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Too many stray bullets in neighborhood has Lowcountry gun range making changes
Preliminary plans to make the range safer include re-orienting the direction of the rifle range, per owner
Alex Littlehales
The sound of gunshots and bullets is nothing new for Jon Baker, a Yemassee man who's family owns a local outdoor nursery. “I’ve got a concealed weapon permit. I carry my gun when I go places. I’ve got nothing against guns. I’m a deer hunter. I like to shoot," Baker said in an interview Tuesday. Last Thursday he was repairing his grandparents' roof when he heard the sound of a bullet near where he was working. Hunting is common in the area, so at the time, he thought nothing of it.“One stray bullet, we’re out here in the country. I didn’t think a whole lot of it," Baker said.Then, he heard a couple more. “I heard whistling by, looked down I see the bushes moving, and I hear it where it hit the house.Workers at Bakers Nursery say it's not the first time they've heard bullets in the area, either. While hunting is common in the region, they’re afraid the bullets may be a result of the Maltese Arms Shooting Club, an outdoor gun range nearby. “They said they heard some rounds coming onto their property. We’ve tried to re-orient targets, lower them, have bigger berms to prevent them...but they’re still having the same complaint," range owner Justin Lane said in an interview on Tuesday. Now the club’s rifle range -- a nearly half-mile stretch of mulch and wood -- is temporarily closed to address safety concerns from the neighborhood. “I don’t want people to get hurt," Lane said. "So we’re going to move the property around and hopefully that’ll fix everything.”Baker says he has no problem with the gun range, and is a firm believer in the Second Amendment. He says he just wants to feel safe in his own home. “I just want it done, to put it behind us and move on," Baker said. Lane says says he plans to install higher barriers around the edges of the range, and the rifle range will remain closed until he’s come up with a layout everyone is happy with. The club's pistol range is still open and operational.
YEMASSEE, S.C. (WJCL) —
The sound of gunshots and bullets is nothing new for Jon Baker, a Yemassee man who's family owns a local outdoor nursery.
“I’ve got a concealed weapon permit. I carry my gun when I go places. I’ve got nothing against guns. I’m a deer hunter. I like to shoot," Baker said in an interview Tuesday.
Last Thursday he was repairing his grandparents' roof when he heard the sound of a bullet near where he was working. Hunting is common in the area, so at the time, he thought nothing of it.
“One stray bullet, we’re out here in the country. I didn’t think a whole lot of it," Baker said.
Then, he heard a couple more.
“I heard [WHOOSH] whistling by, looked down I see the bushes moving, and I hear it [THUMP] where it hit the house.
Workers at Bakers Nursery say it's not the first time they've heard bullets in the area, either. While hunting is common in the region, they’re afraid the bullets may be a result of the Maltese Arms Shooting Club, an outdoor gun range nearby.
“They said they heard some rounds coming onto their property. We’ve tried to re-orient targets, lower them, have bigger berms to prevent them...but they’re still having the same complaint," range owner Justin Lane said in an interview on Tuesday.
Now the club’s rifle range -- a nearly half-mile stretch of mulch and wood -- is temporarily closed to address safety concerns from the neighborhood.
“I don’t want people to get hurt," Lane said. "So we’re going to move the property around and hopefully that’ll fix everything.”
Baker says he has no problem with the gun range, and is a firm believer in the Second Amendment. He says he just wants to feel safe in his own home.
“I just want it done, to put it behind us and move on," Baker said.
Lane says says he plans to install higher barriers around the edges of the range, and the rifle range will remain closed until he’s come up with a layout everyone is happy with. The club's pistol range is still open and operational.
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Some Savannah residents in favor of fee to increase safety and beauty Downtown
Some local residents as well as tourists are in favor of a proposed 25-cent fee on all purchases of $10 or more in the Downtown area. This fee is designed to make Downtown Savannah more safe, beautiful and welcoming.
WEBVTT 3 DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH THOUSANDS OF TOURISTS AND LOCALS ALIKE COME HERE EVERY DAY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. BUT NOW CITY LEADERS SAY THE AREA CAN BE MADE MORE BEAUTIFUL, HOSPITABLE AND SAFE. THAT'S WHY THEY PROPOSED A 25-CENT FEE FOR ALL PURCHASES OF 10 DOLLARS OR MORE IN THE DOWNTOWN AREA."IT'S A NOMINAL FEE THAT WILL GO TO MAKE YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE AND MAKE YOU FEEL SAFER AND MAKE DOWNTOWN MORE DESIRABLE. IT'S A SMALL FEE FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO ENJOY DOWNTOWN,"THE FEE WOULD PAY FOR MORE STAFFING DOWNTOWN. THAT INCLUDES MORE AMBASSADORS, WHO ARE THERE TO HELP PEOPLE WITH ANY QUESTIONS THEY MAY HAVE, MORE STAFF TO CLEAN UP, AND MORE POLICE OFFICERS."WE NEED TO DO IT. WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH OFFICERS TO DO WHAT WE NEED TO DO HERE, EVEN AT FULL STAFF,"THE FEE WOULDN'T APPLY TO GASOLINE, GROCERIES, OR SERVICES.OUT-OF-TOWNERS SAY THEY'D SUPPORT THE MEASURE."IF IT'S ONLY 25 CENTS PER PURCHASE OF 10 DOLLARS OR MORE AND IT IS GOING TO MAKE THE CITY A NICER AND MORE WELCOMING PLACE AND I THINK THAT IS SOMETHING THAT I WOULD GO FOR,"CITY LEADERS SAY SOME BUSINESSES HAVE EXPRESSED CONCERNS ABOUT THE PROPOSED FEE BUT LOCAL RESIDENTS SAY THEY'D LIKE TO SEE IT BECOME A REALITY."I WOULD SUPPORT IT JUST BECAUSE WITH POLICE AND CITY SERVICES, THE MONEY NEEDS TO COME FROM SOMEWHERE,"ALDE RMAN MILLER SAYS THIS ISN'T JUST FOR TOURISM BUT SO MORE LOCAL RESIDENTS COME DOWNTOWN AS WELL."IT JUST A DELIGHTFUL PLACE TO BE AND THERE
Some local residents as well as tourists are in favor of a proposed 25-cent fee on all purchases of $10 or more in the Downtown area. This fee is designed to make Downtown Savannah more safe, beautiful and welcoming. The fee would be imposed on all purchases downtown except for sales of gasoline, groceries or services. "It's a nominal fee that will go to make you feel more comfortable and make you feel safer and make downtown more desirable. It's a small fee for someone who wants to enjoy downtown," said Alderman Julian Miller of District 4, who supports the proposal. The fee would pay for more staffing downtown. That includes more ambassadors, who are there to help people with any questions they may have. Ambassadors have been helping people in Downtown Savannah for about a year. The fee would also pay for more people to clean up and more police officers. “We need to do it. We don’t have enough officers to do what we need to do here, even at full staff,” Alderman Miller said. Tourists say they support this measure. “If it’s only 25 cents per purchase of 10 dollars or more and it is going to make the city a nicer and more welcoming place and I think that is something that I would go for,” said Michael Lingg, who lives in Pittsburgh. “Twenty-five cents doesn’t seem like a lot of money so it sounds like a good deal to me,” said John Balaam, who lives in Columbia, S.C. City leaders say some businesses have expressed concerns about the proposed fee, but local residents say they’d like to see it become a reality. “It’s worth it. We definitely need more beefed up security,” said Linda Damisi, who lives in Savannah. “I would support it just because with police and city services, the money needs to come from somewhere,” said Yael Elfassy, who lives in Savannah. Alderman Miller says the fee is the only way to keep the ambassador program going and to bring in more city employees and police officers to the Downtown area. He says this isn’t just for tourism, but to increase the number of local residents who visit Downtown as well. “It just a delightful place to be and there are so many things going on that it is a shame that we have people who do not take advantage of it who live here and hopefully that will put some people at ease and more people will go downtown and enjoy the downtown that they own," said Alderman Miller. The state legislature needs to approve the measure for it go to into effect. Currently, there’s no word on when city officials expect that to happen.
