following her orders). Secondly, Wes is not only “quiet” because he’s the only one who doesn’t speak his mind to Annalise (“you already know how I feel about you”), but he’s also been surprisingly irrelevant since last season, and has only been there due to his past as Christophe and the Mahoney case. At this point, he’s the one we would expect the least to betray Annalise.
Last week I talked about how this series is built on bad decisions, lies and miscommunication. A lot of repressed feelings and thoughts are spilled out in this episode in a scene that sees the Keating 5 (except for Wes) being brutally honest to Annalise, in a very in-your-face parallel to this week’s case. “We’re not asking you to be perfect, but to be honest”, says Laurel. It’s the lies that bother the Keating 5 the most, but Bonnie also has a point in saying that Annalise’s doing her best, and the Keating 5 are not exempt from fault either. At this point, no one is.
Aside from seeing more footage from the flashforward, each episode also slightly changes the theories on what could have happened due to the way the relationship between the characters keep unfolding. After the very intense and well-acted scene between Bonnie and Frank, it doesn’t seem so likely that she’s talking to him on the phone the night of the fire. Another relationship that has seen a big change this week is Connor and Oliver‘s. After Thomas says that he’s not ready to be with someone who’s positive, Oliver gets drunk and goes back to Connor to tell him he misses him and that he regrets what he did, which ends up on them having sex. So what was really the point of the break up? The only answer that comes to mind is Connor being under the sheets and Oliver feeling really guilty about it, which could somehow end with him becoming a full-time hacker for Annalise. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore now that they’re back… unless Oliver just used Connor for the night and goes back to Thomas next week. I really hope that’s not the case because if Connor somehow died because of something Oliver does, he would be irredeemable in the eyes of the audience. Lastly, Wes and Laurel are in their honeymoon phase, and Wes actually confesses that he loved her since he first saw her (what was Rebecca to him, then?). Shortly after that, Frank shows up at Laurel’s apartment as the cliffhanger for the episode.
‘Akame Ga Kill’ – Series Premiere Review
Generally, TV shows that want to go with bombastic, jaw-dropping finales with each season end up becoming tiring (Supernatural, Doctor Who…). How to Get Away with Murder is not only maintaining it’s “oh shit” momentum, but it also keeps raising the bar each season. However, this situation might become unsustainable if the series plans to go for quiet a few more seasons. Yes, the series is called How to Get Away with Murder, but there’s just too much conflict among the characters, too many lies and messes that will continue accumulating, and there’s just no way the series can keep any sort of realism in the long run. Not unless there’s a BIG change. In ‘Call It Mother’s Intuition’, Laurel repeats that maybe they should go to jail, and Wes asks Annalise whether she’ll just “wait until the next thing”. These are all signs that Annalise’s methods can’t go on forever. Will this season be the one where things finally change in a drastic way? Will the group split up? Will any of the main characters really die for good?
Call It Mother's Intuitionhow to get away with murderhtgawm
Uve Escribano
A journalist with a passion for TV shows, anime, and fandom. Animanga Author for The Daily Fandom.
Fanfic Friday: 5 HTGAWM Fic Recs!
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How to Get Away with Murder Season 3: The Good and the Bad
· February 24, 2017 ·6 min read
FANFIC FRIDAY: How to Get Away with Murder Gen Fic Recs
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Previous Supernatural ‘American Nightmare’ Review: Now vs Then
Next ‘The X-Files’ SHO-FILE
The Film MOUTHPIECE Will Have You Seeing Double, Literally
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Governor Haslam, Commissioner Rolfe Announce SAIC to Establish Technology Integration Gateway in Cookeville
Premier technology integrator is expected to create 300 jobs over the next five years in Putnam County
NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) officials announced today that the company will establish a Technology Integration Gateway™ in Cookeville. The new facility is expected to create 300 new jobs over the next five years.
The Technology Integration Gateway will create a wide range of technology jobs, including roles in information technology (IT) services, computer programming, engineering and software development. The Gateway will also provide cloud, cyber security and data science expertise.
“We’re pleased that SAIC has decided to expand further in Tennessee by creating 300 well-paying jobs in software engineering, computer programming and other technology roles in Cookeville,” Haslam said. “Tennessee leads the nation in the growth of STEM-related advanced industry jobs and SAIC’s new commitment to Putnam County continues that strong momentum, bringing us closer to our goal of making Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs.”
“SAIC employs more than 600 Tennesseans and this decision to put additional resources in Tennessee is a strong vote of confidence in the strength of our workforce,” Rolfe said. “SAIC’s commitment to forge strong ties with Tennessee Tech University and create high quality jobs matches perfectly with our statewide efforts to better align higher education with the needs of business partners. We look forward to the positive impact SAIC will have in Cookeville for years to come.”
Headquartered in McLean, Va., SAIC is a premier technology integrator in the technical, engineering, intelligence and IT sectors. SAIC employs more than 15,000 people worldwide.
“SAIC has a long legacy of doing business in Tennessee,” SAIC CEO Tony Moraco said. “When seeking a location for our first Technology Integration Gateway, Tennessee was a natural choice, especially given Governor Haslam’s strong commitment to workforce development, job creation and post-secondary attainment. The Cookeville Gateway will provide an excellent opportunity to build a lasting relationship with Tennessee Tech, support the development of a 21st century workforce and help local talent develop the in-demand skills necessary to address our customers’ most critical IT missions.”
Expected to open this summer, the Technology Integration Gateway will serve federal defense and civilian agencies, state and local governments, as well as commercial businesses. SAIC is exploring partnership opportunities with Tennessee Tech to identify and provide high-tech training to prospective IT employees.
Local officials and the Tennessee Valley Authority praised SAIC for its commitment to create 300 new jobs in Cookeville.
“The City of Cookeville is extremely excited about this announcement. The impact these new jobs will have on our downtown merchants and businesses is significant,” Cookeville Mayor Ricky Shelton said. “Jobs in the technology sector will be vital in helping raise per capita income in Cookeville. Higher wage jobs will create more income for our local businesses to capitalize on. The bottom line is that jobs in this sector translate to greater opportunities for our retailers, and this is very promising in regards to our city’s future. We look forward to more technology-based firms making Cookeville their home.”
“It’s always a thrill to announce new jobs for Putnam County and add to our outstanding portfolio of current business and industry partners,” Randy Porter, Putnam County Executive said. ”SAIC’s high-tech, high-paying jobs will provide a significant boost to our local economy and give Tennessee Tech computer engineering graduates another good reason to stay in the county. The IT field is an area we’ve long wanted to tap into and SAIC is the perfect fit to put Putnam County on the map for future growth opportunities. We enthusiastically welcome SAIC to our county.”
“Tennessee Tech, along with leaders in Cookeville and the Upper Cumberland, strives to create a friendly frontier for businesses. We are excited to play a key part in developing training and education partnerships for SAIC,” Tennessee Technological University President Phil Oldham said. “More and more, our faculty, students and staff allow the university to influence industrial recruitment and growth, job creation, and entrepreneur development based on our area’s specialties and strengths.”
“This announcement is a game-changer for our region. Our team has been working to grow employment in this sector for a long time, and we are optimistic that this company will be a catalyst for continued growth in the IT cluster,” George Halford, president and CEO of the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber, said. “This project would never have been possible without the support and teamwork from our TTU, Putnam County, City of Cookeville, TNECD, and TVA partners. We see this project as the tipping point for future technology-driven, higher paying jobs for our region.”
“TVA and Cookeville Electric congratulate SAIC on its decision to locate in Cookeville and create hundreds of new job opportunities,” TVA Senior Vice President of Economic Development John Bradley said. “We are proud to partner with Tennessee Tech University, city of Cookeville, Putnam County, Cookeville Chamber, Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce and Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development to help foster economic growth and prosperity in the Valley.”
Cookeville and Putnam County are represented by Sen. Paul Bailey (R – Sparta), Rep. Ryan Williams (R – Cookeville) and Rep. Cameron Sexton (R – Crossville) in the Tennessee General Assembly.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development’s mission is to develop strategies that help make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs. To grow and strengthen Team Tennessee, the department seeks to attract new corporate investment in Tennessee and works with Tennessee companies to facilitate expansion and economic growth. Tennessee is the only three-time winner of “State of the Year” for economic development by Business Facilities magazine. Find us on the web: TNECD.com. Follow us on Twitter: @TNECD. Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/TNECD.
Governor Haslam, Commissioner Rolfe Announce Rockline Industries to Launch New Business, Locate New Facility in Morristown
Tennessee Main Street Communities Generated $124 Million in 2016
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Category: Album Reviews
ALBUM REVIEW: David Bowie – Blackstar
January 8, 2016 January 14, 2016 1 Comment
David Bowie’s twenty-fifth studio album Blackstar has been one of the most highly anticipated albums since it’s announcement in October of last year, and it’s finally arrived. The days have certainly been counted down with eagerness since news first broke of a new Bowie album and since then we’ve been gifted with two fantastic songs, Blackstar and Lazarus. But ever since the album was announced there’s been an unspoken level of excitement everywhere you go that only someone as well known and respected as David Bowie could produce. The album couldn’t be anything but fantastic, right? Keep reading.
ALBUM REVIEW: The Allman Brothers Band – Idlewild South (Deluxe Edition)
January 7, 2016 January 7, 2016 Leave a comment
The second album from The Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South, has received a well deserved remaster in the form of this outstanding deluxe edition. Recorded between February and July 1970, Idlewild South contains a number of fantastic songs that became live staples over the lifetime of the band. These include the mesmerising In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, the scorching Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ and the legendary Midnight Rider.
EP REVIEW: Foo Fighters – Saint Cecilia
November 25, 2015 November 26, 2015 Leave a comment
Recorded in the The Saint Cecilia Hotel in Austin, Texas, the entire EP came about naturally. The band eyed up playing in a studio next door but the staff at the hotel insisted they could record in the hotel itself. The bar, the office, the kitchen, the bathroom, wherever they wanted. So they did. The result is a 5 track EP called Saint Cecilia.
ALBUM REVIEW: City and Colour – If I Should Go Before You
The transformation of City and Colour as a musical unit over the years has been extraordinary. Dallas Green started off the project as a solo player with only an acoustic guitar to keep him company but as each album has gone by the band has grown and the sound has grown with it. If I Should Go Before You is City and Colour’s fifth album in ten years which is remarkable considering in all that time the band has remained with an independent record label. City and Colour could certainly move to a bigger label if they desired but staying with Dine Alone Records is symbolic of what the band has become.
ALBUM REVIEW: Keith Richards – Crosseyed Heart
Keith’s first new album since 1992’s Main Offender is, in one word, superb. It’s been 11 years since we had a new album from The Rolling Stones so in many words this is the next best thing. However on first listen you can tell that the quality on Crosseyed Heart is as good or if not better than anything the Stones have done since the 90’s.
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← Warship Watch. Canada joins largest-ever US-Japanese war exercise
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights celebrates 70th anniversary
International Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10, the date on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, seventy years ago in 1948. According to its Preamble, the Declaration, which contains thirty articles, was to constitute a “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.”
Paying tribute to the Declaration on its 70th anniversary, the UN describes it as “a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being — regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status,” and one that “establishes the equal dignity and worth of every person.” One of the most translated documents in the world, it is available in more than 500 languages.
The Declaration has the character of a non-binding pronouncement. It is up to UN member states that accede to it to bring their domestic law into compliance with its principles for them to assume any legal weight.
Human Rights Today
Commentary by TML Weekly
Affirming human rights is the most important question of our time. It arises out of the objective developments, that is, the colossal advance of the productive forces. It is a question that is calling for the entire restructuring of society, the theory and philosophy guiding it, as well as the economic, political and other theories that shape modern life.
The modern definition of human rights can be summed up in one sentence: People have rights by virtue of being human. This is the cornerstone around which the entire base and the superstructure of the society have to be built. All people have rights in the objective sense, that is, by virtue of being human. These rights can neither be given nor taken away. This is to say that anyone who tries to take away these rights will face the people’s opposition. At the same time, the people have to provide these rights with a constitutional guarantee that they can protect. Society has to be organized to provide these rights as a matter of principle, without exception.
A society that has as its foundation the guarantee of human rights according to the modern definition will provide great inspiration for other people in the world to follow suit. As people engage in building new societies in their own countries it is normal to sympathize with and support others who are striving for the same.
On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, which this year also celebrates the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, TML Weekly salutes the peoples of the world who are waging a life and death struggle to provide human rights with a guarantee. The fight for human rights is testimony to the fact that societies are advanced enough to express these rights and human beings are determined to overcome their absence.
Rights are not expressed by the fact that they are given by this or that economic or political power, this or that social or cultural institution. It is necessary to evaluate these rights as they exist within a particular society or internationally so that the extent to which the society has to advance can be ascertained and the tasks to affirm them can be brought forth.
Of course, this is what the old forces who usurp power through force and fraud do not want the working class and people to do. Their aim is to get the working class and people to submit to their demands. To achieve this, they do everything possible to promote the present arrangements as credible, even as they restructure everything to eliminate even the notion that modern society is responsible for the claims of its members upon it. They go so far as to rule out even the very mention that society is advancing from one stage to the next by claiming that liberal democracy is the highest possible development of democracy. This is done to block the striving of human beings to change the conditions which are blocking society’s path to progress.
TML Weekly calls on its readers to review the history of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by paying utmost attention to the striving of the people to establish a new coherence in order to renew society so that the human rights of all are provided with a guarantee.
December 8, 2018 – No. 43
Peoples of the world oppose those who make a mockery of human rights based on ulterior motives
Commentary by PAULINE EASTON
The peoples of the world do not accept reaching conclusions about whether human rights are being violated in this or that country based on the self-serving propaganda of warmongering forces. A serious study of the economic, political and social system of a country will clearly expose what is going on there. Serious study and investigation of social systems is not the desire of the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada, who float “human rights” pretexts and organizations for their own purposes. For them, truth is a matter of creating an outlook which permits them to carry out their neo-liberal anti-social nation-wrecking agenda with impunity. They use the pretext of championing human rights in whatever manner suits their particular pursuit of the moment. If truth has to be bent and twisted to its opposite, so be it, if this is what serves their interests. The question of human rights is used by the Anglo-American imperialists as a political tool, a weapon to justify aggression and intervention against peoples and countries hostile to their interests.
After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, and even during its drafting and the adoption process, the Anglo-American imperialist forces launched the Cold War, based on the lie that the “West” is the “defender” of human rights, and that socialism and communism are not. It was a patent falsity, but it has obviously served as the backdrop for many of the crimes committed against the peoples fighting for national and social liberation since the Second World War. Not only did the Anglo-American imperialists refuse to de-nazify the zones under their control but they actually protected the Nazis, gave them safe-haven and positions of influence and authority while they persecuted the communists, slaughtering them en masse as they did in Indonesia or keeping them in concentration camps for 40 years as they did in Greece and south Korea while carrying out witch hunts, coups d’état and wars of aggression in the name of the containment of communism. They established NATO as an aggressive U.S. imperialist-led war alliance and its North Atlantic Council to make sure that only systems to their liking were permitted in Europe, based on definitions of rights and types of government, which they themselves approved and imposed.
Anti-communism and the defeat of the Soviet Union and countries of the former people’s democracies, not defence of democracy and human rights, was their motivation and the most heinous crimes were justified on this basis.
The accusations against others of violating human rights have proven to be well-orchestrated campaigns to divert attention from what the U.S. imperialists and the “West” have been doing at any particular time. At the time the Universal Declaration was adopted, this expressed itself in the clash between the countries that comprised the socialist camp and those that comprised the capitalist camp. The socialist countries fought against permitting rights to be treated as an abstraction while there was no obligation to put in place the economic and social conditions required for their realization. According to the U.S. imperialist mantra, communism was based on the violation of human rights and for this reason was to be overthrown. The overthrow of communism was thus to prove the superiority of the U.S. democracy and its defence of human rights. To this day they continue to erect monuments to condemn the alleged crimes of the communists while the crimes the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada, have carried out in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights are to remain forgotten. But history has its own cunning. Reality exists. Human beings not only exist but they strive to humanize the social and natural environment as a matter of their being human and this is what settles scores with the old conscience of society.
Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and people’s democracies, when the period of flow of revolution went into retreat and U.S. imperialism began subverting the entire world in order to create a uni-polar world under its dictate, the crimes against humanity in the name of human rights have become unprecedented, even by the previous standards set during World War II. Meanwhile, the European Union, the Russian Federation, Japan and others have pushed for a multi-polar world, a world divided up between various imperialist powers. It is this drive of the imperialists against the peoples of the world that is behind the most flagrant violations of human rights everywhere, including in the U.S. and the “West” as we see on the news every day.
The developments in the United States, said to be the greatest champion of human rights, expose in stark detail the overall clash between authority and condition. Increasingly, the military and police are given broad authority to carry out an agenda worldwide set by a small ruling elite. The war on terror, the Patriot Act, the militarization of Homeland Security and the consolidation of civil defence within its mandate, and the expansion of the rule of the executive branch of government at all levels give powers to the institutions of the U.S. state to act with impunity and without redress and this is willy nilly extended over Canada. The existence of arbitrary powers established through the war on terror and Homeland Security gives licence to the executive powers and administrators of the state and their police authorities to do whatever they wish. Having established these police powers they now claim that the war on terror is no longer needed and the main enemies have become Russia and China and their attempts to undermine the “western democracies” by floating fake news, financing third parties and other such schemes. It is on the pretext of fighting these enemies that the U.S. state now claims to defend democracy, freedom and human rights.
Their desire to control the world is their justification to demand that everyone must have brutal capitalist exploitation, which makes a mockery of human rights; and brutal capitalist democracy, which implements totalitarian methods and police powers and violates the most important of all human rights, the right to conscience, and militarizes culture and life itself. They fight so that finance capital under their control only is entitled to maraud all countries. Free competition is non-existent when it comes to the marauding of international finance capital. No matter what crimes are committed, all of it is done in the name of human rights, opposing corruption and fraud, defending the national interest and other pretexts.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, hollow statements are being made by the representatives of the imperialist powers and the UN Human Rights Commission itself to smash public opinion by diverting attention from this reality but also hoping to render all opposition hopeless. Their preferred method is to create straw men and red herrings in order to push their interests, but if this fails, they justify invasions as we see in the Middle East and coups d’état as we see in Latin America. A favourite diversion is that of accusing others of human rights violations by defining human rights strictly according to their own interests.
But the peoples all over the world, on the basis of their own fight in defence of rights, have exposed their pretexts. The imperialists respond by creating even more diversionary pretexts. In the name of defending democracy, freedom and human rights they are now defining rights in even more egregious ways, such as turning their attention to rival business representatives who they humiliate and criminalize because they have their own interests and refuse to submit to their hegemony.
All of it shows that the spearhead of the struggle for human rights today is the affirmation of the very right to be, the right of all human beings to be, which the imperialist powers and all those who have usurped power by force are threatening with extinction. This, in turn, means that the affirmation of human rights today requires the affirmation of the right to conscience which is what participating in making the decisions that affect the lives of human beings and their social and natural environment, implementing these decisions and rendering accounts for the result is all about.
In his important work, The State of Human Rights After the Cold War, written in 1992, Hardial Bains writes:
“Human beings are not only social in the way they acquire their living, but in all aspects of their life, they constitute a break with the animal condition. This break with animal existence – with the vagaries of nature – places a new, vital condition on all humans, the condition of being…. This condition of being dictates … that human beings must have a say in the production and reproduction of real life. The demand of a say emerges out of the condition of socialization and leads to further socialization…. The condition of being demands that everything be judged on the basis of the extent to which the conditions permit the actualization of human rights.”[1]
“A right is fundamentally a phenomenon of human civilization [and] reminds the powers-that-be that we are human beings and that we should be treated in a way which befits human beings,” Hardial Bains writes. He explains:
“A clash between the act of being, Authority, which refuses to do its duty, and the act of being, Condition, which is demanding that the people do their duty, is the order of the day…. The act of being of the condition has assumed the primary position over the formalities and abstractions used as justifications by various authorities. When authorities do such a thing [neglect their duty], the right to conscience is violated…. Either the authority must bring about changes in the conditions, that is to shoulder its responsibilities so as to favour the right to conscience, or the conditions will continue to deteriorate until the people terminate the authority…. [The people] are doing their duty by claiming their rights from the act of being in definite conditions; they want to overcome those conditions.”
The violation of human rights today is done by asserting the right to be of Authority in the face of anarchy and violence and the danger to the security of that Authority. This is to cover up that Authority has become anarchy and violence in the form of a state which “never stops claiming that it is innocent of any wrongdoing and that everything which is being done is for the well-being of the entire people and humanity. But the very act of being, the very existence of anarchy and violence, refutes such a claim…. If such a government were fighting for the interests of the people, and were actually doing its duty, anarchy and violence would not take over. This is because the people, who despise anarchy and violence above all else, since they are the ones who suffer from it the most, would certainly side with such a government…. When a government claims to combat anarchy and violence through the massive use of force, by an all-round assault on the mass of the people and through their humiliation, it is not beyond belief that such a government may have created that anarchy and violence in the first place.”
The peoples of the world are doing their duty by “demanding their rights on account of their conditions of life.” They are striving to end conditions which violate the human rights of the people and their right to conscience, their right to be. Hardial Bains wrote:
“People are seeking to abolish the conditions which give rise to violations of human rights in the first place. They want to protect their right to conscience and use the content of their conscience to improve their condition of being…. It is the Authority which is increasingly coming under fire and it is the conditions which are more and more crying out to be changed and an increasing number of people are coming forward to take up their duty…. Forms will vary, but in every instance they will reflect the contradictory process posed by the clash between the claims of authority and the demands of the conditions…. The act of being is what has to prevail. The act of being of conditions overrides any claims of authority.”
The struggle for human rights today is the struggle for the emergence of the modern democratic personality which upholds democratic principle as an act of being. Those who take up their duty to themselves and society force the Authority to change the conditions. An Authority which refuses to do its duty to the people and society, an Authority which refuses to submit to the Necessity for Change will be overthrown by the very force of history itself to remove all blocks in the path to progress.
On this occasion, those whose Authority is out of tune with the needs of the times will be more concerned with the trappings and symbols of the Authority than in doing their duty to the peoples and their societies. “By depriving the people of the right to conscience, Authority is being turned into a cult and conditions are being worshipped as final and immutable,” Hardial Bains wrote. He noted
“Whether or not the right to conscience exists in real life, will actually determine whether a people live or die. It is the fundamental question of our time, along with matters related to the nature of a state, its form of organization and the economic system. It is at a par with these, and it actually overrides them in its importance…. Rights can only find their concretization in the solution of the problems facing a modern society, be they related to the economic well-being of the people or to the peace and harmony between peoples within a nation or between nations, or to matters of a spiritual and social nature…. Rights will be realized when Authority changes the conditions in favour of the people and the people carry out their duty by ensuring that Authorities do such a thing. People can perform their duty only if they have the right to conscience. This struggle, then, is the fulcrum on which the uplifting of the world and its renewal rests.”
1. The State of Human Rights After the Cold War – A Theoretical and Political Treatment, Hardial Bains, 1992.
TML Weekly, December 8, 2018 – No. 43
70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
TML Weekly Supplement, December 8, 2018 – No. 43
• The Inalienable Rights Which Everyone Is Inherently Entitled to as Human Beings
• Differing Perspectives on Human Rights During Drafting of Universal Declaration
• Perspective of the Soviet Delegation on Draft Covenant on Human Rights
• Canada’s Less than Honourable Role
• Text of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Tagged as Hardial Bains, Human Rights, International Law, Pauline Easton, United Nations
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Peerless Martial God 2
Heavenly Curse
Devouring The Heavens
Website People
PMG Chapter 2380: Have the Gods Really Vanished?
Editor: RED
Lin Feng took the Saint Emperor forwards. They quickly arrived at the top of a mountain and stopped. Lin Feng gazed into the distance.
There was a gigantic valley below, in which there was indeed a battlefield. Smoke kept rising up in the air, and there were caves and fortresses everywhere, with tents scattered between. Many people were sitting around, looking confused. There was an invisible and intangible Qi around them which indicated they had been fighting for a very long time.
In the sky was a gigantic curtain of fire. Lin Feng was still far from all this, but he could sense an enormous amount of strength. That strength wanted to pierce through his third eye, leaving him no choice.
“How come there are so many Saint Emperors?” asked Lin Feng. Those people all seemed to be Saint Emperors.
“They’re like me. After they came in, they weren’t able to leave. Even though I’ve been here for a long time, many people have been here for much, much longer than me. Some of them have been here for ten thousand or even a hundred thousand years. The most incredible thing I’ve seen here was seven generations of people who met in here, they were from the same clan and surprisingly they all met in here. You know, at our level, if we don’t get killed, we almost never die,” the man replied. It reminded him of the Supreme Ancient Pit of Hell, generations of people entering the forbidden territories and getting stuck inside.
“Since it’s a battlefield, it must be to death, right? Why are there so many people?” asked Lin Feng.
“The FIRE word in people’s third eyes is a gift offered by the spiritual being to protect people before dying. Even if their body is destroyed, they can use body capture to come back to life. Saints have incredible healing abilities. I have personally died twice; once I was saved and brought back to life, and once I stole a body using body capture.”
That person looked sad and devastated, he had no way to live. He had become a puppet, only death could save him.
“According to legends, there are spiritual beings’ historical remains in the Godly Grave, but there’s only a battlefield here? How come? What is the purpose?” Lin Feng didn’t understand.
“Lies. Everything is a lie in the Continent of the Nine Clouds,” said the man firmly. “I’ve heard many things I would have never dared believe in the past. For example, people who manage to leave usually find historical remains, and the spiritual beings allow them to leave. Many people who come here are strong fighters, and they can make the spiritual beings disappear, but do spiritual beings really disappear? The spiritual beings who made the Shrines, are they alive or not? Are there only peerless Saints who controlled Shrines?”
“You think that the spiritual beings still exist?” asked Lin Feng.
“I also used to think that the spiritual beings, or gods if you wish, had disappeared. But since I’ve been here, I’m sure that the nine gods still exist. Otherwise the existence of the Godly Grave wouldn’t be justified. Those people, or deities, despise us. They use us like chess pieces. They look down at us from the sky. The Godly Grave is a forbidden territory for us; for them, it’s a game!”
He looked terrified, desperate, panic-stricken, and terrifyingly sad. He put his hands on his head and shouted furiously, “No, no…”
“What’s going on?” asked Lin Feng frowning. His informer went into a frenzy, writhing in pain.
“The word in his third eye!” Lin Feng was astonished. The word in his third eye started burning, then it grew large enough to surround his body.
“No!…” the cultivator screamed, and began to burn.
Lin Feng pulled a long face, and moved forwards. Ice surrounded the man, but it was useless. He burned down to ash and finally, only the gigantic word ‘FIRE’ was left behind.
“He’s dead.” Lin Feng was grim. They were chatting about the gods, and suddenly that person had begun to burn. How mysterious. Lin Feng raised his head and looked up at the sky. Did gods really exist?
According to legends, there had been a great war in the ancient times, and the gods had vanished. Was it all a lie?
Was everything about the Godly Grave a lie, too?
Lin Feng looked at the ashes and bowed. “If I hadn’t taken you back, you wouldn’t have died. I just didn’t know.”
Lin Feng turned around and gazed into the distance. Someone came out of a fortress. He had big eyes, but looked remarkably dignified. He sensed something and looked back at Lin Feng. However, he didn’t look surprised; it was just another person who had come to the Godly Grave.
It was normal. Many people came here.
“Since you’re here, come down. There is no exit,” said that person. Lin Feng’s eyes twinkled. He had no option, he jumped forwards.
Lin Feng walked slowly through the valley. However, when he landed on the ground, an invisible and intangible strength crashed onto his third eye. The word “FIRE” appeared there, just like the one on the man who had just died.
“Is it really a god’s signature?” murmured Lin Feng. If there was no god, what was the explanation? No wonder the man had suspected they were still gods after having spent such a long time here.
Lin Feng walked past a middle-aged man. The man looked at Lin Feng and said, “From now on, obey me. If you disobey, you’ll die.”
That middle-aged man was a low-level Saint. Lin Feng’s cultivation level was always blurry in other people’s eyes. He looked ordinary.
“What do I need to do?” asked Lin Feng. He didn’t show how strong he was. He needed to understand what kind of place the Godly Grave was, and he needed to get pieces of information from other people.
“Nothing. Just stay with them. If there’s anything to do, I’ll tell you,” said the middle-aged man indifferently. In the distance was an army of cultivators.
Lin Feng nodded and walked over to them. Those people looked at Lin Feng apathetically, totally expressionless.
“Another unlucky person,” a woman sighed. Lin Feng turned around and looked at her. She was wearing black clothes. She didn’t look beautiful, she looked just normal, clean, and simple.
Lin Feng smiled and sat down next to her. She was a bit surprised, but she smiled and said, “Where are you from?”
“Northwest Area,” said Lin Feng smiling.
“Northwest Area? You’re from the Imperial Court of the Continent of the Nine Clouds then. It’s not far from the Fire Shrine. No wonder you came through the fire door,” said the woman smiling. She stretched her hand and said, “Lin Yi.”
“Lin!” Lin Feng’s heart twitched, but he shook her hand and smiled, “Mu Feng.”
“By the way, Lin Yi, you said I’m from the Imperial Court of the Continent of the Nine Clouds, but are there people here from other places, then?” asked Lin Feng. He was curious.
“I don’t know. I’ve only been here for a dozen years. I’ve talked to some people, but some of them are from places I’ve never heard of, and I don’t know whether they were from the Imperial Court of the Continent of the Nine Clouds or not.”
“You’ve been here for a short time too, then. What’s going on with the battles? Who are we fighting? And why?” asked Lin Feng. There had to be a reason to fight. The one who had died had told Lin Feng the gods were just playing a game…
“For merit and to open the gods’ historical remains, but we are just cannon fodder,” said Lin Yi smiled sadly. People around looked at her, all looking devastated. What a tragedy to be there!
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OddManOut 2019-03-20T18:26:33+00:00 November 2nd, 2018|Peerless Martial God|3 Comments
Note: To hide content you can use spoiler shortcodes like this [spoiler title=”title”]content[/spoiler]
Sun Qi Long November 2, 2018 at 2:19 am - Reply
iqqy chan November 2, 2018 at 6:26 am - Reply
Yeaaa…thanks so much for the chapters 😊😊😊
AlexdaLauch November 2, 2018 at 7:11 pm - Reply
gotta know what time zone this is so I’m writing this message but thanks for the chapters anyway 😉
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Posts Tagged ‘Tim Roth’
This Week’s “Peaks” : Part Sixteen (Spoilers Abound)
Tags: Al Strobel, Amy Shiels, Angelo Badalamenti, Chrysta Bell, Clark Middleton, David Lynch, David Patrick Kelly, Don Murray, Eamon Farren, Eddie Vedder, J.R. Starr, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jim Belushi, Jonny Coyne, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Mark Frost, Miguel Ferrer, Naomi Watts, Pierce Gagnon, Robert Knepper, Sherilyn Fenn, Tim Roth, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks 2017, Twin Peaks : The Return
Pre-emptive separation anxiety — it’s a real thing.
I admit it : I’m not ready for David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks : The Return/Twin Peaks season three to be over, and I’m sure the same is true for many of you (and there are a lot of “you”s if my WordPress readership statistics are to be believed — let me say thanks for that right now). This is only going to happen once, and that “once” ends just seven short days from now. Oh, sure, we’ll be discussing, debating, theorizing, even philosophizing about what it all meant for the next 25 years (at least), but the “event” (a term that really does apply in this case) itself is almost finished.