SAVANNAH, Ga. —
The fee would be imposed on all purchases downtown except for sales of gasoline, groceries or services.
"It's a nominal fee that will go to make you feel more comfortable and make you feel safer and make downtown more desirable. It's a small fee for someone who wants to enjoy downtown," said Alderman Julian Miller of District 4, who supports the proposal.
The fee would pay for more staffing downtown. That includes more ambassadors, who are there to help people with any questions they may have. Ambassadors have been helping people in Downtown Savannah for about a year. The fee would also pay for more people to clean up and more police officers.
“We need to do it. We don’t have enough officers to do what we need to do here, even at full staff,” Alderman Miller said.
Tourists say they support this measure.
“If it’s only 25 cents per purchase of 10 dollars or more and it is going to make the city a nicer and more welcoming place and I think that is something that I would go for,” said Michael Lingg, who lives in Pittsburgh.
“Twenty-five cents doesn’t seem like a lot of money so it sounds like a good deal to me,” said John Balaam, who lives in Columbia, S.C.
City leaders say some businesses have expressed concerns about the proposed fee, but local residents say they’d like to see it become a reality.
“It’s worth it. We definitely need more beefed up security,” said Linda Damisi, who lives in Savannah.
“I would support it just because with police and city services, the money needs to come from somewhere,” said Yael Elfassy, who lives in Savannah.
Alderman Miller says the fee is the only way to keep the ambassador program going and to bring in more city employees and police officers to the Downtown area. He says this isn’t just for tourism, but to increase the number of local residents who visit Downtown as well.
“It just a delightful place to be and there are so many things going on that it is a shame that we have people who do not take advantage of it who live here and hopefully that will put some people at ease and more people will go downtown and enjoy the downtown that they own," said Alderman Miller.
The state legislature needs to approve the measure for it go to into effect. Currently, there’s no word on when city officials expect that to happen.
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Search continues for missing mom of 5 nearly 1 week after her disappearance
By Grace Duffield, New Haven Register
New Canaan Police
Jennifer Dulos
SOURCE: New Canaan Police
As the search for Jennifer Dulos continues, police in Connecticut said Thursday no arrests have been made and no body has been found.New Canaan Police Lt. Jason Ferraro released a brief statement in response to media inquiries into Dulos’ disappearance. The 50-year-old mother of five, who has been involved in a two-year divorce from her husband, Fotis Dulos, was last seen dropping off her children last Friday at New Canaan Country School.Ferraro said the Connecticut state police search-and-rescue teams continue to examine the surrounding areas.Carrie Luft, a spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos’ family, told “Good Morning America” that “it’s devastating, a heartbreaking situation.”“We are all incredibly concerned but very hopeful she will come back to us safe and sound,” Luft said. “And a great deal of what is keeping everyone going is the outpouring of support from the public.”Jennifer Dulos was reported missing Friday night and her black Chevy Suburban was found soon after parked along a road behind Waveny Park, Ferraro said Wednesday.On Thursday morning, five police cars were parked outside a house in the center of the 300-acre park. Investigators were seen searching the west side of the mansion after spending most of Wednesday on the opposite side of the facility, focused on the high grassy area and a small pond.The search was aided by police-trained dogs, a drone and New York state police helicopter that circled low above the area for about an hour.Seven joggers who were asked said Thursday they had not seen Dulos in the park during previous visits."It's so sad," one runner said. "I hope they find her."Jennifer Dulos’ five children have been staying in New York City with her mother, Gloria Faber, who is also in a legal battle with Fotis Dulos. According to court documents, Faber and her late husband’s estate have accused Fotis Dulos of failing to repay $1.7 million in loans he used to purchase and redevelop homes as part of his business, The Fore Group.On Wednesday, Fotis Dulos’ attorney requested a judge to allow his client to see his children who he claims is under the watch of an armed guard at Farber’s apartment.A divorce hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday at the Stamford courthouse was postponed.Michael Meehan, a Bridgeport attorney and court-appointed guardian ad litem for the Dulos children, filed a motion on Tuesday for an emergency conference “regarding the safety of the children.” A date for the conference has not yet been scheduled.
NEW CANAAN, Conn. —
As the search for Jennifer Dulos continues, police in Connecticut said Thursday no arrests have been made and no body has been found.
New Canaan Police Lt. Jason Ferraro released a brief statement in response to media inquiries into Dulos’ disappearance.
The 50-year-old mother of five, who has been involved in a two-year divorce from her husband, Fotis Dulos, was last seen dropping off her children last Friday at New Canaan Country School.
Ferraro said the Connecticut state police search-and-rescue teams continue to examine the surrounding areas.
Carrie Luft, a spokeswoman for Jennifer Dulos’ family, told “Good Morning America” that “it’s devastating, a heartbreaking situation.”
“We are all incredibly concerned but very hopeful she will come back to us safe and sound,” Luft said. “And a great deal of what is keeping everyone going is the outpouring of support from the public.”
Jennifer Dulos was reported missing Friday night and her black Chevy Suburban was found soon after parked along a road behind Waveny Park, Ferraro said Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, five police cars were parked outside a house in the center of the 300-acre park. Investigators were seen searching the west side of the mansion after spending most of Wednesday on the opposite side of the facility, focused on the high grassy area and a small pond.
The search was aided by police-trained dogs, a drone and New York state police helicopter that circled low above the area for about an hour.
Seven joggers who were asked said Thursday they had not seen Dulos in the park during previous visits.
"It's so sad," one runner said. "I hope they find her."
Jennifer Dulos’ five children have been staying in New York City with her mother, Gloria Faber, who is also in a legal battle with Fotis Dulos. According to court documents, Faber and her late husband’s estate have accused Fotis Dulos of failing to repay $1.7 million in loans he used to purchase and redevelop homes as part of his business, The Fore Group.
On Wednesday, Fotis Dulos’ attorney requested a judge to allow his client to see his children who he claims is under the watch of an armed guard at Farber’s apartment.
A divorce hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday at the Stamford courthouse was postponed.
Michael Meehan, a Bridgeport attorney and court-appointed guardian ad litem for the Dulos children, filed a motion on Tuesday for an emergency conference “regarding the safety of the children.” A date for the conference has not yet been scheduled.
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Benghazi: Americans died for the re-election of the president
Jeffrey T. Kuhner
President Obama is presiding over an administration that has engaged in the systematic abuse of power. This is the real meaning of the Benghazi tragedy.
State Department whistleblowers testified Wednesday at a House hearing about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2012, in Libya, which resulted in the killing of four Americans — including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Contrary to the liberal media’s spin, the testimony was damning and devastating.
The whistleblowers said that prior to the attacks, consulate officials repeatedly asked for extra security. The reason: Benghazi was unsafe. Rampaging jihadists had forced out British diplomats and the Red Cross. The U.S. Consulate had been attacked twice — the mission’s walls were blown up — before Sept. 11.
Yet senior State Department officials denied the requests. Eric Nordstrom, the officer in charge of diplomatic security, testified that the consulate did not meet the protection “standards” required under the law. The consulate was officially designated as a “high-risk,” “high-threat” target — one of a few such diplomatic missions around the world. Mr. Nordstrom rightly pointed out that only one person had the legal authority to deny or approve the requests for extra security: then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Hence, Mrs. Clinton lied when she testified in January at a Senate committee. Mrs. Clinton claimed she did not know about any enhanced security demands. This is impossible. An April 19, 2012, State Department cable bearing her signature explicitly denies the security requests. Under the law, only Mrs. Clinton had the ability to authorize the cable.
Moreover, according to Gregory H. Hicks, the State Department’s deputy chief of the Libya mission, Mrs. Clinton told Stevens to go to Benghazi. He was there under her personal orders. He was tasked with transforming the U.S. mission into a permanent consulate — despite the rising threat of terrorist violence and the lack of security. Knowing the dangerous situation, she sent him on a suicide mission. Mrs. Clinton has American blood on her hands.
The hearing revealed another bombshell — one that has the potential to damage Mr. Obama’s presidency. An email was sent on Sept. 12, 2012 — one day after the attack — to senior State Department officials by Elizabeth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Among those who received it was Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; State Department spokeswoman (and Clinton hack) Victoria Nuland, and Undersecretary of State for Management, Patrick F. Kennedy, a key Clinton adviser. The email’s conclusion: Ansar al-Sharia, an affiliate of Al Qaida in Libya, was directly and solely responsible for the terrorist atrocities at Benghazi.
This means the Obama administration knew from the beginning that Benghazi had nothing to do with a “flash mob” or an anti-Muslim video. The entire narrative was concocted to preserve Mr. Obama’s re-election. The central narrative of his campaign was that he had “smashed” and “defeated” Al Qaida. “The tide of war is receding,” he said.
Benghazi threatened to expose Mr. Obama’s false claims. Rather than being on the run, Al Qaida was resurgent. It had just stormed a U.S. diplomatic mission, burned it to the ground, killed four Americans and dragged our ambassador’s body through the streets. Jihadists had pulled off a spectacular, deadly terrorist attack. In the middle of a closely contested campaign, this revelation could have cost Mr. Obama the election.
This is why U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice was told to go on the Sunday TV talk shows and deliberately deceive the American people. She directly contradicted Libya’s president, who said immediately that the attack had nothing to do with demonstrations; rather, it was the work of Ansar al-Sharia. It is why Ms. Nuland oversaw the “scrubbing” — the systematic manipulation — of all of the intelligence talking points, eliminating every reference to Ansar al-Sharia, Al Qaida, terrorism or jihadism. It is why Mrs. Clinton repeatedly lied about Benghazi. It is why Mr. Obama continued to peddle the bogus video-flash mob narrative for two weeks after the assault. The administration engaged in a massive cover-up to protect Mr. Obama’s political credibility.
It is also why no military operation was ordered to save consulate personnel fighting for their very lives, including former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Both men were killed during the eight-hour assault. Mr. Obama did not lift a finger to help them. A special-operations team in Tripoli was told to “stand down” and not attempt to rescue them. F-16 fighter jets — the very ones used in the relentless NATO bombing campaign that helped topple Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi — stationed in the Mediterranean were not scrambled. Woods and Doherty were left twisting in the wind, betrayed by their own government. Only the president can give the final order not to undertake a military rescue mission. Mr. Obama’s inaction led to the deaths of Woods and Doherty.
Ultimately, Benghazi is considerably worse than Watergate. No one died in Watergate; the scandal revolved around the cover-up of a third-rate burglary. President Nixon’s crimes paled in comparison to those of the Obama administration. Mr. Obama has violated his sacred trust with the American people. He has repeatedly misled the public. He has engaged in rampant abuse of power and gross dereliction of duty. He has sanctioned the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. He has enabled his subordinates to commit perjury and obstruct justice in the investigation of the terrorist killing of four U.S. officials.
Mr. Obama neglected his duties and Americans died.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a popular talk radio host at Boston’s WRKO.
Ansar Al Sharia, Benghazi: Americans died for the re-election of the president, blamed anti-Muslim video, Christopher Stevens, Eric Nordstrom, Gregory Hicks, Hillary Clinotn, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland
Benghazi: Americans died for the re-election of the president added by World Tribune on May 12, 2013
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Former Mueller prosecutor writing book on investigation
by: HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press
This photo provided by Random House shows the cover of Andrew Weissmann’s “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.” A lead prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller has a book coming about the two-year investigation into the alleged ties between Russia and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Random House announced Monday, July 13, 2020, that “Where Law Ends” will be published Sept. 29. (Random House via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — A top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller has a book coming out this fall about the two-year investigation into the alleged ties between Russia and the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.
Random House announced Monday that Andrew Weissmann’s “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation” will be published Sept. 29. Weissmann, often the target of criticism from Trump supporters, is calling the book a meticulous account of the Mueller team’s probe and its ongoing battles with the Trump administration.
“I felt it was necessary to record this episode in our history, as seen and experienced by an insider,” he said in a statement. “This is the story of our investigation into how our democracy was attacked by Russia and how those who condoned and ignored that assault undermined our ability to uncover the truth. My obligation as a prosecutor was to follow the facts where they led, using all available tools and undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our work.
“I am deeply proud of the work we did and of the unprecedented number of people we indicted and convicted — and in record speed. But the hard truth is that we made mistakes. We could have done more. ‘Where Law Ends’ documents the choices we made, good and bad, for all to see and judge and learn from.”
Weissmann, who worked as an FBI general counsel under Mueller, gained prominence as a prosecutor investigating organized crime in New York City and for his leadership of a task force looking into the Enron scandal. He has a reputation for being aggressive and experienced, and skilled in developing cooperating witnesses. Under Mueller, Weissmann led the case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in 2018.