At least part sixteen gave us a chance to say some good-byes in advance, thus preparing us for the “big good-bye” next Sunday, and so : good-bye to Eamon Farren’s Richard Horne, set up for death by his own father (told you!!!!), “Evil Coop” (played with Emmy-worthy sneer n’ cringe by Kyle MacLachlan), while a fucked-up Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) watches from a safe distance through the wrong end of his binoculars. Good-bye to Laura Dern’s Diane Evans, revealed, in a truly shocking (at least to me) sequence to be a “tulpa,” and one that tried to knock off Lynch’s Gordon Cole, Chrysta Bell’s Tammy Preston, and Miguel Ferrer’s Albert Rosenfield on her way out before undergoing — uhhhhmmm — “de-manufacturing” at the hands of The One-Armed Man (Al Strobel). Good-bye to Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth, who met the fate of all who attempt to harm Dougie Jones and his family, courtesy of a psychotic next-door neighbor, played by Johnny Coyne, who’s credited only (but entirely accurately) as a “Polish Accountant.” And a very big, sloppy, wet-kiss, heartfelt good-bye to Dougie himself, who starts out this evening’s installment comatose after his light-socket-and-fork number and ends it —-
Well, hello, Special Agent Dale Cooper! Yes, the real Special Agent Dale Cooper! “100%!” “I AM the FBI!” All that good stuff. Goddamn, but this sequence was amazing to watch, as Coop emerges, Angelo Badalamenti’s original version of the show’s theme swelling in the background, borrows a snub-nose revolver from Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray), and arranges for a private plane owned by Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper’s Mitchum Brothers to take him to —- Twin Peaks. Oh, and the Mitchums, Candie (Amy Shiels), and her fellow side-kicks? Apparently they’re all coming along for the ride. That promises to be interesting!
Unfortunately, but wisely, Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon) won’t be. Dougie/Coop’s farewell to his wife is another Lynchian nod to Old Hollywood, and while I have no doubt that his promise to return to “his” family is sincere, the fact that he asked for an extra “seed” from the One-Armed Man (who, by the way, passed the “Owl Cave Ring” onto him) and gave him a lock of his hair tells me that the Coop we know won’t be coming back to Vegas, but that another manufactured doppleganger will be. Cooper seems to have memories of Dougie’s life, though, so who knows? Maybe I’m wrong and he’ll get his happily-ever-after with a wife and son that at least part of him “knows.” At this point, as always, I have far more questions than answers.
Speaking of which — so, like, what the fuck happened at the Road House tonight? Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) and ostensible “husband” Charlie (Clark Middleton) finally made it — and just in time to see emcee J.R. Starr introduce none other than Eddie Vedder himself to the stage (great song, by the way) — but as soon as the Pearl Jam frontman wraps up and the house band plays “Audrey’s Dance” (complete with her original Badalamenti theme — we’ve got a theme going here tonight), you figure something’s gotta be up. And something is up. Specifically, this :
That’s one hell of a cliffhanger, ain’t it, though? Has everything she’s been seeing, doing — or, more accurately, not doing — these past few weeks been entirely in her head? Is she institutionalized? Is the man we know as “Charlie” possibly her doctor or something? Again, only questions, no answers. I kinda figured the Renaud family couldn’t afford to pay Eddie Vedder to play their dive bar, though. They already blew their live music budget on “the” Nine Inch Nails — assuming they were ever really there themselves — oh dear God I’m lost.
And that’s where I want to be for a good long while yet, but like it or not, we’ve got one two-hour chunk left, and that’s it. There’s a symmetry of sorts to this — the original series ended with two episodes sandwiched together as a “TV Movie Of The Week,” shoved into a scheduling “suicide slot” on a Monday night in June back when summers were strictly “rerun season,” and the new series ends with the final two parts airing back-to-back on a holiday weekend, so that seems a bit poetic — but even if the circumstances are right, the stars are aligned, and what have you, I’m still not ready to let go. If you want a few hints as to what may be in store but want to avoid actual “spoilers,” the show’s cast listing on IMDB now has final stats for how many parts everyone appears in available, and some of the folks who will be coming back are very surprising indeed — and the same is true for some of the folks who won’t be. Beyond that, I’ll say no more, because I don’t want to know any more myself. What I do know is that I’m probably not ready to be done writing about Twin Peaks after the finale airs next Sunday. What form that additional writing will take I have yet to determine, but maybe that’ll be one more answer that we finally get next week, too.
This Week’s “Peaks” : Part Fifteen (Spoilers Abound)
Tags: Caleb Landry Jones, Catherine E. Coulson, Clark Middleton, Dana Ashbrook, david bowie, David Lynch, Eamon Farren, Everett McGill, Grant Goodeve, Harry Dean Stanton, Harry Goaz, J.R. Starr, Jake Wardle, James Marshall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kimmy Robertson, Kyle MacLachlan, Mark Frost, Michael Horse, Naomi Watts, Patrick Fischler, Peggy Lipton, robert forster, Sherilyn Fenn, The Veils, Tim Roth, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks 2017, Twin Peaks : The Return, Wendy Robie
There’s so much we could talk about when it comes to part fifteen of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks : The Return/Twin Peaks season three —
We could, for instance, talk about what I call “The Ballad Of Norma And Big Ed.” Nadine (played with an extra spring in her step by the great Wendy Robie) has finally given her long-suffering husband (Everett McGill) his freedom, and he heads right for the Double R and the woman he loves, the woman he’s always loved (Peggy Lipton) — only to have his heart broken one last time when cheeseball Walter (Grant Goodeve) puts in an appearance. Norma sends the slick operator and his franchise operation packing, though, and two minutes later she’s agreed to be Mrs. Big Ed Hurley. I’d like to talk about this. I’d like to talk about it a lot, in fact.
We could also talk about the trip “Evil Coop” (Kyle MacLachlan) makes to the world/realm/dimension above the convenience store, and about how he finally meets Phillip Jeffries (not David Bowie, obviously, but a disembodied voice who apparently has taken up residence inside one of those vaguely bell-shaped devices that we’ve seen so much of inside what we’ll call “The Zone”), and about how Phillip can blow numbers in smoke. We could talk about what those numbers mean — or might mean — and speculate on who or what this “Judy” he’s always going on about is.
We could talk about “Evil Coop” clocking Richard Horne (Eamon Farren), who I still maintain is his son, before they hit the road together bound, I’m assuming, for Las Vegas, where Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) has just met his end at the hands of Jennifer Jason Leigh — who likes ketchup with her fries, apparently. Lots of it. And we could talk about how the way Tim Roth dotes on her is actually rather adorable.
We could talk about the harrowing extended finale that perpetual loser Steven (Caleb Landry Jones) finds/comes to, meth skank in tow, out in the woods is actually one of the more disturbing scenes in the entire series, and about how Lynch’s goddamn fucking genius sound design literally makes the entire thing work and elevates the demise of a “throwaway” character into one of the most gut-wrenching things that’s ever been shown on television. Yup, we could talk a whole lot about that.
Once we ran through all that, we could talk about how overhearing the name “Gordon Cole” in a movie has seemingly brought a glimmer of awareness to Dougie Jones (MacLachlan), and how the crackling of electricity from an outlet threatens to bring about more. We could talk about his (literal) “tuning fork” and what the holy hell is happening to him as the lights flicker and his wife, Janey-E (Naomi Watts) understandably freaks out. We could talk for hours, in fact, about what this all means going forward.
We could theorize, as well, on just what’s going on between Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) and her husband, Charlie (Clark Middleton). Are they stuck in some sort of decaying time loop, endlessly repeating the same thing over and over again, while never really going anywhere — or doing anything — at all? Or is it just the most screwed up co-dependent-bordering-on-mutually-abusive relationship of all time? We could also talk about whether or not she’s really going to kill him.
Once we’d exhausted all these big subjects, we could move on to the smaller things, like James Hurley (James Marshall) getting into a fist- fight that gives his buddy, Freddie (Jake Wardle) a chance to show off his super-powered gloved hand, or the young girl freaking out hard on the floor of The Roadhouse while The Veils play, or the fact that the coolest emcee in the world, J.R. Starr, is a big ZZ Top fan. We could also talk about how great it is to see Harry Dean Stanton one more time, even if it’s in the far distance, and about how he’s proving to be, in many ways, the ultimate “glue guy” in this series. These things are all worth talking about, as well — and I guess, for a moment at any rate, we’ve done precisely that.
But more than any of the above — hell, more than all of it combined — I want to talk about Margaret Lanterman, better known as “The Log Lady,” and the extraordinary artist who brought her to life and made her an icon — the late, great Catherine E. Coulson. She died before this show made it onto our screens, and I have no doubt that all of her various phone calls to Deputy Hark (Michael Horse) were filmed in one afternoon, so fragile was her health, but if you thought you’d seen bravery from her in earlier parts (and we certainly have), tonight proved that she’d saved her most powerful performance — heck, one of the most powerful performances anyone has ever given — for her last. She talks about dying, and about how it’s not an end, but a change. She talks about her fear. She talks about the unknown. She talks about what may lie ahead. She talks about everything that matters — everything that could ever matter — and says so much with so few lines. Above all, though, what she does — in a more public way than any thany any actor has before — is say goodbye. And it’s not even acting at this point. This is Coulson, speaking from her heart, about what she’s going through. Her log is turning to gold, and so are her words. But me? Shit, I don’t mind admitting that I was turning to jelly as I watched this.
Not everyone knows that Coulson was one of Lynch’s oldest and closest friends. The two went all the way back to his Philadelphia days, and she was even his assistant director on Eraserhead. He credits her with sparking his interest in TM, which has become, in a very real sense, the center of his life and his being. And she created the character of the Log Lady more or less from whole cloth, with only minimal suggestion from her decades-long friend and artistic collaborator. Lynch dedicated part one of this series to Coulson’s memory, and tonight, after Hawk said one last, stiff-upper-lipped “goodbye” to her on the phone, and the lights went out in her cabin for the final time, and Michael Horse, Kimmy Robertson, Harry Goaz, Robert Forster, and Dana Ashbrook bowed their heads in a silent display of respect, he dedicated this part to Margaret Lanterman. I realize that I’m referencing the wrong show altogether here, but goddamnit — so say we all.
This Week’s “Peaks” : Part Thirteen (Spoilers Abound)
Posted: August 7, 2017 in television
Tags: amanda seyfried, Amy Shiels, Clark Middleton, Dana Ashbrook, David Koechner, David Lynch, Don Murray, Eamon Farren, Eric Edelstein, Everett McGill, George Griffith, grace zabriskie, Grant Goodeve, J.R. Starr, James Marshall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jim Belushi, Kyle MacLachlan, Larry Clarke, Madchen Amick, Mark Frost, Naomi Watts, Patrick Fischler, Peggy Lipton, Pierce Gagnon, Robert Knepper, Russ Tamblyn, Sherilyn Fenn, Tim Roth, Tom Sizemore, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks 2017, Twin Peaks : The Return, Wendy Robie
Quick question : who is the most tragic figure in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks : The Return/Twin Peaks season three?
Is it Kyle MacLachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper, bifurcated into two distinct beings? I’m thinking no — in part thirteen, “Evil Coop” finally dispenses with the troublesome Ray (played — for presumably the last time — by George Griffiths) once and for all, after winning an arm-wrestling match, placing the infamous “Owl Cave Ring” on Ray’s finger, pumping him for the co-ordinates he’s been needing (along with some info on the ever-enigmatic Phillip Jeffries), and, unbeknownst to him, forging an unspoken bond with the psychotic Richard Horne (Eamon Farren), who I still maintain is his son. And while all that’s going on, back in Vegas, the brothers Mitchum (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper) are happier than hell with Cooper’s Dougie Jones persona, coming into his insurance agency’s office in an honest-to-God conga line along with their showgirl sidekicks (once again Amy Shiels’ Candie being the only one who actually speaks) and bestowing expensive liquor, cufflinks, and even new cars on both Dougie himself as well as his boss, Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) as ostentatious tokens of appreciation for an enormous insurance claim being decided in their favor. Heck, Sonny-Jim (Pierce Gagnon) even gets the swing set of every kid’s dreams and Janey-E (Naomi Watts) — well, shit, she’s just happier than ever, and why shouldn’t she be?
Of course, this isn’t good news for everybody — and by “everybody” I mean Tom Sizemore’s Anthony Sinclair and Patrick Fischler’s Duncan Todd. Still, Dougie’s simple-minded fascination with Sinclair’s dandruff — yes, you read that right — triggers a 180-degree transformation in the ethically conflicted con artist, and soon he’s spilling his guts and probably saving his job in one fell swoop just when he was about to commit himself to a truly irreversible decision, and with the comedically incompetent Detectives Fusco (Larry Clarke, Eric Edelstein, and David Koechner) on the case of deciphering Dougie’s true identity and predictably writing off key clues as simple “mistakes,” our empty vessel’s newfound and truly mindless suburban marital bliss seems very secure indeed. No real tragedy to be found here, then.
Could our tragic figure then be Sherilyn Fenn’s Audrey Horne? There’s clearly a lot more going on in the battle of wills between her and her husband (Clark Middleton) than we suspected last week — in fact, this is some MK-ULTA, Chuck Traynor/Linda Lovelace-level manipulative bullshit that’s playing out before our eyes. Audrey doesn’t even seem completely sure of where she is, what she’s doing there, where she wants to go, or how to get there from here — wherever “here” even is. So, yeah, depending on how things shake out in future installments, she might be the character trapped in the most tragic situation of all — but I really don’t think so. She’s always been a survivor, and a devious one when needs be. She’ll work her way out of this mess one way or another.
Who, then? James Hurley (James Marshall)? There was talk way back in part two about him being in a motorcycle accident some years ago, and he does seem a shadow of his former self, but no less an authority than Shelly Johnson/Briggs (Madchen Amick) informed us, if you’ll recall, that “James is still cool,” and he proves it tonight by taking the stage at the Roadhouse (after being introduced by beyond-awesome emcee J.R. Starr) — the same stage recently occupied by the likes of Chromatics and “the” Nine Inch Nails — and making a transfixed female member of the audience cry with his heartfelt rendering of what’s apparently still the only song in his repertoire, “Just You And I.” Even the two creepiest-looking backup singers you’ve ever seen in your life can’t diminish James’ musical magnetism, so nope, he’s not exactly leading a tragic existence, either.
A brief check-in with Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh shows that they’re headed through Utah, and that’s certainly tragic, no doubt, but they’ll get through to the other side of the state and make their escape at some point. And, as I predicted in my last review, Russ Tamblyn’s Dr. Amp/Jacoby and Wendy Robie’s Nadine Hurley appear to be on the verge of cosummating their previously-confined-to-the-airwaves romance in the shadow of her silent drape-runners, so these two lonely souls may have just found true love at last. Let’s rule out all four of these “suspects,” then, and move on.
Becky Burnett (Amanda Seyfried) has it rough, there’s no denying that , given that she’s trapped in an abusive relationship with a drugged-out, two-timing loser, but at least her mom still loves her, loans her cash, and feeds her homemade cherry pie — and does she really have it any worse than her father, Deputy Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), who’s reduced to eating alone at the Double R and pining after the wife and daughter he’s lost? Hmmm —two strong contenders here, to be sure.
Except that in the end, Bobby doesn’t have to eat alone — he’s invited over to the table shared by Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) and (finally!!!) “Big” Ed Hurley — and I think Ed might just be our guy, because this happy trio is soon interrupted by Norma’s new beau, a cheesy financier named Walter (Grant Goodeve) who’s so blatantly phony and insincere that he makes old-school game-show hosts like Wink Martindale and Chuck Woolery seem honest and authentic by comparison. “Big” Ed still clearly carries a torch for Norma, and despite his assurances to Bobby that “nothing’s going on here,” he’s not fooling anyone. McGill gives a truly gut-wrenching (and largely silent) performance here in part thirteen, one that anyone who’s ever been sweet on somebody they can’t have (shit, I guess that includes anyone who was ever in their twenties) can immediately relate to. He’s obviously envious of Mr. Plastic, but at the same time you can feel that he wants Norma to be happy above all else — he just knows it sure won’t be with this sleazy operator, who’s convinced her to franchise out her diner (now we know why she’s doing her books all the time), but then has the unmitigated nerve to tell her how she should be running the place. “Big” Ed obviously loves Norma to death — always has, always will — and the final scene of him eating his take-out soup alone in his gas station as the credits roll is enough to rip your beating heart right out of your chest. This is emotional desolation at its most profound — and most profoundly difficult to watch.
Yup, that’s it then, case closed — the most tragic character on the Twin Peaks revival is “Big” Ed Hurley.
But then I remember Grace Zabriskie’s Sarah Palmer, self-medicating away her pain with fifty bucks’ worth of booze and three or four packs of cigarettes every night, her daughter and husband both dead at the hands of forces beyond her understanding that now appear to be coming for her as well, watching blood-soaked nature documentaries and 1950s boxing matches on her giant television every night, basking in the cathode ray (or whatever the hell they’re made out of these days) glow in an otherwise silent home — a woman for whom the end of the world is no longer an abstraction, but something that already happened a quarter-century ago and didn’t even have the decency to take her with it. Imagine an apocalypse so heartless and cruel that it leaves you behind with no road map for how to put your life back together while everyone else goes on with theirs all around you, as if nothing even happened, and you’ll have some inkling as to what Sarah’s going through. Compared to that, shit — even “Big” Ed has it easy.
This Week’s “Peaks” : Part Twelve (Spoilers Abound)
Tags: Ashley Judd, Chromatics, Chrysta Bell, Clark Middleton, David Lynch, David Patrick Kelly, grace zabriskie, Harry Dean Stanton, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Mark Frost, Michael Horse, Miguel Ferrer, Pierce Gagnon, richard beymer, robert forster, Russ Tamblyn, Sherilyn Fenn, Tim Roth, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks 2017, Twin Peaks : The Return, Wendy Robie
When I was a kid, I had a massive crush on Sherilyn Fenn. Or, more specifically, on her character of Audrey Horne. And who wouldn’t? She was that alluring combination of cute, calculating, and maybe even a little crazy (although the “crazy” was downplayed significantly as the original run of Twin Peaks progressed) that whispered “I’m gonna take you down the road to hell, and you’re gonna love every minute of it.” A true femme fatale for the “Generation X” set. So, yeah, the older version of me that shambles around, half-dazed, through the world of 2017? He was extremely curious to see what David Lynch and Mark Frost were going to do with her in Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks:The Return/Twin Peaks season three — and, fully 2/3 of the way through, we finally have our answer.
We know all (or some) about her kid already, of course — Richard’s been rising holy hell for some time now, and in part twelve tonight, that finally comes back to bite his grandpa Ben (Richard Beymer — who seems to have cooled off his percolating “office romance” with Ahsley Judd a bit and gets a genuinely nice extended scene with Robert Forster’s Sheriff Frank Truman) in the ass. If Audrey knows about any of this, though, she seems completely unperturbed by it, and is far more concerned with the recent disappearance of a guy that she’s been stepping out on her perpetually-tired, workaholic husband (played by Clark Middleton) with. This appears to be an unconventional marriage, to put it mildly — the word “contract” is mentioned more than once — and, as such, it makes for plenty of old-school “prime time soap” intrigue, but to have this all dropped on us this late in the game? Well, let’s just say I’m waiting to see how successfully Lynch and Frost are going to shoe-horn yet another subplot into the mix here on top of everything else (or maybe that should be subplots, plural, because at the tail end of part twelve we meet three new characters altogether and who they are and what they have to do with anything is anyone’s guess at this point).
Anyway, while Audrey’s long-awaited return may have been a highlight for me personally, there were plenty of other developments that merit a mention : Gordon Cole (Lynch) and Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) officially induct Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) into the brotherhood — or maybe that should now be brother/sisterhood — of the Blue Rose (and we get our fullest explanation beyond the printed page of Frost’s “novel” as to what the Blue Rose is all about); Cole makes time with an exotic and alluring French mystery woman who sure knows how to take her time making an exit; Dr. Amp/Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) continues his love-affair-via-the-airwaves with Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie), whether he knows it or not; Harry Dean Stanton further reveals himself to be the guardian angel of Fat Trout Trailer Park, and perhaps of this entire series; Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh pop back into the picture to perform a sniper-rifle “hit” on poor Warden Murphy; Dougie (Kyle MacLachlan) and “his” boy, Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon) play a decidedly one-way game of catch in the backyard; Laura Dern’s Diane is discovered to be a double-dealer by Albert and cryptically exclaims “Let’s Rock” when officially deputized back into the FBI fold; Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) finally makes it down off the mountain — plenty to mull over, indeed.
Tonight’s show-stealer, though, has gotta be Grace Zabriskie as the long-suffering Sarah Palmer. The years have been every bit as hard on her as one would expect given the compound tragedy that befell her family a quarter-century ago, and her breakdown at a grocery store checkout lane is downright painful to watch. There are even hints dropped that the Black Lodge hasn’t had the decency to leave her alone yet — her ceiling fan is still doing “that thing” (whatever it is), she talks as if there’s another entity taking up residence within her body and mind, and Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) hears inexplicable noises in her kitchen when he drops by to check on her well-being (or lack thereof). She’s doing her best to hold it together — but is anyone’s “best” good enough under such circumstances?
Zabriskie’s acting is straight-up dynamite in this segment (who are we kidding? It always is), every raw nerve and strained-beyond-the-breaking-point thread on full display in a gripping and altogether unforgettable tour-de-force right up there with the best we’ve seen in this series. It’s not easy stuff to watch, by any means — but it’s downright impossible to look away from.
Wrap it all up with a return appearance from Chromatics at the Roadhouse and we’ve got yet another ridiculously compelling installment of the darkest and most irresistible siren call to ever play out on American TV screens under our collective belt. With six parts to go, the prospect of all of our myriad questions being answered seems remote, indeed, but I’m not really sure that’s the point — giving us a map and a methodology by which to find the answers ourselves (even if it takes another 25 years) is what Lynch and Frost are building towards, and in that respect, they’re succeding in a manner that’s equal parts harrowing and beautiful.
This Week’s “Peaks” : Part Nine (Spoilers Abound)
Tags: Adele Rene, Ashely Judd, Brent Briscoe, Charlotte Stewart, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Chrysta Bell, Dana Ashbrook, David Koechner, David Lynch, David Patrick Kelly, Don Murray, Eric Edelstein, Harry Goaz, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kimmy Robertson, Kyle MacLachlan, Larry Clarke, Laura Dern, Mark Frost, Matthew Lillard, Michael Horse, Miguel Ferrer, Naomi Watts, Patrick Fischler, richard beymer, robert forster, Tim Roth, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks 2017, Twin Peaks : The Return
Can you ever really go back home again?
Two weeks ago, David Lynch and Mark Frost detonated what we thought television was capable of — perhaps even what reality itself was all about, depending on who you ask — in part eight of Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks : The Return/Twin Peaks season three with as much undeniable and unalterable (fuck, is that a word?) force as the atomic explosion they took us so deeply into the heart of. I was bummed we didn’t get a new segment last week, but actually appreciated having the extra time to process all we had witnessed, and now the question becomes one of whether or not you can put the genie back in the bottle. We don’t want or need every part to have the sheer nuclear impact of that last one, of course — much of its power lies in its singularity — but now that we’ve seen the “other side,” so to speak, what’s to be made of this one?
As luck — or, okay, fair enough, Lynch’s skill — would have it, quite a lot, thankfully, for while part nine is punctuated throughout with any number of small and slow “character moments” of the sort to which we’re becoming accustomed to, if not outright spoiled by (Lynch’s Gordon Cole longingly eyeing the cigarette being enjoyed by Laura Dern’s Diane Evans being a particular favorite), we’re also treated to so much sheer plot progression (executed with a kind of quiet grace that only looks and feels laconic while actually bearing down with the force of a goddamn locomotive) that, once again, a couple of viewings, at the least, are going to be necessary in order to take it all in.
In short order, then : Evil Coop (portrayed, as ever, by soon-to-be-Emmy-winner-if-there’s-any-justice-in-this-world Kyle MacLachlan) is up and running again and makes his way to “The Farm,” where we meet Tim Roth for the first time and Jennifer Jason Leigh for the second. He’s got business that needs attending to with Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) back at the Silver Mustang Casino in Vegas, so we’ll see what that’s all about, and speaking of Sin City, Dougie (MacLachlan again) and Janey-E Jones (Naomi Watts) are still in the process of being cut loose from police questioning after Dougie’s attempted assassination at the hands of the diminutive Ike “The Spike” (Christophe Zajac-Denek). There’s some terrific interaction between Dougie’s boss, Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) and the trio of Detectives Fusco (David Koechner, Eric Edelstein, and Larry Clarke), and not too long after they, and the rest of Las Vegas Metro, get to play heroes by finally bringing Ike to justice in a fleabag North Strip (by the look of it) motel room.
Concurrent with all this, Cole, Agents Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) and Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer), along with Diane and Cole, find their return flight to Philadelphia interrupted by a spur-of-the-moment course change to, no shock here, Buckhorn, South Dakota, where we learn that mild-mannered high school principal Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard) , still under lock, key, and the watchful eyes of Detective Dave Macklay (Brent Briscoe) and the Pentagon’s Lt. Knox (Adele Rene) is actually a blogger (poor sap) with a keen interest in what he calls “The Zone,” which seems to be shorthand for the “world between worlds” that we’ve explored in parts three and eight. He knows Major Garland Briggs — hell, he’s met the man — and what that all means is surely going to be one of the key mysteries explored in the nine short weeks we have left with this, the most remarkable piece of work ever crafted for American television screens, but for now it looks very much like Lynch and Frost have pulled another of their trademark “you didn’t think this shit was connected, but check this out!” twists, and I’ll bet you anything that the glass box in New York ties right into this particular plot thread, as well.
Meanwhile, in the town of Twin Peaks proper, while Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Andy (Harry Goaz) shop for furniture online, Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster), Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) and Deputy (it still sounds weird to say this) Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) are bestowed with a gift from the aforementioned late (any way you slice it) Major, and when they’re given both it and as much of an explanation as she can muster from Bobby’s mom, Betty (Charlotte Stewart), we witness arguably the most powerful and affecting performance we’ve seen in this series so far, with the possible exception of Catherine E. Coulson’s as-brief-as-it-was-brave reprisal of her role as the Log Lady. Stewart’s straight-up incredible in her few moments of screen time here, Lynch directs the scene with superb humanistic understatement that really allows her to shine, and when she breaks her soliloquy with “should we have that coffee now?,” well — everyone feels both relieved and, somehow, not to sound too grandiose, transported. It’s beautiful stuff, and manages to outdo even Lillard’s harrowing breakdown under questioning that comes later in the epis — shit, there I go again, part.
Oh, and while all that’s going, Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) and his assistant, Beverly (Ashley Judd) still can’t find the source of the mysterious “hum” in the corner of her office (but its power definitely seems to be drawing them inexorably closer together), and brother Jerry (David Patrick Kelly) is just plain out of his gourd on weed that absolutely has to be laced with something stronger. After all, I’ve been pretty damn high in my time, but I’ve never had my foot talk to me, much less tell me it wasn’t my foot at all.
Further questions abound (why is Johnny Horne running head-first into a wall? Who are the two — sorry to use the term, but — meth skanks hanging out in the Roadhouse at the end?), but between the transcendent moments from Stewart and Lillard and the usual beyond-stong work from MacLachlan, Dern, and company, it has to be said that Lynch did the one thing he could, indeed the one thing he absolutely needed to do, in order to get all of our heads “back in the game” this week : trusted his cast to hit it out of the park. And they did.
So, to return to our question from the outset : can you ever really go home again? It seems you can. Our eyes are open wider, the scope of our vision expanded, our expectations amped up to a degree that no TV show has ever even attempted, much less actually been able, to follow through on, but yes. This is familiar territory. We know the world of Twin Peaks as well as we ever have.
Which is to say, of course, not at all.
Late To The Party : “The Hateful Eight”
Posted: May 5, 2016 in movies
Tags: bruce dern, cinema, Demian Bichir, dvd, Ennio Morricone, film, Jennifer Jason Leigh, kurt russell, Michael Madsen, movie, quentin tarantino, Robert Richardson, Samuel L. Jackson, The Hateful Eight, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins
Waaaaayyy back in my early days as an armchair critic, I focused almost exclusively on exploitation, horror, and other “B”-movie genres. They’re pretty much all I wrote about, in fact, and calling my blog “Trash Film Guru” made a kind of sense back then. These days, of course, I find myself casting my hopefully-more-sharply-trained critical eye on just about anything, and if I went back and added up the numbers over the last two or three years I’d probably find that I’ve reviewed just as many comics as I have films, and that I’ve reviewed as many Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, foreign films, and straight-to-video numbers as I have old-school (or, for that matter, new-school) exploitation flicks, but still — the “Trash Film Guru” name continues to run at the top of my site, and since it does, I take it as almost a personal responsibility to review new Quentin Tarantino films as soon as they come out, given that he’s essentially the living embodiment of the exploitation ethos in our day and age.
Not that it’s a responsibility I don’t relish, mind you — I’m not ashamed to admit that I still absolutely love all of Q.T.’s work to one degree or another (yes, even Death Proof), and that I still consider it a genuine cinematic “event” when something new from the man hits theaters. And yet —
I never did get around to seeing 2015’s The Hateful Eight when it was playing cinemas. I was short-staffed at work at the time and clocking six-day weeks for a good few months there, and so getting out to the movies just wasn’t something I had time for. By the time things settled down a bit and I found myself with something vaguely resembling “free time” again, wouldn’t you know it — the damn thing was long gone. It’s out on Blu-ray and DVD now (with excellent picture and sound as you’d expect and sparse extras, the most notable of which is a decent little “making-of” featurette), though, so hey — I can finally do my duty as a self-appointed “guru” of exploitation and report back to you, dear reader, with my thoughts on this, our guy Quentin’s latest, and perhaps most divisive, effort.
First off, let’s not kid ourselves — everybody loved Inglourious Basterds (and with good reason), and everybody especially loved that long, slow-burn first scene. A lot of folks even openly wished the entire flick had aped its tone and structure, and evidently Tarantino was listening, because The Hateful Eight is easily his “talkiest,” most insular, most claustrophobic, most subtle work yet. It takes a long time to get going and is decidedly less flamboyant in terms of its balls-to-the-walls, operatic violence(though rest assured there’s still plenty of it) than we’re used to from the auteur, but in many ways that’s the best thing about it — not only because, hey, a little variety is always good, but because Tarantino extends that meme outward within the film itself. The Hateful Eight, ya see, is much more than “not exactly what we were expecting” — it’s also never exactly what it appears to be.
On the surface, of course, this story about bloodthirsty bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (played by Tarantino mainstay Samuel L. Jackson) crossing paths with more-supposedly-gentlemanly-but-really-even-more-twisted fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) as he escorts his latest captive, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) into the one-horse town of Red Rock, Wyoming barely ahead of a blizzard sounds like it’s probably a fairly traditional western — as new characters make their acquaintance, though, such as the town’s purported new sheriff, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), and add layers of intrigue to the proceedings, one starts to get the idea that perhaps Tarantino is going to give us a Peckinpah-esque “revisionist” western. It’s not until we meet the rest of the “hateful” bunch, though — former Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), Red Rock hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), cow puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and substitute shopkeep Bob (Demian Bichir), who are all waiting out the storm inside the confines of an establishment known as Minnie’s Haberdashery — that we realize what we actually have on our hands here is an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery where no one is who they appear to be. Even the ones, paradoxically, who are.