The Mueller Report, released in April 2019, found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to tip the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. But it also did not reach a conclusion on whether the president had obstructed justice. The investigation did lead to more than 30 indictments, including Manafort, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen andlongtime Trump friend Roger Stone, whose sentence for seven felony crimes was commuted last week by the president.
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Godfather Of Champions (Web Novel) - Chapter 873: This Looks Bad
Chapter 873: This Looks Bad
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
”A series of beautiful combination through the middle with a continuous one-two! George Wood’s——powerful volley! The ball hit the bottom of the crossbar, flew downwards and hit Casillas on the back and bounced into the goal… Nottingham Forest takes the lead in the Bernabéu Stadium just like this!”
“The captions indicated that this is an own goal by Casillas, but we have to give credit to George Wood for his impressive contributions to this attack. It was his long shot that caught Casillas off-guard… In fact, after the ball went in, the Forest players surrounded Wood to congratulate him.”
George Wood was indeed in the middle of his teammates’ embrace. The match would be much easier now that they were able to score first. That was why they did not care whether this was an own goal, the important thing was that they are leading Real Madrid 1:0.
Waves of jeering rang out from the stands. One could not tell whether these jeers were directed at the Nottingham Forest players or at Real Madrid for conceding a goal.
Poor Casillas had to pick himself up, turn around to retrieve the ball from his goal and kick it towards the center circle, mumbling as he did so. He must have been complaining about his bad luck for the ball to bounce out when he dived and for the ball to coincidentally hit him, then changed direction and flew into the goal after that…
He did not even know why that happened. When he was performing admirably in front of goal, saving shots that was impossible to be saved, the fans referred to him as “Saint Iker” and it was as if he was possessed by God. But at this moment, both the God and the Holy Light had left him.
It was a good thing that he was a goalkeeper as goalkeepers usually had very strong mentality. He shut his mouth after grumbling for a little and did not mention this matter anymore.
Michels was a little unhappy about the fact that Real Madrid conceded the first goal. After watching the goal go in, he jumped out of his seat and could not stop complaining while waving his arms. He was complaining about the problem in Real Madrid’s defense in the middle, and also their rotten luck…
The Nottingham Forest players were still celebrating the goal, ignoring the thunderous jeers while Michels pulled Ribéry to the sideline and instructed him about the things that he had to pay attention to in the match later.
“…They’ll play on the break after taking the lead, their defensive line will drop back, we have to press up in attack.”
Ribéry nodded in agreement. He did not have any opinions actually; he would follow whatever the manager said.
“Be more committed when attacking, if you lack support from your teammates around you, take a long shot!” Michels pointed at the Forest goal as he said, “George Wood is marking you; you can pull him away from the middle and tell Lassana to go forward more.”
Ribéry understood that he was to be the distraction then. Diarra’s attacking prowess was pretty strong too, with good passing and dribbling abilities.
“They know how to suppress our flanks; we shall do the same. Suppress their flanks and force their flanks to be on the defensive. Tell Ronaldo and Higuain to be more committed, don’t be hesitate, if they want to dribble, do so! Go!”
Ribéry went after receiving the instructions.
Twain sneered as he watched Michels pull Ribéry back alone to adjust his tactics. This kid had become a core member of Real Madrid, he was doing quite well for himself.
“If we look at it from another angle, it might be a good thing to concede after 23 minutes. At least Real Madrid has 67 minutes to comeback and win the game.”
The match restarted as the trailing Real Madrid launched waves of vicious attacks on the Forest team. Their momentum forced Nottingham Forest to pull back their defensive line and go into the defensive.
The commentator was a little pleased with himself as what he said earlier came true, “I said that if Nottingham Forest were to take the lead, they would play on the counter. I wasn’t wrong, Tony Twain has pulled back as expected. The excitement of the match next depends on when Real Madrid can penetrate the Forest goal…”
Ribéry became the focal point of Real Madrid’s attack. He was in charge of starting the attack, and he would also take some long shots to test Akinfeev’s focus on the match once in a while.
Pepe was abnormally excited today. There were a few times when Wood had already closed in on Ribéry and yet he still rushed forward to mark the same target.
Twain simply took it as a demonstration of Pepe’s excitement and did not put it to mind. After all, the pincer defense of him and Wood did make Ribéry a little flustered and made it difficult for him to start the attack.
Until the 31st minute, when Pepe brought Ribéry to the ground just outside the penalty area and the referee awarded a direct free kick to Real Madrid, Twain then slapped his thigh and complained, “Is he trying to break Ribéry’s leg? That bastard! He needs to watch what he’s doing!”
He received a yellow card because of this foul. That was a tackle from behind, bringing Ribéry, who was guarding the ball down.
The Real Madrid fans directed their jeers at Pepe while Ribéry held onto his ankle in pain on the ground. Michels stood up to denounce the violence of the Forest team furiously whereas Twain only scolded Pepe in private without any other actions.
Ribéry eventually picked himself up and walked around with a slight limp. He did not glare at Pepe like the other players, moving to one side instead.
Pepe did not let him off easily as he continued to glare at him.
Bale pulled his arm from the side and said, “Relax, Pepe!”
“I just don’t like the look of him,” Pepe said as he stared at Ribéry with a fierce look in his eyes.
“Look at where you committed the foul,” Wood walked over and said to Pepe with a stern look on his face.
Pepe took a look at it and pouted.
He committed the foul just outside the penalty area.
“It’s nothing, this is too close, it’s not a good distance for a free kick,” it appeared as though he made sense too.
“It better be so,” Wood turned to stand in the wall with no emotions on his face.
There were many people who thought the same way as Pepe. The Forest players all thought that this was too close to the goal and was not a good position for a free kick.
The commentator thought so too, “18 meters from the goal… This is too close, the ball would either hit the wall or fly over the crossbar.”
Cristiano Ronaldo stood over the ball. It seemed like he would be the one to take this free kick.
Ronaldo was adept at taking long distance free kicks, this seemed to confirm the everybody’s thoughts.
Pepe’s foul might seem dangerous, but it might in fact be the safest move?
The Real Madrid players did not attempt to squeeze into the Nottingham Forest wall, as though they did not have high hopes for this free kick too.
Aaron Mitchell had wanted to stay in the frontline to prepare to launch a counterattack, but he got asked to stand in the wall by Wood. His 2.2 meters frame was an eyesore in the wall. Wood arranged for him to stand at the most dangerous spot, blocking the far corner of the goal which was furthest away from Akinfeev.
When the wall was ready, the referee indicated that Real Madrid can restart the game.
Ronaldo stood in front of the ball, feet apart. He took a deep breath and started his run up.
His run up was quite long and everyone thought it would be a fierce shot, hoping that it would penetrate the Forest wall. However, when he reached the ball, he lifted it with the tip of his foot!
The calf moved rapidly but the thigh did not move much.
The ball flew above the wall and it did not go towards the far post, going to the near post instead!
Akinfeev did not expect Ronaldo to take the free kick like this at all. He originally chose to dive towards the far post and the center of gravity of his body had already moved towards that side before he realized that the ball was flying towards the near post. He wanted to readjust his position but he was already wrongfooted as he could only stand on the spot and watch the ball fly just above the wall and straight into the goal.
Akinfeev momentarily lost his balance and all his strength as he fell backwards into the goal, as if he got hit by the ball.
Pepe stared at the ball inside the goal in disbelief too. Behind him, the Real Madrid players were celebrating.
“Damn it” Twain cursed on the sideline.
Michels ran back to the manager’s seat in excitement as he embraced his assistants.
“Ronaldo scored with a direct free kick!” The commentator roared in excitement. This time, he was really feeling happy for the goal scored by Real Madrid——Nottingham Forest could no longer play on the break, this match would be even more exciting now!
Twain would have definitely felt wronged if he knew what the commentator was thinking of. That was because he had no intentions of playing on the counter after leading…
“A beautiful direct free kick! This was actually not an especially good chance of scoring, but Ronaldo’s unique free kick’s arc still flew over the wall and into the goal! Akinfeev was totally bamboozled as he did not react at all!”
The Bernabéu stands finally erupted in cheers this time. The long-awaited moment for the fans in white to hold their heads up high had finally arrived.
“Twain was still rambling on, “This kind of goal… This kind of foul… And he even got a yellow card! I really don’t understand the benefits of that foul!”
Eastwood could only give a wry smile at the side. He believed he knew why. There were some things that would only be spoken amongst the players. No matter how close the boss was to them, or how high the players held him in regard, he would not be able to understand all the thinking of every player.
For example, Pepe had mentioned not just once that he looked down on Ribéry in the changing room privately. The reason why he looked down on him was not because Ribéry moved to Real Madrid for money, Pepe was no saint, he understood that the reason for playing professional football was to earn money. The reason why he looked down on Ribéry was because he chose to leave the team when the boss and the team were in a difficult moment. He had always been looking for an opportunity to get back at Ribéry and this final finally gave him the best opportunity.
Real Madrid seemed to be even more fired up after levelling the score. The two flanks completely woke up and suppressed any signs of a counterattack from the Forest team. Under the waves of cheers in their home ground, of which each wave was louder than the previous one, they launched attacks on the Forest goal continuously. There were times when they managed to reach the goal of the Forest team, making things very awkward for the Forest defenders.
Twain left the manager’s seat after Real Madrid scored. He stood on the sideline, making different kinds of body language as the situation changed on the field. When Real Madrid was getting close to the goal, he would clench his fist, straighten his back and leaned forward, as if all the muscles in his body were tensed up. When Forest had the ball and countered, he folded his arms and gave his team the feeling that their manager had everything under control, having the effect of stabilizing his team’s morale.
The tv broadcast also kept going towards Twain. Sometimes, his performance on the sideline was really a better show than the match.
Actually, Twain did not do that to hog the limelight on TV, he was just nervous…
No matter how much he acted as though he was unaffected, arrogant… He could not deny the fact that Real Madrid had a big advantage playing at the Bernabéu stadium. This kind of advantage might sometimes be decisive in a final, that was why he had to handle it carefully. Scoring first was a good sign as it reduced the pressure, but he did not expect Real Madrid to level the score within 10 minutes. Now, Real Madrid’s morale was high, and Forest had just been dealt a blow. Under such circumstances, if he was not careful, the situation on the field might be overturned.
Now that Forest was doing their best to not let Real Madrid overrun them, George Wood was once again the star that shone the brightest in the team. His tireless running, vicious yet clean defense, aided the team to barely stay level with Real Madrid.
In the eyes of most of the outsiders, Real Madrid had the advantages. Especially when coupled with the home ground atmosphere, it gave people a feeling that Real Madrid could penetrate the Forest goal at any time. Real Madrid’s combinations were pleasing to the eye, as though they could receive any kind of passes, and there were many different kinds of attacking plays they could pull off. On the other hand, Nottingham Forest found things to be a little difficult. After Şahin was restricted by Diarra, the Forest midfield became a pure workhorse midfield. Their functions were not to start the attack and link the backline with the frontline, but they were to think of ways to destroy Real Madrid’s attack… When there was only destruction without any creation, how would that be good enough?
Evan Doughty’s expression became darker and darker as he watched from the VIP box. He only smiled when Forest scored, and he watched the match with a long face after that. The match became even worse after Real Madrid levelled the score… By his side, Florentino watched the whole game with a smile on his face. He did not even frown when Forest was leading.
He was an old and crafty person indeed. His culture and shrewdness were some things that Evan Doughty could not be a match for.
When the first half ended, the score was still 1:1. Even though Real Madrid had the advantage, they could not penetrate the Forest goal again as the Forest defense system passed the test. Twain was not concerned about his own defense; he was concerned about spending too much energy on defense that his offense would be stunted. The key to this match was no longer defense, but attack…
Twain entered the tunnel first, thinking about ways to salvage the situation in the second half.
The commentator felt pity for Real Madrid, “I bet, if the first half was five minutes longer, Real Madrid would penetrate the Forest goal again… Or have the initiative of the game completely. This is the Bernabéu after all, it’s their home ground. This halftime break saved Twain. We can look forward to the adjustments that Tony Twain will make during halftime.”
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Hoover superintendent Dr. Murphy: ‘Rezoning will happen’
Hoover school leaders looking at plans to redraw school attendance zones
Updated: 8:38 AM CDT Sep 24, 2015
Sarah Killian
Superintendent of Hoover City Schools Dr. Kathy Murphy recently informed school board members that conversations of school rezoning are back on the table.“It’s not a conversation I, our community, our parents want to have, but rezoning will happen,” said Murphy.Redrawing school attendance zones is an issue that’s stirred up controversy in the past. Former superintendent Andy Craig introduced school rezoning plans last year that were met with resistance from many communities. Those plans were later put on hold pending a review from the U.S. Department of Justice.Representatives from the Justice Department are in Hoover this week, and part of their discussions have included school rezoning.Right now, Hoover City Schools is working with the Justice Department to attain unitary status from a decades-old federal desegregation order. Part of that effort includes reviewing the racial makeup in school attendance zones, the racial makeup of faculty and staff, transportation, facilities and extracurricular activities. "We have the opportunity to show them really our compliance to expectations, and the fact that we exceed expectations and that we are deserving of unitary status," Murphy said.Conversations on school rezoning are not solely based on the Justice Department’s review.Murphy said more than anything, school rezoning is necessary in order to ease overcrowding at some of the schools in Hoover.“We have schools that are filled to capacity and other schools that are underutilized as it relates to the capacity of the students in those schools," Murphy said.Murphy said she recognizes that school rezoning is a difficult issue for students and parents and promises transparency during the process. “I have no assumption that I have the answers, but I believe we have the answers which is why we'll go out into the community and give them that opportunity to be heard."Murphy plans to hold community meetings soon to get input on school rezoning. She said the earliest parents and students can expect changes is the 2016-2017 academic year.
HOOVER, Ala. —
Superintendent of Hoover City Schools Dr. Kathy Murphy recently informed school board members that conversations of school rezoning are back on the table.