But hold on a minute. Is that really what Tarantino is serving us here? Of course not. The various characters are, in fact, the flesh-and-blood embodiment of any number of problems (specifically those of the racial, cultural, political, and sexual varieties) plaguing just-post-Civil War America, and even as the onion of just who the fuck did what and what it even means is being peeled, the deftly-intertwined socio-political commentary is where the real action is here — and even there you honestly have to wonder whether or not Tarantino is confining his critique to this historical setting, or showing just how little has really changed between then and now. None of this ever gets heavy-handed, but it sure is thought-provokingly juicy.
The other delicious bit of sleight-of-hand that Tarantino indulges in comes by way of the brilliant “switcheroo” he pulls immediately after the film’s opening act. Robert Richardson’s gorgeous cinematography at the outset gives us magnificent snow-swept vistas of such quietly ominous grandeur that I was literally kicking myself for not having seen this flick in 70mm, and coupled with Ennio Morricone’s Oscar-winning score the feel established early on in epic in the truest sense of the word — then the remaining 90% of the movie takes place in a single room and is pretty much a stage play on celluloid. Here’s the funny thing, though : Richardson and Morricone’s work only gets stronger once confined to these tight quarters. I have no idea how that works, but works it does.
Needless to say, the acting from all parties concerned is absolutely superb, and much as every line of dialogue in The Hateful Eight is loaded with import whose meaning will only become clear later, every single movement, gesture, even facial tic on the part of the actors matters here. At over two-and-a-half hours long you’d be forgiven for assuming that there was a fair amount of “filler” material on offer in this flick, but the truth of the matter is that each and every detail is relevant to this film’s outcome. Not only are there almost no “throwaway” lines, there are very few, if any, “throwaway” moments.” So, ya know, pay attention.
And I hope that the nay-sayers who bad-mouthed this flick are still paying attention. If ever there was a film almost purposefully designed to benefit from critical re-appraisal as the years go on, it’s this one. Sure, it’s something of a lengthy slog and most of the tension is bubbling well beneath the surface, but damn — The Hateful Eight is a powder keg that could go off at any second, even if it isn’t always exclaiming that fact in forceful, “in-your-face” tones. You do need to be patient with this flick — but your patience will be richly rewarded.
So — is this Tarantino’s best work? No, Jackie Brown still holds that honor in my own humble opinion. But The Hateful Eight is definitely his most complex, multi-faceted, nuanced, and politically aware effort to date, and shows that while the years may be mellowing the tone of his product, they are in no way blunting its impact.
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Pravda: Stalin Deconstructs Trotsky’s Duplicitous Letter (15.12.1923)
18/05/2017 Adrian Chan-Wyles (PhD) Leftwing Political Analysis Leave a comment
Full Article – JV Stalin – UK
Trotsky’s Letter
The resolution of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission on internal Party democracy, published on December 7, was adopted unanimously. Trotsky voted for this resolution. It might have been expected, therefore, that the members of the Central Committee, including Trotsky, would come forward in a united front with a call to Party members for unanimous support of the Central Committee and its resolution. This expectation, however, has not been realised. The other day Trotsky issued a letter to the Party conferences which cannot be interpreted otherwise than as an attempt to weaken the will of the Party membership for unity in supporting the Central Committee and its position.
Judge for yourselves.
After referring to bureaucracy in the Party apparatus and the danger of degeneration of the old guard, i.e., the Leninists, the main core of our Party, Trotsky writes:
“The degeneration of the ‘old guard’ has been observed in history more than once. Let us take the latest and most glaring historical example: the leaders and the parties of the Second International. We know that Wilhelm Liebknecht, Bebel, Singer, Victor Adler, Kautsky, Bernstein, Lafargue, Guesde, and others, were the immediate and direct pupils of Marx and Engels. We know, however, that all those leaders—some partly, and others wholly—degenerated into opportunism.”. . . “We, that is, we ‘old ones,’ must say that our generation, which naturally plays a leading role in the Party, has no self-sufficient guarantee against the gradual and imperceptible weakening of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, assuming that the Party tolerates a further growth and consolidation of the bureaucratic-apparatus methods of policy which are transforming the younger generation into passive educational material and are inevitably creating estrangement between the apparatus and the membership, between the old and the young.”. . . “The youth—the Party’s truest barometer—react most sharply of all against Party bureaucracy.”. . . “The youth must capture the revolutionary formulas by storm. . .
First, I must dispel a possible misunderstanding. As is evident from his letter, Trotsky includes himself among the Bolshevik old guard, thereby showing readiness to take upon himself the charges that may be hurled at the old guard if it does indeed take the path of degeneration. It must be admitted that this readiness for self-sacrifice is undoubtedly a noble trait. But I must protect Trotsky from Trotsky, because, for obvious reasons, he cannot, and should not, bear responsibility for the possible degeneration of the principal cadres of the Bolshevik old guard. Sacrifice is a good thing, of course, but do the old Bolsheviks need it? I think that they do not.
Secondly, it is impossible to understand how opportunists and Mensheviks like Bernstein, Adler, Kautsky, Guesde, and the others, can be put on a par with the Bolshevik old guard, which has always fought, and I hope will continue to fight with honour, against opportunism, the Mensheviks and the Second International. What is the cause of this muddle and confusion? Who needs it, bearing in mind the interests of the Party and not ulterior motives that by no means aim at defence of the old guard? How is one to interpret these insinuations about opportunism in relation to the old Bolsheviks, who matured in the struggle against opportunism?
Thirdly, I do not by any means think that the old Bolsheviks are absolutely guaranteed against the danger of degeneration any more than I have grounds for asserting that we are absolutely guaranteed against, say, an earthquake. As a possibility, such a danger can and should be assumed. But does this mean that such a danger is real, that it exists? I think that it does not. Trotsky himself has adduced no evidence to show that the danger of degeneration is a real danger. Nevertheless, there are a number of elements within our Party who are capable of giving rise to a real danger of degeneration of certain ranks of our Party. I have in mind that section of the Mensheviks who joined our Party unwillingly, and who have not yet got rid of their old opportunist habits. The following is what Comrade Lenin wrote about these Mensheviks, and about this danger, at the time of the Party purge:
“Every opportunist is distinguished for his adaptability . . . and the Mensheviks, as opportunists, adapt themselves ‘on principle,’ so to speak, to the prevailing trend among the workers and assume a protective colouring, just as a hare’s coat turns white in the winter. It is necessary to know this specific feature of the Mensheviks and take it into account. And taking it into account means purging the Party of approximately ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Mensheviks who joined the Russian Communist Party after 1918, i.e., when the victory of the Bolsheviks first became probable and then certain.” (see Vol. XXVII, p. 13.)
How could it happen that Trotsky, who lost sight of this and similar, really existing dangers, pushed into the foreground a possible danger, the danger of the degeneration of the Bolshevik old guard? How can one shut one’s eyes to a real danger and push into the foreground an unreal, possible danger, if one has the interests of the Party in view and not the object of undermining the prestige of the majority in the Central Committee, the leading core of the Bolshevik old guard? Is it not obvious that “approaches” of this kind can only bring grist to the mill of the opposition?
Fourthly, what reasons did Trotsky have for contrasting the “old ones,” who may degenerate, to the “youth,” the Party’s “truest barometer”; for contrasting the “old guard,” who may become bureaucratic, to the “young guard,” which must “capture the revolutionary formulas by storm”? What grounds had he for drawing this contrast, and what did he need it for? Have not the youth and the old guard always marched in a united front against internal and external enemies? Is not the unity between the “old ones” and the “young ones” the basic strength of our revolution? What was the object of this attempt to discredit the old guard and demagogically to flatter the youth if not to cause and widen a fissure between these principal detachments of our Party? Who needs all this, if one has the interests of the Party
in view, its unity and solidarity, and not an attempt to shake this unity for the benefit of the opposition?
Is that the way to defend the Central Committee and its resolution on internal Party democracy, which, moreover, was adopted unanimously?
But evidently, that was not Trotsky’s object in issuing his letter to the Party conferences. Evidently there was a different intention here, namely: diplomatically to support the opposition in its struggle against the Central Committee of the Party while pretending to support the Central Committee’s resolution.
That, in fact, explains the stamp of duplicity that Trotsky’s letter bears.
Trotsky is in a bloc with the Democratic Centralists and with a section of the “Left” Communists—therein lies the political significance of Trotsky’s action.
Pravda, No. 285, December 15, 1923
1923BolshevikCCCPCentral CommitteeDecember 15Democratic CentralismNo. 285PravdaSoviet UnonstalinStalin Collective WorksTrotskyTrotsky's duplicityTrotsky's errors of judgementTrotsky's treacheryUSSR
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Category Archives: Imagination
February 16, 2017 by thomtruelove in Controversy, Ideology, Imagination, Musing, Opinion and tagged Demons, Evil, Handbook, Moral Constitution, Philosophy, Political climate, Religion, Theology | 1 Comment
Growing up I was not introduced to worship and faith in what I would describe as a helpful manner. That having been said, several members of my extended family were quite religious. The manner of their practice focused on the prohibitions and consequences rather than anything that could be described as love or virtue. I did get the lesson that we – human beings – were to oppose evil but there wasn’t any clear indication of an effective methodology.
Early on my experience with God distilled to an unrelenting and judgmental view of humans, in which they were essentially worthless, while giving them the loftiest of assignments. It isn’t remotely logical even to someone in grade school.
By the time I was twelve years old I divorced myself from attending church although, at that age, that wasn’t the phrase I used. I just stopped going. Theology became a cerebral, philosophical matter for me. For a time I dismissed faith as belonging to the same category as superstitious belief in fairies or magic. I did not embark on a life of deplorable behavior or debauchery. That path seemed dangerous; avoiding it was not based on the avoidance of sin. The concept of sin was also grouped with legends and fables.
As a subject theology (in a number of ways in which humanity has approached it) has stayed with me as an object of fascination. The notion of “evil” remains an idea that I’ll spend time pondering. A worthy handbook on the subject would, I think, provide 1. a concise but through definition of evil, 2. training on how to recognize it, and 3. procedures for to do when it found. Scripture and religious texts are actually fairly vague on these points – apart from praying to and praising the divine.
I have from time to time asked people how they address the first point. The most frequent answer is that evil is defined as “anything that causes harm”. On face value that makes sense but razor blade can cause harm. I wouldn’t call them evil. Given the assignment to resolutely stand against evil, usually no matter the cost – to attack it continuously until it is banished – it seems to me that evil has to be something so universally heinous that most people would agree, “Yeah. That has to go.”
From an intellectual stance and for more than a decade I used a formula in place of “evil”. What almost everyone else used that term to describe I would evaluate as a combination of stupid, crazy, and/or cruel. That does cover a wide range of objectionable behavior and wretched results. Were I to include a fourth element it would probably capture the willfully contrary and/or ignorant.
Stupidity does not require endless war; it can be “cured” with ongoing education. Insanity can be mitigated including by the hospitalization of those beyond treatment. The correction of cruelty falls in part within our education system and, failing that, our justice system. History has many example of how to correct those who deliberately oppose truth: shame, guilt, and other forms of peer pressure – resulting in exile as a last resort.
Evil would therefore be something outside those categories. I’m afraid I cannot provide Article I of a Moral Constitution. The above, I think, accounts for some of the things that evil is not. Recent research does, however, remind me that there are a few hundred named demons in past. There are fewer than 20 named demons in the Bible. Renaissance fascination with the occult provides most of the rest of the roster.
I once read that “public belial” used to be a crime. Unfortunately, I cannot find any proof of that now. Rather than working on the three-point handbook I may gradually add to a list of which demon represents what societal sin.
➀ Belial – assholes generally; ➁ Mammon – unrestrained capitalism and obsessive greed; ➂ Baphomet – obstinate know-it-alls (à la “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”); ➃ Dagon – anything that teaches, glorifies, or encourages poor behavior; ➄ Moloch – those who oppose and obstruct another’s effort to do an agreed upon good; ➅ Abaddon – fearmongers and those who foster enmity instead of amity; ➆ Pythius – peddlers of alternative fact and those who obscure truth.
In these times it is interesting to note that in 1818 Jacques Collin de Plancy gave Rimmon as the name of the demon ambassador of/to Russia. There’s another point of trivia from esoterica that I can no longer connect to a source. The above image of a symbol for sin. It is identical to one of the alchemical symbols for sulphur apart from the “rocker” at the top. Use it in good health.
⟢ ⟡ ⟣
strangely familiar…
December 30, 2016 by thomtruelove in Design, Imagination, Musing, Observation, Opinion and tagged Affinity, Ars Goetia, Connections, King Solomon, Magic, Marginalia, Pokémon GO, Reminders, Wayne Barlowe | Leave a comment
Since the release of Pokémon GO, I had been attempting to understand just why it had become a social media phenomenon. “I just like it.” That’s the most common answer given by pokénthusiasts – who are not just existing fans of the 20-year franchise enjoying a new expression of it – when asked why they play. At face value that is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Attempting to probe deeper may prompt defensive responses and/or accusations of being a hater of one type or another.
I have lately been borrowing a friend’s Pokédex to emulate their experience with the game – hatching, catching, and watching evolutions. There have not yet been any training nor any battles fought. The animation and use of color are certainly part of the appeal. The use of Google Maps in navigating the augmented reality fascinates me. First of all, it’s a very clever shortcut in coding I’m sure. It also appeals to my long-standing (and previously documented) love of maps.
Many – not all – of the creatures are cute and I cannot really claim to be immune or opposed to cute given my Pandora’s Pets creations. Like the Pets, Pokémon has a deep lore from which to draw. Admittedly, the mythology I’ve been developing for my little monsters isn’t as fast as that of Pokémon – yet. And just like the Pets, which are designed to help people with specific emotions, each of the pokémon might prompt a new thought.
One of the newest pokémon – released in Sun & Moon this past November – is Lunala, an emissary of the Moon. While preparing this post I discovered her and found myself saying, “Okay. When she’s in Pokémon GO I’ll play.” And then I found myself asking why I’d had that reaction. That is apart from her seeming particularly badass.
She reminds me of Starhawk from Marvel’s original Guardians of the Galaxy comics (yet to appear in MCU films) and the Elven Man-o-war ships from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer campaign setting.
With a sci fi novel in progress and the intent to retrieving the ancient Greek myth story from the back burner, I’m not going to let myself get distracted. A few new ideas have popped up while examining this bit of zeitgeist and they’ve been filed away. But spending a little time at the PokéStop has reminded me of a few other strange things.
Johann “Trithemius” Heidenberg was an abbot known for compiling dictionaries and writing about cryptology. History also holds him to be an occultist, chiefly due to misinterpretation of his book Steganographia (written c. 1499). The term used as the title means, in essence, the art of hiding a secret message within a presumably mundane text. Trithemius chose to present this manual as a means to summon spirits that might then be forced to transmit messages over great distances. Depending on one’s perspective, the result would be clairsentience or a worldwide mystic web.
Trithemius’ decoder wheel and a poké ball.
Most of the abbot’s contemporaries seem to have missed the point – a lesson in code – and focused on the magic. The abbot was an opponent of the historical Dr. Johann Georg Faust and Steganographia inadvertently inspired a 16th century craze: catching demons. An advisor and astrologer to both Queens Mary and Elizabeth, Dr. John Dee, was all in – even designing a mystic sigil to represent himself and certain hopes. He was the first to use the phrase “British Empire” – and then as an aspiration.
John Dee would certainly have known about a number of spirit-catcher manuals including Steganographia, Ars Goetia, and Pseudomonarchia Daemonum by Johann Weyer. The latter two grimoires provide names and descriptions for a number of demons (72 and 69, respectively) along with the advantages of summoning and binding each one. King Solomon is said to have done this to speed construction of his famous Temple. Why not by Elizabeth I to expand the reach of Britannia?
12th century Pokémon trainer waiting on that egg to hatch.
The origin of these spirits may have been the result of a misconception but they seem to be as difficult to “put back” as the woes and evils that sprang from Pandora’s box. Goetic names turned up through the French Revolution and now are mentioned in comic books and manga, TV shows and roleplaying games. At least half a dozen names that John Dee might have mentioned to his sovereign have been used in Pokémon’s cousin – Yu-Gi-Oh!