“It’s not a conversation I, our community, our parents want to have, but rezoning will happen,” said Murphy.
Hoover school leaders to share rezoning plan for the first time Thursday
Hoover City Schools ready to present rezoning plan
Few school districts in Alabama showing interest in charter schools
Hoover City Schools starts new school year with new leadership
Hoover City Schools hires Dr. Kathy Murphy as superintendent
Redrawing school attendance zones is an issue that’s stirred up controversy in the past. Former superintendent Andy Craig introduced school rezoning plans last year that were met with resistance from many communities. Those plans were later put on hold pending a review from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Representatives from the Justice Department are in Hoover this week, and part of their discussions have included school rezoning.
Right now, Hoover City Schools is working with the Justice Department to attain unitary status from a decades-old federal desegregation order. Part of that effort includes reviewing the racial makeup in school attendance zones, the racial makeup of faculty and staff, transportation, facilities and extracurricular activities.
"We have the opportunity to show them really our compliance to expectations, and the fact that we exceed expectations and that we are deserving of unitary status," Murphy said.
Conversations on school rezoning are not solely based on the Justice Department’s review.
Murphy said more than anything, school rezoning is necessary in order to ease overcrowding at some of the schools in Hoover.
“We have schools that are filled to capacity and other schools that are underutilized as it relates to the capacity of the students in those schools," Murphy said.
Murphy said she recognizes that school rezoning is a difficult issue for students and parents and promises transparency during the process.
“I have no assumption that I have the answers, but I believe we have the answers which is why we'll go out into the community and give them that opportunity to be heard."
Murphy plans to hold community meetings soon to get input on school rezoning. She said the earliest parents and students can expect changes is the 2016-2017 academic year.
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White House Press Secretary chokes back tears while discussing Las Vegas massacre
Updated: 9:39 AM CDT Oct 3, 2017
Dylan Hyman
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held back tears Monday as she briefed reporters on the mass shooting in Las Vegas."The memory of those who displayed the ultimate expression of love in the midst of an unimaginable act of hate will never fade," Sanders said. "Their examples will serve as an eternal reminder. that the American spirit cannot and will not ever be broken."At least 59 people were killed and over 527 were injured when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concert goers across the street from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Some politicians have already begun calling for increased gun control, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who tweeted "Our grief isn't enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again."Sanders pushed back when asked if President Trump would discuss legislation for gun control."Today is a day for consoling the survivors. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those individuals," Sanders said. "There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held back tears Monday as she briefed reporters on the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
"The memory of those who displayed the ultimate expression of love in the midst of an unimaginable act of hate will never fade," Sanders said. "Their examples will serve as an eternal reminder. that the American spirit cannot and will not ever be broken."
Couple married in Vegas Friday ran from massacre
Mandalay Bay Resort seeking trauma counselors to aid Las Vegas shooting victims
Officials: Las Vegas shooter had devices to allow fully automatic gunfire
At least 59 people were killed and over 527 were injured when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concert goers across the street from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
Some politicians have already begun calling for increased gun control, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who tweeted "Our grief isn't enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again."
Our grief isn't enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 2, 2017
Sanders pushed back when asked if President Trump would discuss legislation for gun control.
"Today is a day for consoling the survivors. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those individuals," Sanders said. "There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country."
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Transgender Teacher Returns To Class As A Woman
Being transgender is not a choice
When students at a California high school came back to class after Spring Break, they were in for a surprise. Their science teacher, Mr. Gary Sconce, showed up as Ms. Karen Scot—in an auburn wig and flowered dress.
According to an article in NBC News, the 56-year-old grandfather taught at Yosemite High School for 24 years before recently outing his "true" female self.
“I will not return as my male persona ever again,” said Scot. “I stand in front of the class and I’m so filled with joy.”
Of course, what was a celebration for the teacher has been met with some controversy, despite the school's support.
“I see this as an assault on the minds and morals of our children,” wrote neighbour Kathi Bales in a local paper. “It blurs the lines of what is right and wrong.”
While students and parents were obviously shocked by the transition, the vast majority were accepting of Scot's move toward authenticity.
"She'll still be the same excellent teacher that she is," said the parent of a former student.
"Being transgender is not a choice," Scot wrote in a letter informing colleagues and officials of her intention to begin the medical and social transformation.
Californian law prevents discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Students were offered counselling. Scot had planned a quiet, gradual transition, but had been "outed in a horrible way.”
What do you think of Scot's decision to return to school as a woman?
Another student who braved a gender change at school.
Life - In The News
transgender teacher
Tweets by @YMCbuzz
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Improved access for Bradford Interchange complete
Work to improve the main entrance of Bradford Interchange for the nine million people who use it to catch buses and trains each year is now complete and has re-opened to the public.
Among the improvements are new and extended pedestrian crossings, new guard railing to segregate pedestrians from vehicles, which will improve safety, a dedicated taxi rank, a new pick-up and drop-off area and a short-stay disabled parking space.
Marked improvement
Cllr Kim Groves, Chair of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Transport Committee said:
�I am pleased we have been able to work with Bradford Council on this successful project, which has resulted in a marked improvement for Bradford Interchange�s nine million annual users in terms of accessibility and safety as well as improving the welcome to Bradford city centre that the Interchange provides.
�Earlier this month we started a six-week, �120,000 refurbishment of the public toilets at the interchange and we have plans for further improvements including a new frontage, better pedestrian access and improved facilities.�
Positive first impressions
Coun Alex Ross-Shaw, Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, Planning and Transport, said: �The enhancements to the Bradford Interchange are part of a wider strategy to improve local infrastructure and boost jobs and economic growth.
�This is an important upgrade and will make positive first impressions for people visiting Bradford and the wider district.�
In February, West Yorkshire Combined Authority approved a �5.65 million scheme to improve the Interchange as a gateway to Bradford city centre. Further stages would see wholesale improvements to the Interchange�s layout and facilities improving the way that passengers can use the building and move from one transport mode to another, paving the way for improved Calder Valley rail services and a central Bradford stop on the planned Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) or HS3 route.
The work to improve access at the Interchange took 10 weeks to complete with pedestrian access being maintained throughout the scheme.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority manages the Metro-branded bus stations across West Yorkshire.�
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A Texas County Clerk’s Bold Crusade to Transform How We Vote
Benjamin Wofford
How Dana DeBeauvoir set off the biggest, weirdest, and most promising revolution in election technology since the 1800s.
Photograph: Sarah Lim
It was not the first time Dana DeBeauvoir had moved a room full of men. At 9 o'clock in the morning on August 8, 2011, she adjusted a pair of half-frame reading glasses on the end of her nose, got up behind a tabletop podium in a downtown San Francisco hotel, and set out to enlist some of her most bitter adversaries in a dare. “I really appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today,” she began in a warm tone of Southern geniality, flashing a wide, radiant smile.