I’ve been aware of these opposite numbers to the Shem ha-Mephorash (המפורש שם, the Qabalistic hidden name(s) of God) since 1982 but from nothing more arcane that the DragonQuest rpg by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI). The spirits that Dee hoped to harness appear in the works of Wayne Barlowe since 1998.
In a conversation with my business partner, Leanna Renee Hieber, about all of these notions she made the connection that the Elizabethan obsession and pokémania had a lot in common.
Decarabia as seen in Shakugan no Shana and Staryu from Pokémon.
Peculiar creatures and imaginary lore seem to have always been poking around the marginalia of our minds and zeitgeist. This was true when – in the mythology of the founding of Thebes – Cadmus fought a dragon and later became (evolved into?) one. The borders of Medieval manuscripts, including apparent wars with rabbits and snails, demonstrate that weird beasts would not disappear even given 3000 years. Pokémon may be the latest expression and if so folkfauna may evolve forever.
And we may never know why they keeping turning up, precisely why we like them, or what they mean. All this to say, I’m not completely sure that I shouldn’t at least nod a little toward all of this in Astral in some way. Hmm. I’m not completely sure I’ve a choice in the matter.
run it up the flagpole…
October 24, 2016 by thomtruelove in Ideology, Imagination, Process, Symbolism and tagged Flags, Gene Roddenberry, Heraldry, Joss Whedon, Oskar Pernefeldt, Outer Space Treaty, Pliny the Elder, T. H. White, Vexillology | 1 Comment
With apologies to Oskar Pernefeldt and anyone who has imagined a flag for planet Earth, in Astral the banner for M.other E.arth is based on vexillology, the study of flags. Symbolism in a wide range of forms has fascinated me at least since the mid-70s. Relevant to this post, I recall an illustrated dictionary that devoted to pages to “Flags of the World”.
Rules and preferences for flag design share a heritage with heraldry. To a degree, the process for describing of a coat of arms (i.e., blazonry) can apply to flags. The proper display of a flag is based on the orientation of shields.
Given present international law, national flags will only appear offworld under certain conditions. The Outer Space Treaty† provides that “outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” The treaty does not limit businesses and private citizens but a flag with a logo on it is not a flag – it’s an ad.
Fictional flags do not have to follow such laws either so we’re free to imagine what we’d like. Star Trek imagines a Unified Earth and Gene Roddenberry modeled his United Federation of Planets on the United Nations. The flags of United Earth (and its Space Probe Agency) reflect this inspiration. It’s often easy to see the sources of other Earth banners.
In Astral, while imagination permits anything, I’ve attempted to stay close to good flag design and a little heraldic knowledge.
The flag of the Hamarchy of Keid, which includes the principal world on which Astral is set – Dalim, is sky blue and black with a silver crane and at least eight stars in the center. In heraldic terms the colors suggest a society that values wisdom, aspiration, and peace. The crane refers to an early Roman view that cranes enjoyed a cooperative society and took turns at watch at night. I like this because, although T. H. White came long after Pliny the Elder, this theme is echoed in White’s Arthuriana.
The Ophiuchid Cantons are almost two separate governments and will likely grow further apart. During the story, however, they share a flag. It is blue and silver with an ermine canton, or field, in the upper left corner. The fictional designer of this flag meant to demonstrate independence from M.E. along with a love for truth and innocence. There is subtle defiance in this.
Initially a part of the Cantons, Federalist Arcadia’s political emblem stands for a sincere and dignified demeanor while its citizens have little connection or allegiance to M.E. The linked angles toward the right show additional values of efficiency and pragmatism. In some heraldic traditions and in the opinion of M.E. the red-violet blush on the flag stands for treason.
The final term for the “Solar Empire” or the territories of M.E. hasn’t come to me as yet. Commonwealth is the leading contender but we’ll see. The coat of arms for the original human homeworld and her extended family of colonies is a golden sun in a green field meaning life and fertility with a black chevron representing prospect in and ever widening reach into outer space. The symbolism here being a mind elevated in hope – with protection and generosity for all new settlements.
How all societies present themselves in their best light will show up in well-designed flags. These four in Astral (and one other without an official flag) will try to live up to the values and virtues outlined above. How close they come to their own ideals is part of the story.
† The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.
⛿
Pt. Being…
September 26, 2016 by thomtruelove in Content, Creativity, Design, Imagination, Musing, Process and tagged C. S. Bird, Complexity, David Keirsey, Eloquence, ENTP, Goal-oriented, Isabel Briggs Myers, Katharine Cook Briggs, Kelly Johnson, KISS, MBTI, Peter Bowler, Procedures, Reminders, Task at hand, Visual thesaurus | Leave a comment
One of my habits – bad or not – is a tendency toward complexity. In the late 80s my coworkers and I were asked to fill out the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. It was not made a requirement, though some on the team viewed it as such. I was intrigued by the concept of sorting personality types into sixteen broad categories based on what seemed to be a relatively short questionnaire.
Of the categories, my personality type turned out to be ENTP* which means, according to the “test”, that I could be expected to be primarily interested in understanding the world. The MBTI also suggests that I enjoy debate and playing devil’s advocate.
Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers did not go on to say that I’d be attracted to intricate charts of relationships such as social media webs** and find visual thesaurus entries fascinating. If they had guessed that I would have these affinities they’d have been spot on.
Etymology and other fields of origin study are a large part of what occupies my musing when not seeking to craft entertaining worlds or unusual sculpture. My great grandmother once told me that to begin gaining a skill or cultivating a talent was to “first admire it”. I cannot remember not admiring eloquence.
But – as it turns out – having a silver tongue does not depend on strict adherence to every rule of grammar or an ever-expanding vocabulary. Effective communication can only be measured in terms of audience comprehension. I’ve always regarded “dumb it down” as a chore for myself and an insult to others. “Make it more accessible” seems more like a mission and a courtesy.
This is not to say that I won’t pause from time to time to hunt down a very precise and/or obscure word. There is a PDF of C. S. Bird’s Gradiloquent Dictionary on my hard drive. Somewhere in my collection of books is a physical copy of The Superior Person’s Book of Words by Peter Bowler. (I was once accused that I felt I was a superior person based on owning a copy of the latter.)
I will probably always find phylogenetic circular cladograms nearly equivalent to sacred geometry. I do, however, have to remain vigilant in keeping the famous advice of Clarence L. Johnson in mind. He, better known as Kelly, was the engineer who headed the Lockheed Skunk Works from during WWII until 1975. It is believed that he originated the principle of “Keep it simple, stupid.”
The MBTI structure indicates the types are based on preferences. Although my extrovert score is very high, it isn’t a constant. INTP is the introvert mode and that state is described as having the motto of “eschew obfuscation”. Sometimes that can feel like what I’m doing – all while trying to make an actual point. This means a lot of reminders to myself after enjoying the exploration of what may be to return to mission and work of what can be. That is enjoyable too.
* ENTP people draw energy from interactions with people and tend toward the abstract while relying on logic and objectivity. We also like to keep our options open. That sounds more like me than Sagittarius.
** I haven’t found an app or add-on that can build the “hairball” illustration of 1,672 interconnected Facebook friends.
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a reasonable approximation of the MBTI, if you’re curious.
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and back again…
August 5, 2016 by thomtruelove in Character-driven, Creativity, Imagination, Process, Terrain, Writing and tagged C. S. Lewis, Cartography, Distraction, Fantasy, Focus, J. R. R. Tolkien, Location, location, location, Middle-earth, Narnia, Pauline Baynes, Ray Bradbury, Science fiction | Leave a comment
Visualization can get sometimes get in the way of manifestation. I had started to develop a map of a hypothetical planet in orbit around the larger star in the Alpha Fornacis binary system, a location in Astral. What does the story need from such a map?
While I was in high school Ralph Bakshi’s animated version of The Lord of the Rings was released. Some educators including my English teacher seized the opportunity to introduce a classic of modern literature. There is, of course, the famous map of Middle-Earth of which there are now countless variations. Pauline Baynes, trained as a cartographer during World War II while a volunteer with the Ministry of Defence, did the original work.
J. R. R. Tolkien was very impressed by Miss Baynes’ talent though some of his friends suggested that her work reduced his “to a commentary on the drawings”. He viewed her mapmaking as presenting a “collateral theme” and introduced her to C. S. Lewis. Some of how we view Narnia is still influenced by her imagination.
Maps tell stories just as novels do. If used in conjunction they must help tell the same story. Does it help show how long and/or arduous a physical journey is? Are there warnings about potential dangers along the way? Is the map equivalent to a trail of breadcrumbs away from Rosina Leckermaul or a length of thread leading back to Ariadne? Proper use of a map helps shape the narrative and defines the characters.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m very pro-map. One of the things I’ll catch myself wondering when I pick up a science fiction or fantasy novel, “I hope there’s a map.” As a fan of fiction I think I rather expect a nice, fancy map. But why map α For Aa?
Building an illustration of the network of Earth’s five dozen future colony worlds helped establish the sociopolitical environment of Astral. The concerns and attitudes of the major characters grew out of my understanding of how humans had spread into interstellar space. Part of the motive of the murderer stems from the star map.
In a setting where terraforming is somewhat commonplace – and the character of any given planet can therefore be changed to suit settlers – there’s less need to map the planet’s surface. Moving from future city’s public transit station to another seems far less important to map out when some of the characters have already traveled more than 20 light-years before the story begins.
I’ve done animations of rotating fictional worlds before but I’d forgotten how time-consuming that can be. From time to time now I will have to ask myself, “What does this contribute to the story?”, which is a polite way of asking, “Are you wasting your time on this detail?”
This afternoon I remembered something I’d made eight years ago. In Astral, the locations that matter are those along the way in pursuit of the murderer and where justice may be meted out. Less spinning globe and more floor plan, then. And I won’t need to sketch out any rooms; real buildings are everywhere as a menu of locations.
From preschool on, we’re told that imagination is a virtue. It is, in fact, the first tool of any artist whether with images or words – unless you happen to be one of those lucky people for whom a blank page or canvas is a Muse in itself. In order to invite and guide a reader to explore any new world, the author must be a diligent scout first. A writer of any sort owes those who may follow his or her lead not to be distracted along the first trail blazed.
From the end of May 1985 to the day before Halloween of 1992 (first on HBO and then shown by USA Network), each episode of The Ray Bradbury Theatre began with the author’s description of himself as a pack rat of things that helped him dream stories into being. The introduction concluded with Mr. Bradbury saying, “And the trip? Exactly one half exhilaration, exactly one half terror.”
If a map helps along the way it is a valuable tool. If not it’s another item of clutter.
⛰
straight on ’til morning…
July 20, 2016 by thomtruelove in Imagination, Observation, Perspective, Sociology and tagged Apollo, Barter, Columbia, Gemini, Hammurabi, Hope, Imaginary economy, Justice, Market factors, Mercury, Money, Optimism, Recorded history, Space Shuttle, Symbolism, The Confidence Exchange, Ur-Nammu, Written language | 1 Comment
Respect and trust are commonly referred to as being earned. Other aspects of human interaction are sometimes included but only these two are held in quite this regard. We speak of both, in a sense, as social commodities.
When doing so, it is often part of a critique of someone’s behavior being insufficient to warrant such credits. We also take this stance as a reminder to those who demand admiration or belief.
Imagine if society had a literal system of accounting for behavior and personal qualities. If human interaction were directly comparable to an economy, what currency buys respect and trust? What can they in turn be used to purchase? Imagine this Confidence Exchange.
Desire would drive this market just as it does real financial systems. Reputation plays a role in these hypothetical stocks in the same way real investments are effected. Given that forms of monetary transactions predate recorded history, the idea that we’ve been participating in the Confidence Exchange (and without knowing it as such) all along may not be far-fetched.
Although coin and paper currency would come later, money existed before most early legal codes. Both Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu dealt with the role of money in civil society (among other matters, of course).
The scales of the market were borrowed to serve as the near-universal representation of justice. There is then, still, an implied pessimism in the symbol – from back in the traders’ stalls where proof of a good deal was required by real measurement.
Spoken language predates barter but for the entire course of recorded history our thinking has been driven by market-based factors we don’t spend much time considering. Case in point, how we spend our time, not to mention the idea that time is money, may have grown up with the economy more than any other aspect of civilization.
There is no symbol for the intrinsic value of a person or society. There are no signs for loyalty or honor. The Anglo-Saxon and Scandic systems of weregild may have provided small, financial comfort in the aftermath of loss but the cost in coin could not reflect the nature of the person(s) lost.
Religious symbols represent institutions, tenets, and adherents but rarely (if at all) any specific virtue. Where are these signs?
It won’t catch on but I have an idea for a symbol for Hope and Optimism.
On April 12, 1981, Space Shuttle Columbia stood on Launch Pad 39A. I was in my last year of high school and four generations of my family sat in relative silence listening to journalists and scientists trade jargon and speculation. They too fell silent when the shuttle began to rumble. With seven seconds to go, the hydrogen burn-off igniters made it look like they sparked the launch into being.
For several minutes we sat without a word. My siblings and I hadn’t seen the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs; everyone else in the room had. To them this launch seemed different. Human desires that had survived on little more than hope for 15,000 years were arcing into the sky.
Finally, the eldest person in the room, my great grandmother, spoke. “When I was a little girl they brought milk to my house in a horse-drawn cart.”
I was then and remain truly awestruck by that observation. It’s probably the only aspect of my point of view that has a timestamp. If the space shuttle is a horse-drawn cart how astonishing will the future be?
So, I offer the space shuttle as a symbol of the value and virtue of hope.
let’s make it a good one…
May 6, 2016 by thomtruelove in Imagination, Inspiration, Perspective, Sci fi and fantasy, Science, Theology and tagged Genetic engineering, History, Hope, Human destiny, Human nature, POV, Science fiction, Space exploration | Leave a comment
Astral is my first effort at a sci fi novel since high school. I don’t have any of the scripts or books I wrote then with one exception and while the retained short story is not The Eye of Argon it isn’t The Time Machine by any stretch.
As noted previously, my science fiction preference requires space travel. But what about the rest of the world(s) in which the story takes place? We’re quite unlikely to invent any propulsion system that could make reaching exoplanets feasible without seeing advances in other scientific and technological fields. By the time any visit to α Centauri is made, it seems probable that we might also have taken a significantly more active role in our own evolution.
Astral won’t be a big bucket into which I’ll pour all the science that appeals to me. However, the characters in the novel will consider many machines yet to be dreamt of to be common, everyday things. Part of the world-building has to include a fairly thorough understanding of the societal repercussions of fictional innovations. What will it mean if we can travel faster than light and have mastered manipulation of the genome?
Opinion of human civilization 500 years ago can range widely. Should our emphasis be on the artistic achievements of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo or on the rise and impact of Imperialism? Is it more important to note the wars and plagues or the contributions of Martin Luther and Galileo Galilei? In 500 more years what will be the state of art and thought? Human nature may never change, despite our technological sophistication.
By the time audiences first took seats in the Globe Theatre in London and other people were excavating Pompeii near modern Naples, what humanity was and probably would always be was already on full display – fully developed. The fact that Shakespeare and Vesuvius still interest us may prove this point.
There will be more than a few exceptionally dark, perhaps ugly moments in Astral. Tonight I’ve been pondering which aspects of the characters who inhabit one human colony find beautiful and how they find it in their lives.
Any moment in time is both great and horrible if viewed from a wide enough point of view. What sort of future we create and whatever tales we tell about it depend – as it always has – on what perspective we adopt.
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Movie review: Roger Ailes documentary paints a picture of a paranoid bully
By Al AlexanderFor the Patriot Ledger
Without Roger Ailes, there would have been no President Richard Nixon, no President George H.W. Bush and definitely no President Donald Trump. All three were blessed by the keen mind of a master manipulator who knew how to sell political candidates like Apple sells iPhones. Was there buyer’s remorse? You betcha, but Ailes – like most ad-men – believed in the motto of “you buy it; you own it.” He didn’t care; all that mattered was he won, eventually earning the title of “kingmaker,” a designation he didn’t wear humbly.