DeBeauvoir (pronounced day-buv-WAH) introduced herself as the chief clerk and election administrator of Travis County, Texas, better known as the home of Austin. She was dressed in a dark tailored jacket and ruffled blouse, with nails polished in her favorite candy-apple red. Gazing back at her was an audience of academics, computer scientists, and hacktivists, whose collective occupation was warning the American people that the country's election technology was dangerously vulnerable. Most of them slouched around banquet tables in the programmer's uniform of mussed hair, rounded paunches, and untucked shirts. They were assembled for one of the nation's preeminent conferences on election technology, and DeBeauvoir—who had a fairly average grasp of computers—was the event's unlikely keynote speaker.
October 2020. Subscribe to WIRED.
Trying to break the ice, she stammered through a yuk-yuk computer joke that strung together references to Python and CherryPy 3.2.0. It was greeted with scattered snickers. Then she cut the air by acknowledging what everyone already knew: “There's some unpleasantness here.”
The room had been bracing for this. For the past 10 years, county election officials like DeBeauvoir and cybersecurity experts like those in the audience had been mired in opposing trenches. The “unpleasantness” began in 2002, when the lingering debacle of Florida's butterfly ballots prompted Congress to authorize billions of dollars for states to buy new digital voting machines. Among the most popular were devices known as DREs, direct-recording electronic voting machines. No sooner had they been taken out of the box, however, than a wave of computer scientists appeared over the hill like a guerrilla infantry. They assailed the machines' embarrassing security flaws and excoriated the technology vendors who built them.
But it was the nation's election administrators—the 10,000 or so secretaries of state, county clerks, and township presidents who actually ran the country's elections—who ended up taking all the heat. When local voters skimmed an incendiary op-ed that claimed the governor's race could be hacked, they didn't complain to the obscure manufacturers that virtually monopolize American voting; they called on their clerks, upset and confused. If for nothing but to quell mass panic, many election clerks had by the mid-2000s firmly locked arms with one another, pounding the same adamant message: They told voters to ignore the scientists, whom they portrayed as reckless doomsayers, and insisted that their machines were secure.
Many knew that wasn't true, but that was beside the point. From then on, the two sides eyed each other spitefully. The computer scientists took potshots from tech conferences and C-SPAN; the clerks hurled guff from local papers and town halls. The academics showed a hacker's flair for theatrics. They dug up voting machines whose encryption codes were “abcde,” and they cooked up malware that forced DREs to run Pac-Man or swing elections for Benedict Arnold. One professor and his grad students hacked the real-life voting system of Washington, DC—forcing the machines' auxiliary speakers to blast a school fight song and changing the ballot choices to “Bender” and “Hal 9000.”
One of the earliest stuntmen was a Texas professor named Dan Wallach. In 2001 he was called to testify about electronic voting machines before the city council in Houston, where he taught computer science at Rice University. During his testimony, Wallach stood up, crossed the hearing room, and opened a voting machine's hatch, pulling out its PCMCIA memory card. “This is where the votes are,” he said, waving the card while cameras clicked. “This can be attacked.”
Soon Wallach was accepting invitations to speak all across Texas, often leaving a trail of angry election officials fuming in his dust cloud. It was inevitable that he would eventually lock antlers with one of the most powerful clerks in Texas: Dana DeBeauvoir.
election tech
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hack the vote
Some Voting Machines Still Have Decade-Old Vulnerabilities
One IT Guy’s Spreadsheet-Fueled Race to Restore Voting Rights
Jack Hitt
DeBeauvoir had been one of the first clerks in the country to adopt DREs, outfitting Travis County with a model called the Hart eSlate. Soon, she and Wallach were going to war in the pages of The Austin Chronicle. Wallach lambasted the voting machine manufacturers for keeping their code secret instead of going open source. “The bad guys can tear it apart,” he told the paper. DeBeauvoir responded with measured reassurance but had sharp words for Wallach and his ilk. She told the paper that she was bending over backward to secure the machines—all for “appeasing a worry that is a little dubious.” She torched Wallach's rhetoric as “awful” and “unfair” and later called him “a rock-thrower.”
By 2011 this history was well known to everyone assembled in the conference room of the San Francisco Westin—where Wallach himself sat in the audience, watching DeBeauvoir from a distance.
Onstage, DeBeauvoir found her bearings and then turned up the heat. She wanted the computer scientists to know what the past decade had been like for her. She was tired of seeing clerks “vilified by electronic voting critics who made broad sweeping statements”—attacks that denigrated not just machines but “the people who administered them.” Every year the broadsides continued, “without any advice to those of us who are in the field.” She accused the academics of doing little to quell the conspiracy theories their research tended to spawn, meaning that “academic papers and internet rumors were often given equal weight in the public discourse.” All this while she toiled endlessly just to convince citizens and politicians that elections were fair.
DeBeauvoir was practically seething, and the audience shifted nervously. Then, out of nowhere, she changed tack. Lately, DeBeauvoir confessed, she'd begun to see things from their perspective. Once upon a time, the specter of malware and advanced persistent threats felt “like science fiction.” Now she'd come to understand that the scientists had felt ignored as much as she had. For the first time, a room of computer experts heard sounds of real sympathy from the mouth of an elections official. “For you, I imagine it felt—as we would say in Texas—like hollerin' down a well,” DeBeauvoir said. Today, she wanted the scientists to know “how much this country needs your wisdom, your knowledge of science”—and help.
She had come to the conference with one purpose: to invite the computer scientists to design a new voting system entirely from scratch. It would have a paper trail, an easy-to-use interface, and the greatest security conceivable. And, she declared, “The. Source. Code. Must. Be. Open.”
By now, the attendees were frozen in stunned silence. One later recalled it was all he could do not to fall off his chair. It was as if someone from the IRA had breezed through the door and casually declared peace in Northern Ireland. But DeBeauvoir was in earnest. “The finding of a problem also comes with the obligation to help find a solution,” she chided them. “May I suggest to you: Now is the time when you can put your mark on the future,” she declared. “And you can use Travis County to make that mark.”
DeBeauvoir had started her speech as a visitor from a hostile tribe. She ended it to fervent applause. When she opened the floor to questions, people rushed to the microphone. One was a computer scientist named Josh Benaloh, who was so excited he began brainstorming on the spot. “There are some other methods that might provide even greater assurance,” he said cryptically. “I'd love to talk to you about it.”
She pointed to another hand that shot up and realized it belonged to Dan Wallach. “I've been involved in Texas politics for long enough now to know that change in Austin doesn't happen easily,” Wallach said dryly. “How are you gonna pull this off?”
“I might not!” DeBeauvoir shot back, to nervous laughter. But she felt obligated to try. Since Bush v. Gore, voting technology had barely improved in the richest country on earth. Over the previous decade, while civil servants and computer scientists had been at each other's throats, the vendors had been content to keep churning out the same mediocre and overpriced equipment. “Ten years!” she said. “And what's changed?”
She'd been raised in the Lone Star philosophy of asking forgiveness, not permission: “Ignore the obstacles, screw the rules, go get something better.” The crowd of PhDs was studying her skeptically, and DeBeauvoir stared right back. “I'm an Austinite,” she said flatly. “We're an odd mix of dreamers and realists. And if the establishment says it can't be done—well, you can bet that's the one thing we're gonna be hell bent to go do.”