He liked to brag, and watching his story unfold in the fascinating documentary, “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes,” it strikes you how many cues Trump takes from Ailes, right down to his belief in transactional relationships, his thirst for power and his misogynistic treatment of women. It was the latter that famously got Ailes booted from his job as CEO of Fox News, a network he founded and long championed to the top of the ratings. It’s also where he fostered an environment of rampant sexual harassment of his female employees, offering quid pro quo ultimatums in which sexual favors were sought in exchange for promotions. Refusals of which, were sure to get you fired or placed on a “do-not-hire” list. In that respect, Ailes ruined as many careers as he made.
Director Alexis Bloom (“Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher”) wrenchingly introduces us to his victims, or at least the handful willing to discuss it on camera – or not under an non-disclosure agreement as part of their lucrative settlements with the network and its oily owner, Rupert Murdoch. What strikes you is the fear in their voices, cringing at the mention of Ailes’ name, even though he’s been dead for 18 months. It’s the reaction of someone who’s faced down a monster and lived to tell about it. What causes men like Ailes, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Trump to behave so callously, so entitled?
Bloom, to her detriment, has little inclination to find out. Hers is more a just-the-facts-ma'am approach, which is devastating enough. The stories are appalling, especially Ailes setting the example for his male anchors like Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling and contributor Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator. The takeaway being that men and power is a rancid mix.
If that wasn’t awful enough, Bloom makes a convincing case that the current political temperament of us vs. them, red vs. blue and the incivility such divisions sow, can all be traced to Ailes and his infamous Willie Horton ads credited with Bush 41 erasing a 15-point gap to Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. When questioned about the ad’s overt racial messages, using a black escaped murderer as a political ploy, Ailes cavalierly replies, the public reaction would have been the same if Horton were white. Yeah, right.
Bloom suggests this misanthropic attitude was born out of Ailes’ resentment of his allegedly abusive father, a tire-factory foreman from Ohio who instilled his conservative beliefs in his son. But she offers no real proof. To the contrary, Ailes in his early years was actually a pretty solid citizen, albeit a bit of a conniver when it came to wresting away the top spot at his first job as the executive producer of “The Mike Douglas Show.” And then, when he later pulled Nixon aside when he was a guest on the “Douglas” show during the 1968 presidential election, convincing the future chief executive he needed him to make his “brand” more palpable to TV viewers if he wanted to avoid a repeat of his loss to JFK in 1960. Nixon agreed, and the rest is history.
We also get a feel for Ailes’ pettiness through his running feud with the local politicians in his home away from home in Putnam County, New York, where his third wife, Beth, owned the local newspaper. How convenient to possess such an opinion-swaying tool when you’re determined to turn your blue town red. But to what end? As one of Ailes’ victims asks, “Didn’t he have better things to do?” Apparently not. According to the film, Ailes had no close friends and no real interests beyond stirring up trouble and watching the factions fight it out. Again, a trait he shares with Trump.
Glaringly missing is any attempt to contact Ailes’ three wives or the on-air hosts he made into stars, such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Judge Jeanine Pirro; and the candidates he helped get elected like Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Nor do we hear from the woman who eventually brought Ailes down, former “Fox and Friends” host Gretchen Carlson, who is happy to let her $20 million settlement do all the talking.
As close as we get to a real insider is Glenn Beck, who tells Bloom he left the network because he didn’t like the way it was being used to rip America apart. But, he adds, when handing in his resignation, he was sure to thank Ailes for giving conservatives a place to express their views. It was a compliment he says caused the steely Ailes to actually shed a tear.
Liberals are also sure to get a kick out of the little known fact that their beloved MSNBC was called America’s Talking in its original incarnation, a network founded by Ailes, whose on-air personalities included himself and the Left’s devil incarnate, Sean Hannity. The network eventually paved the way for Fox News after parent company, NBC, sold the channel to Bill Gates without making Ailes privy, a betrayal that stirred him to vow to “f—k NBC, and f—k it good.” And that just what he did, as a check of the weekly Nielsen ratings prove.
In the end, purposely or not, Bloom leaves us to deal with what to think of a “genius” who was a great innovator but a terrible person, a real-life Charles Foster Kane. But, alas, there is no “Rosebud”; just a sad, pathetic man who used his God-given gifts to destroy and provoke instead of mend and unite.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
(Not rated.) A documentary by Alexis Bloom featuring Glenn Beck and Austin Pendleton. Grade: B.
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Intelligence Chief Walks Plank Without Ceremony
Ray McGovern,
The term “accountability” was effectively banned inside the Washington Beltway many years ago. So, why was it that the just-jettisoned Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Dennis Blair, was abruptly shown the door last week – I mean, really. Most pundits attribute the firing of Blair to the most recent series of intelligence misadventures. But the evidence is mounting that there is much more to the story.
True, a Senate Intelligence Committee report released on May 18 regarding 23-year-old Nigerian passenger Uma Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to down an airliner over Detroit on Christmas revealed a damning string of intelligence shortcomings – on top of other recent misadventures. Once again, the intelligence community was shown to be in all-too-familiar disarray – adrift, with no helmsman strong, savvy and courageous enough to get proliferating intelligence bureaucracies to cooperate.
The Senate report is a damning catalog of misfeasance and mistakes. Yet, given recent precedent, with US intelligence screwing up so clearly and regularly with no one held accountable, L’Affaire Abdulmutallab probably would not, in and of itself, have been enough to send Blair packing. Rather, it should be seen as the proximate cause of Blair’s walking the plank on Friday – which he did without the normally de rigueur thank you to President Obama for “the privilege of serving.”
A powerful combination of senior CIA officials and White House functionaries influenced by the Israel lobby had been out for Blair’s hide for over a year. That he crossed the CIA in trying to assert a right to appoint some CIA station chiefs abroad, for example, is by now a familiar story. And his rivalry with CIA alumnus John Brennan, now White House referent for terrorism, was an open secret. Brennan must be particularly happy at Blair’s demise, since, truth be told, Brennan bears as much responsibility for Abdulmutallab being able to board his flight as Blair does.
There is another element, virtually neglected in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), that did Blair in. You see, Blair had a strong measure of integrity. And that can often be the kiss of death in official Washington. On substantive issues, like Iran’s nuclear program, Blair did not show the malleability that is desired by those who are out to zap Iran; I believe it likely that these get-Iran, neocon hawks helped to zap Blair.
Denied His Own Staff
Last year, the neocons had their feathers ruffled big time by Blair’s choice of independent-minded former Ambassador Chas Freeman to be chair of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), without clearing this first with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The NIC has purview over the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and the President’s Daily Brief – the two premier intelligence publications.
Blair’s choice of Freeman raised the ire of Washington’s still-influential neoconservatives and their allies in the Obama administration because he was regarded as a “realist” on the Middle East, rather than someone who would side reflexively with Israel.
When rumors began to circulate about Freeman’s appointment, the neocons unleashed a media barrage, denouncing his criticism of Israel and his associations with the Saudi and Chinese governments. One influential column, entitled “Obama’s Intelligence Blunder,” was published February 28 on The Washington Post’s neocon-dominated op-ed page, written by Jon Chait of The New Republic, another important neocon journal.
Still, on the morning of March 10, 2009, Blair described the high value that Freeman “will” bring to the job – “his long experience and inventive mind,” for example.
Enter Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut), who simply could not abide someone in that post with open respect for the rights and interests of both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By five o’clock that afternoon, Freeman was told by Blair to announce that he (Freeman) had asked that his selection “not proceed.”
To his credit, Freeman went down swinging. He made it clear that he was withdrawing his “previous acceptance” of Blair’s invitation to chair the NIC because of the character assassination of him orchestrated by the Israel lobby (which Freeman now calls the “Likud Lobby,” to identify it more narrowly with the extreme right wingers – the kind who got Rahm Emanuel to give him the heave-ho).
Freeman added, “The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views … and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those it [the lobby] favors.”
Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game regarding what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for US public office.”
Schumer led the lobby’s unabashed boasting. “His [Freeman’s] statements against Israel were way over the top,” Schumer said. “I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.” Though the Freeman flap faded, it was the kind of sin not to be forgiven. Blair had suffered a political hit and had made some powerful enemies.
I recall the “morning after,” as I found myself wondering when Emanuel – who reportedly was Schumer’s go-to guy on the get-Freeman campaign – saw fit to let Admiral Blair in on the little secret that no way could he have Freeman.
And I wondered why Blair tucked tail, rather than quit in protest of having his choice for the nation’s senior intelligence analyst blackballed. It is, at least in theory, a position that is supposed to be about objectivity, giving the president unvarnished information, not ideologically favored spin.
Apparently, these days it is in theory only. The lobby won that one hands down – and, with typical chutzpah, has not stopped boasting. The get-Blair campaign was unusually transparent in The Washington Post’s lead editorial on Saturday, which began by asserting that Blair’s “resignation … was the product of personal as well as institutional failings.” His “personal” failing? Here’s how The Post described it:
“Mr. Blair’s political judgment looked questionable from the beginning of his DNI tenure, when he nominated a former ambassador [Chas Freeman] with … crackpot views about the about the Israel ‘Lobby’ to chair the National Intelligence Council.”
A Messy Structure
Aside from offending the editorial page neocons of The Washington Post and other lobby influenced centers of power, it also seems clear that, without a highly honed talent for management and strong presidential support, Blair was doomed to failure from the start. And so was the bureaucratic superstructure built around the director of National Intelligence as a key reform that followed the twin intelligence failures on 9/11 and Iraq’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction).
The DNI was given the supremely difficult task of ruling over the intelligence community, a responsibility previous invested in the director of Central Intelligence. The job was hard enough, but Blair was hampered further because he lacked the strong personal support of President Obama.
I served under nine directors of central intelligence – several of them at close remove. Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was picked by his Naval Academy classmate Jimmy Carter, was the only one who really grasped the reins of the entire intelligence community and made it cohere.
A few years ago, as Admiral Turner and I sat together waiting to go into a TV studio, I had a chance to ask him how he was able to do that. To the best of my recollection, this is what he told me:
“I was in command of the Sixth Fleet cruising in the Med when I was tipped off that I was about to get a call from the president-elect. There had been earlier signs that Carter was going to ask me to be his Director of Central Intelligence.
“Now, Ray, when you know you’re going to be made that kind of offer – one you can’t really refuse – that’s precisely the time when you need to think long and hard about how you might use what little bargaining power you may have at that point, in order to improve your chances for success in the new job. I had about ten minutes. Then the call came.
“Mr. President-elect, I said, as a former naval officer you will be able to appreciate this conundrum I see. The job is twofold. I would have no trouble running the CIA – I can run the Sixth Fleet; I can run the CIA.
“What gives me pause is the equally important – maybe more important – job of running the entire intelligence community. As a military man I am very reluctant to accept responsibility for something over which I have only tenuous authority.
“And my experience with the intelligence community suggests that the fiefdoms that comprise it will not work together effectively, no matter what I say or do, UNLESS you make it clear that I have the authority derived from the President, commensurate with my responsibility in leading the entire community. If you can make that clear, I will accept the nomination with gusto.”
Carter said he would take care of it and, shortly thereafter, came a directive from the president-elect to heads of the main national security and intelligence agencies and staffs. In it, Carter announced he had selected Turner to be his DCI, that ALL addressees would cooperate fully with him as he harnesses the intelligence community behind the new administration’s main objectives, and that he had instructed Turner to let him know immediately should there be any sign that he was not getting the full and unfettered cooperation he would need as the chief intelligence adviser to the president. That did it, Turner told me.
Turner was too modest to add what I had already learned as a lesson about his tenure, that an effective director of the intelligence community needs the courage to put noses out of joint. He should NOT adopt the “team player” mode that so many intelligence directors since Turner have succumbed to.
If Turner was not getting full cooperation from, say, the FBI, he would simply go down to the White House and let President Carter and/or his advisers know. The attorney general and/or the FBI director would promptly receive the necessary remedial instructions.
Consummate “Team Player”
Two decades later, “team player” George Tenet (the team being George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld) stood this on its head. Nary a nose did timid, incurious George put out of joint.
But Tenet, who had mastered the skills of serving his “principal” as a staff aide to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren, was so well-liked in Washington that even the 9/11 Commission was reluctant to offer pointed criticism of his gross misfeasance in his community role.
(At one hearing, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick fawned over Tenet, noting with admiring wonderment what she said especially distinguished him; namely, that everyone in the establishment simply called him “George,” and all automatically knew to whom they were referring. Amazing!)
Instead of affixing blame for 9/11, co-chair Lee Hamilton, Gorelick, and others kept wringing their hands, complaining, “no one was in charge of the intelligence community.” True enough, but that was by no means solely due to the structural anomaly that gave the DCI responsibility for managing both the agency and the entire intelligence community.
It had much more to do with Tenet’s reluctance to give the needed time and attention to the rest of the community and make it work together. Tenet preferred to direct his gaze upward, showing the bureaucratic skills he had learned as a Capitol Hill aide, ingratiating himself with the powerful and never putting them – or himself – in an uncomfortable situation.
You don’t insinuate yourself into top jobs in Washington, or get to stay in them, by knocking important noses out of joint, no matter how badly such disfigurement is needed. No one ever needed plastic surgery after an encounter with Tenet.
On July 22, 2004, the day the 9/11 report was released, I had been asked to comment on it immediately at the BBC’s studio in Washington. After expressing amazement at the report’s bizarre bottom line, that the calamity seemed to be no one’s fault, I emerged from the studio and promptly bumped into two commissioners, Jamie Gorelick and Slade Gorton. They had been waiting on deck in the outer room.
Gorelick went in first; I thought to myself, now’s your chance, McGovern. I approached Gorton and said that I was bothered by the report’s mantra that no one is in charge of the intelligence community and the commission’s misguided notion that a new DNI superstructure should be placed atop it.
I said that I was sure he was aware that, by statute, Director of Central Intelligence Tenet is supposed to be in charge of the community and to ensure that all agencies coordinate and cooperate. Gorton put his arm around me, as senior ex-senators are wont to do, and in an avuncular voice (as if explaining something pretty basic to a freshman), said, “Yes, of course I know that, Ray. But Tenet would not do it.”
My follow-up question was to be: So, you all are advocating an entirely new superstructure just because Tenet “would not do it?” Unfortunately, the door opened, Gorelick walked out and Gorton escaped into the studio.
The year 2004 was an election year and, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the commission report, members of Congress wished to be seen as doing something – anything. So, they moved to enact many of the 9/11 Commission’s “reforms.”
By then, the CIA and the just-resigned Tenet had been completely discredited, not only for failures prior to 9/11, but also for the unconscionable cooking of intelligence to justify war on Iraq.
Yet, instead of focusing on individual responsibility for 9/11 and the politicization of the CIA’s analytical division – what might be called cultural failures – Congress found it easier to diagram a new bureaucracy.
Protests from intelligence professionals were seen as self-serving. So, we got a new DNI ostensibly to preside over the whole enchilada, but WITHOUT the kind of authority and support Carter gave Turner.
Admirals and Admirals
If recent years have proved anything, it is this: there are admirals; and then there are admirals.
Admirals in the mold of Stansfield Turner – like William (Fox) Fallon and Joint Chiefs’ Chairman Mike Mullen – are one thing. They represent the tough independence that the Navy often requires of its senior officers.
Near the end of the Bush administration, Fallon and Mullen deserved most of the credit for facing down Vice President Dick Cheney and persuading President Bush that war with Iran would not be a good idea and that Israel needed to be told exactly that – in no uncertain terms. That was just three years ago; war was pretty close.
Then there are the admirals who know how to salute and avoid confrontations, the likes of Mike McConnell, who was snatched away from his sinecure as a Booz-Allen & Hamilton marketeer to become the second director of national intelligence, apparently because he was judged to be incapable of doing much harm.
What McConnell lacked in managerial knowhow, well, let me put it this way: he in no way made up for that lack by his substantive acumen. Three poignant illustrative vignettes involving the hapless McConnell come to mind:
(1) Testifying before the Senate, McConnell was asked to venture a guess as to why Israel might put forward a more alarming view of Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon than that of the US intelligence community. He was at a loss for an answer.
(2) At times, McConnell would display his naïveté by saying too much. The subject of torture came up in an interview McConnell gave Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine. McConnell innocently told Wright that, for him: “Waterboarding would be excruciating. If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
Later, McConnell let slip the rationale for the Bush administration’s refusal to admit that waterboarding is torture. For anyone paying attention, that rationale had long been a no-brainer. But here is McConnell inadvertently articulating it: “If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”
(3) More damning was “Malleable Mike” McConnell’s attempts to finesse the key judgments of the bombshell NIE of November 2007, which directly contradicted what Bush and Cheney had been saying about the imminence of a nuclear threat from Iran.
Facing withering criticism from the likes of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and the irrepressible former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, McConnell backpedaled.
In testimony to the Senate on February 5, 2008, he confessed to careless wording in the NIE due to time constraints, and even indicated he “probably would have changed a thing or two.”
Whereas the NIE started out with a straightforward, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” McConnell indicated he would now prefer to say, for example, that “maybe even the least significant portion [of the Iranian nuclear program; i. e., the warhead] was halted and there are other parts that continue.”
McConnell’s successor Blair was in no way a strong manager as DNI. And with an increasingly bloated staff tripping over one another, there was little hope that Blair was up to the job of taking hold of the intelligence community.
Nor was there any sign that he ever thought to ask President Obama for the necessary endorsement and support. Besides, Blair seems to have been an innocent to the ways of Washington.
Anyone could have told him there would be no percentage in locking horns with CIA Director Leon Panetta with the latter’s longstanding political connections in this town and a CIA staff that has proven past master at political infighting.
Worse still, Blair let himself be used in a way no US intelligence official should permit. Those in the Obama administration who think it’s a good idea to put US citizens on the CIA assassination list needed to send up a trial balloon to see if Congress and the media would look the other way.
And so, in February, the White House inflated the balloon for Blair to float at a Congressional hearing. He contended that there were certain counterterrorism cases that could involve killing an American citizen. There were very few objections from official Washington.
Administration officials have since cited secret evidence showing that the Yemen-based Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki’s connections to al-Qaeda have gone “operational,” thus making him a target for killing even though he is a native-born American citizen. The Bill of Rights be damned.
I would wager Blair regrets letting himself be used like that. I have independent confirmation that, during the sixties at the Naval Academy, the curriculum included a block of instruction on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
A Saving Grace
There is one substantive matter of considerable significance on which Blair did muster the courage to stand up. He withstood intense pressure from those wishing to exaggerate the danger that Iran could have a nuclear weapon soon.
There is no sign that whoever succeeds him will have the courage, professionalism or gravitas needed to face down those in Congress and the administration determined to exaggerate that threat, to the point where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be emboldened to launch a “pre-emptive” attack (the term now in vogue for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called a “war of aggression”).
In testimony before Congress early this year, Blair virtually wore out the subjunctive mood in addressing Iran’s possible plans for a nuclear weapon. His paragraphs were replete with dependent clauses, virtually all of them beginning with “if.”
Blair repeated verbatim the 2007 NIE judgment that Iran is “keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons,” while also repeating the intelligence community’s agnosticism on the $64 question: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”
Addressing the uranium enrichment plant at Qom, Blair said its small size and location under a mountain “fit nicely with a strategy of keeping the option open to build a nuclear weapon at some future date, if Tehran ever decides to do that.”
Such “advancements lead us to affirm our judgment from the 2007 NIE that Iran is technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon in the next few years, if it chooses to do so.”
Notably absent from Blair’s testimony was the first “high confidence” judgment of the 2007 NIE that “in fall 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program,” and the “moderate confidence” assessment that Iran had not restarted it.
That was the most controversial judgment in 2007. But Blair did not disavow it. Nor did he weasel on it, as McConnell did. He simply didn’t mention it – probably in an attempt to let that sleeping dog lie. But now that dog is waking up.
Possible Revisions
A “Memorandum to Holders” is intelligence jargon for updating a definitive estimate, like the one from November 2007, with any necessary changes. As has been the custom in recent years, one regarding the Iranian nuclear program has been delayed and delayed again. The Washington Post says it is now due in August.
There is no minimizing the importance of this update. It needs to be as honest as the earlier NIE, though that will take courage and clout.
In this sense, I regret Blair’s departure. For those now in charge are relative nonentities with, truth be told, sparse experience in intelligence work and little gravitas. It is doubtful they will be able to stand up against the mounting pressures to paint Iran in the most alarmist colors.
The task is complicated by the recent tripartite Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal. With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends and supporters already trashing this viable initiative, it will take courage to point out clearly to the president the relative merits of allowing Iran to transfer half of its low enriched uranium to Turkey and then onward for further processing.
Except for the political pressures, not much courage should be needed. By any objective measure, the relative merits should be pretty obvious, IF one is willing to recognize Israeli demands for what they are, as Turkey and Brazil made bold to do. (Where is Freeman when we need him?)
Nominating a Successor
According to press reports, the leading candidate to succeed Blair is retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, whose record does not inspire confidence. Clapper has a well-deserved reputation for telling consumers of intelligence what they want to hear.
He now serves as undersecretary of intelligence at the Defense Department, working for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was the chief bureaucrat responsible for politicizing US intelligence in the 1980s as an apparatchik for CIA Director William Casey.
Some of my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have the book on Clapper, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1991 to 1995. There, according to Larry Johnson, Clapper earned the reputation of “worst-ever DIA director.”
Among other things, he restructured DIA’s analytical corps, removing an analysis capability that would have been an invaluable asset in the period before 9/11 and succeeding years. As a direct result, hundreds of the most experienced analysts took early retirement, and DIA has had to play catch-up ever since to reconstruct its analytic capability.
Retired US Army Col. Pat Lang, who held some of the most senior positions at DIA, told me Friday, “Clapper is a man who is just a walking mass of ambition.”
What I find most damaging, though, is the fact that Clapper was head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2001 to 2006. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chose well, for his purposes.
It is abundantly clear that Clapper smothered any imagery analyst who had he temerity to suggest that, since there was not a trace of WMD in the various kinds of available imagery of Iraq, there might not be any WMD.
Clapper, rather, was one to salute smartly. He subscribed enthusiastically to the Rumsfeld dictum: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Quick, someone tell Barack Obama about Clapper before the president is led once again down the garden path.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publication arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He served at the CIA from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush, and was one of five CIA ‘alumni’ who created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity in January 2003.
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Tom Steyer Wants To Nullify The Bill Of Rights To Get Other People’s Money Out Of Politics
Prop 59 would not just limit corporate political spending on elections, it would exempt wide swaths of American society from any constitutional protections whatsoever.
By Lachlan Markay
Tom Steyer wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow the government to regulate religious sermons, tap the phones of the American Civil Liberties Union, seize phone record and Internet search histories on a whim, and give bureaucrats veto power over the content of The New York Times.
If that sounds like hyperbole, you need only read the text of Proposition 59, the California ballot measure Steyer endorsed last week. Billed as an attempt to roll back the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the measure is actually far broader and more dangerous: it seeks to eliminate all constitutional rights for incorporated entities—for-profit companies, but also nonprofit groups, labor unions, charities, churches, and any other association given an official government imprimatur.
Steyer has focused of late on the ostensibly pernicious effects of money in politics as he pours more money than any other individual into federal elections. But for all of Prop 59’s focus on Citizens United, it never even mentions the separate Supreme Court case that has allowed Steyer to almost single-handedly finance one of the wealthiest political groups in the country.
“The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the rights of individual human beings,” declares California Senate Bill 254, which placed Prop 59 on the ballot. “Corporations are not mentioned in the United States Constitution, nor have we decreed that corporations have rights separate from ‘We the People.’”
People in Groups Lose Their Rights
Put simply, SB 254 says, “Corporations should not have the same constitutional rights as human beings.” Those rights, as we know, include not just the right to free speech that produced the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision, but also rights to due process, a jury trial, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Prop 59 calls for the California legislature to back a constitutional amendment eliminating those and all other liberties in the Bill of Rights for incorporated entities. It proposes to overturn not just Citizens United but all “other applicable judicial precedents,” including court rulings that applied constitutional rights to incorporated entities.
The legal definition of “corporations” includes not just for-profit entities but non-profits, charities, labor unions, churches, and virtually every other association recognized under the law. It’s worth considering, then, what sorts of activities would be permitted if, unlikely though it is, Steyer got his way, the ballot measure passed, and the Constitution were amended in the manner SB 254 spells out.
Corporations—which, again, include far more than just profit-making enterprises—would no longer have rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. If a government entity decides that it wants some piece (or every piece) of information from the ACLU, to use a particularly illustrative example, it could tap the group’s phones, monitor its digital communications, bug its offices, conduct random and sweeping physical searches, and otherwise pry into the most sensitive details of its work, all without obtaining a warrant or any other legal justification. As an incorporated entity, the ACLU no longer would have any constitutional rights, so all of its property and communications would be fair game.
Churches and religious organizations are, by and large, incorporated entities. Under Prop 59, those entities would no longer enjoy First Amendment freedoms, meaning the government would be free to regulate religious worship, teachings, sermons, and educational and charitable endeavors. As officers of incorporated entities, clergy could be barred from expressing their faith in an official capacity if Congress or a presidential administration disapprove.
The government could seize any corporate assets it desires. The Sixth Amendment’s protections against the seizure of property without just compensation would no longer apply, so the next time the National Security Agency wanted a full and complete accounting of your cell phone calls, your Google search history, or your credit card purchases, all it would have to do is take that information from the relevant company. Of course, any corporate property would now be government property the minute the bureaucracy decides it is, meaning every media company in the country must surrender its printing presses and video cameras if the government decides it wants them.
A Full Assault on the Press
That gets to perhaps the most pernicious effect of Prop 59, if it were implemented in full as spelled out in SB 254. In high-minded tones about the importance of democracy and political integrity, it proposes effectively destroying the First Amendment. Under the banner of political participation, Steyer and his fellow supporters would make it legal for the government to censor at will the contents of America’s political press.
The First Amendment would no longer apply to the parent companies of the New York Times, Washington Post, Des Moines Register, the East Hampton Star, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, all three news networks and their local affiliates, National Public Radio, PBS, the Huffington Post, or The Federalist. If a U.S. president decides he doesn’t like the content of their reporting, his bureaucracy would be constitutionally permitted to shut them down or, if he’s in a charitable mood, strike a story or two from their reporting.
Prop 59’s proposed assault on the political press is nothing novel for those who have followed the political drama over corporate political spending in the wake of the Citizens United decision. That decision struck down laws limiting nonprofits’ ability to spend money on speech that criticized a politician during an election season.
The court rightly noted that it is precisely that type of speech—discussing public servants, often in critical ways, as the general public weighs whether they deserve support—that the First Amendment is designed to protect first and foremost. Efforts to roll back Citizens United, while rooted in legitimate concerns about corruption and the integrity of elections, are nevertheless coming down on one side of a particular question: should the government try to maximize speech at risk of tainting elections with special-interest money, or should it attempt to restrict that money at the expense of a vibrant national political debate?
That is a question worthy of nuanced debate. But Prop 59 and Steyer’s support for it reveal an uglier side of the campaign finance debate. Frequently touting the slogan “corporations are not people,” these sorts of efforts would have radical and disastrous consequences for American democracy. Prop 59 would not just limit corporate political spending on elections, it would exempt wide swaths of American society from any constitutional protections whatsoever, subjecting millions of civic, religious, financial, charitable, and educational associations to the whims of bureaucrats and politicians, who would be free to trample on rights their members no longer enjoy simply by virtue of their association.
Are you worried about either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton winning November’s presidential election? Well, now imagine what your disfavored candidates would do with the power bestowed by Prop 59’s constitutional amendment.
This Wouldn’t Actually Get Big Money Out of Politics
For all of the measure’s perhaps unintended consequences, there is one type of organization that would not be affected by rolling back Citizens United: the billionaire-funded super PAC.
Many Americans believe Citizens United is responsible for the super PAC. In fact, that distinction falls to another Supreme Court case, Speech Now vs. FEC, that is not mentioned in the text of Prop 59 or SB 254. Speech Now struck down limits on the amounts of money individuals could donate to groups that spend unlimited sums to elect or defeat a candidate, as long as those groups don’t coordinate with candidates themselves.
Citizens United allowed corporations to donate to such groups, creating a system whereby these groups could solicit limitless funding from corporate entities to spend on explicitly political activity. Overturning Citizens United would eliminate corporations’ abilities to finance super PACs, but extremely wealthy individuals would still be allowed to finance these independent expenditure groups to their hearts’ content.
It just so happens that Steyer is doing exactly that. He’s donated $38 million to his personal super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, so far this cycle, on top of the $72 million he contributed ahead of the 2014 midterms. The group has reported a few donations from labor unions, but Steyer has provided nearly 100 percent of funding for the group. If Citizens United were rolled back, he could continue doing so, even as high-dollar super PACs with which he often clashes, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, would be hobbled considerably.
Steyer frequently proclaims his distaste for money in politics, but Prop 59 would leave his political operation nearly untouched. The real damage would be done to America’s political press, civil society, and every individual who decides simply to exercise his or her right to freely associate with others.
In fact, they won’t have that right either, if Steyer and company get their way.
Bill of Rights California campaign finance campaign finance reform Citizens United Corporations Are People First Amendment free speech political spending Prop 59 Proposition 59 Senate Bill 254 Speech Now vs. FEC Super PACs Tom Steyer
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On January 7, 2019 By thefilmcloset
Based on the novel of the same name, this James Baldwin adaptation directed by film genius Barry Jenkins focuses on a young African American woman (Tish) in Harlem who is pregnant with her first child, while the father (Fonny) is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. She and her supporting family scramble to prove his innocence before the baby is born. The film is a celebration of the importance of love and family, but also shows the dark side of humanity through its portrayals of racism and hatred.
Barry Jenkins is a fairly new filmmaker, but a talented one. He wrote and directed 2016’s Best Picture winner “Moonlight”, a story about a gay African American in Miami Florida, and his journey through self-discovery. Now, with “If Beale Street Could Talk”, he ups the game on emotion and powerhouse performances.
Jenkins has a distinct visual style to his films. He loves to use close up shots of a character looking directly into the camera, as if subtly communicating their emotions with the audience. His films are also very color-driven. Moonlight has tons of purple and blue shots, while “If Beale Street Could Talk” is riddled with shades of yellow and brown. His films are beautifully to look at, especially his latest feature.
Tish is played superbly by Kiki Layne, a promising newcomer to the industry. With her performance alongside Stephan James (Homecoming) as Fonny, this on screen couple is one of the most chemistry-driven and realistic depictions of true love in years. “If Beale Street Could Talk” will surely set these two excellent performances on the map for greater gigs to come.
The powerhouse performance here though is Regina King as Tish’s mother Sharon. King gives the audience her raw emotion that seems to get more intense scene by scene. The exception though, might be in a moment towards the beginning where family dynamics clash in a heated and gut-punching argument that ends up being the scene that stays in the mind for hours after viewing.
From start to finish, watching “If Beale Street Could Talk” is more of an emotional experience than anything else. The love and romance is so real, the cinematography brings the story to life, and the music wins you over, making the film one of the most beautiful romance films in recent years. 2018 was a pretty good year for romance with Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born” making noise with mainstream audiences and “If Beale Street Could Talk” quietly coming through under the radar. As outstanding as both of these films are, it’s “Beale Street” that takes the cake in terms of bringing fictionalized love to life.
Rated R for language and some sexual content
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