Computer scientist Josh Benaloh was so excited about DeBeauvoir's speech that he began brainstorming on the spot. “There are some other methods that might provide even greater assurance,” he said cryptically. “I'd love to talk to you about it.”
Photograph: Jovelle Tamayo
Dana DeBeauvoir was born in Fort Worth and grew up in nearby Arlington, the oldest of four siblings. In school, teachers lauded the plucky kid with good grades. They also noticed a precocious tendency to shout down bullies and shoo them away from prey. That was the only sign something might be wrong. As DeBeauvoir reflects, “I guess I was a good actress.”
The truth was, DeBeauvoir was trapped in a nightmare. Since the age of 9, a dark cloud of sexual abuse at the hands of an adult had hung over her childhood. “There was no help.” She understood nothing would be done, nothing could be done—“except to plan my escape,” she says. “Which I did.”
At 18, DeBeauvoir set out on her own. She worked in an orthodontist's office, ravenous to attend college. Later, her therapists would suggest that her intelligence was a key factor in her ability to survive the trauma of her upbringing. Another was that, even as a child, DeBeauvoir had little trouble recognizing that it was the adults in her life who were morally wrong, not her—a realization that placed her in a tiny minority of child victims. The experience “made for a lousy childhood,” she says. It also made for an exceptionally clear-eyed adult. DeBeauvoir worked herself to the bone, attending the University of Texas at Arlington three years after leaving home. As she put it, “Education was my ticket out of abuse.”
By then, her acute sense of injustice had pushed her toward public service. In 1979 she arrived at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, one of the premier policy schools in the country. For the first time, DeBeauvoir had found her people: puzzle solvers and brilliant pragmatists, students who'd otherwise fetch a killing in the private sector but who dreamed of a life in public service. Her professors included New Deal visionaries like Wilbur Cohen, “the man who built Medicare,” as well as the little-recognized postmaster general who instituted the zip code system.
After graduating, she took a job in Austin, working for the local tax assessor. But soon her boss encouraged her to run for office. She won her first election, and in 1987 became the clerk of Travis County at age 32. “I was very green to politics,” she says. “I didn't know anything, really.” But she had faith in the power of competence. “That would be the inscription on my tombstone—‘Be competent,’” DeBeauvoir laughs. “Either that or ‘She ate life with a big spoon.’”
As the clerk of the state's fourth-largest city, DeBeauvoir had to manage a sprawling bureaucracy: property deeds, marriage licenses, and—this being Texas—steer branding. She also had to hold her own in the male-dominated world of Texas politics, “a boots and bellies convention,” as she puts it dryly. What she lacked in managerial experience she far exceeded with heart-melting charm and a bottomless patience for details. In her private life, she was drawn to tinkerers and engineers. In Austin she fell deeply in love with a man named Ben Smithers, an Eagle Scout who raced sailboats, cycled competitively, played several instruments, and built airplanes by hand. They were married on her grandmother's birthday, to honor the only person DeBeauvoir could trust during years of abuse.
But the part of DeBeauvoir's job she was least prepared for was the one she'd have to tackle first: running Austin's elections. She'd volunteered in one election before she took office to see how the “back of the house” worked. But the LBJ School had skipped over the subject entirely. And she would have to learn fast. The first election was less than six months away—just one in the parade of school board votes, township primaries, and Supreme Court contests that make running an elections office a year-round job. “Just thrown into the job!” she says. And her experience was far from unusual. “For a hundred and fifty years, the way we brought up our elections officials has always been trial by fire,” she says. “We kind of fall into it.”
During that same spring of 1987, while the new Travis County clerk was deciphering election law in Texas, a young mathematician 1,500 miles away at Yale University was submitting a doctoral dissertation that would eventually change the course of DeBeauvoir's life. The paper was called “Verifiable Secret-Ballot Elections,” and its author was Josh Benaloh, then a 28-year-old grad student. Because of new techniques in cryptography, it began, mathematicians could now perform “tasks that seem to defy intuition.” Those techniques, he wrote, made it theoretically possible to construct an election in which everyone's ballot could remain completely secret, while, at the same time, the record of everyone's vote could be “verifiable by all participants”—like a rabbit that's pulled out of a magician's hat and stays hidden inside it at the same time.
Back then, the field of modern cryptography was still young. Encryption had been around since forever—from the ancient Greeks of the Peloponnesian War to the rotor ciphers of World War I. But with the advent of public key cryptography in the 1970s, life as we knew it changed. It would allow ordinary people, not just governments, to cheaply encrypt and authenticate messages between parties; transactions as varied as bank transfers and exchanges between journalists and sources could all be shielded from prying eyes.
The most famous method of public key cryptography was called RSA—after its founders, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman—which was first described by its authors to Scientific American in 1977. Benaloh was a freshman at MIT when he happened to read that first article at an optometry appointment. The child of activist parents, Benaloh had prodigious gifts in math that were matched by an abiding interest in politics. (As a kid, he spent time in a campaign office for the feminist Bella Abzug.) At MIT in 1981, he signed up for a class on cryptography taught by Rivest. And it was there that Benaloh first began toying with the idea of marrying encryption with electronic voting.
To grasp why this prospect is both so tantalizing and so devilishly challenging, it helps to remember that there are many different kinds of voting. One of them is the method that the House of Representatives has used to pass legislation since the early 1970s. Inside the Capitol, members of Congress cast their votes on a custom-designed machine by inserting a special ID card. When their name appears onscreen, they can choose Yea, Nay, or Present. Then they remove their ID card, et voilà—democracy.
As hardware and software go, the machines that tally Congress' votes are the opposite of secure; hacking them would be child's play. So why don't the North Koreans tamper with congressional votes? Because of what hangs above the balcony on the chamber's south wall: a giant electronic display board, the world's most boring jumbotron, where votes are displayed next to every member's name. A congressperson whose vote was hacked need only lift their eyes to catch the mistake, raise a hackle, and correct the problem.
Wouldn’t It Be Great if People Could Vote on the Blockchain?
Well, for starters, stop calling it "the" blockchain.
By Gregory Barber
Believe it or not, American public elections operated in much the same way until the late 1800s. They took place in mass public gatherings—not private deliberations of conscience, but large and boisterous affairs. Often, farmers or laborers chose between rival candidates' crowds as a poll clerk counted heads, and onlookers cheered and hissed. If voting still worked this way, running a trustworthy election would be a cakewalk. “It would be easy,” says Ben Adida, another acolyte of Rivest who has worked on cryptographic voting. “You'd still use computers. But trusting them would be simple. You could just put up a big spreadsheet of how everyone voted.”
The reason we can't is maddeningly simple: the secret ballot. By the late 1800s, vote selling and coercion had become so rampant in electoral politics that reformers stepped in. The secret ballot, appropriated from Australia, became their main weapon against corruption and graft. If Bob's ballot must be anonymous, then he can't be bullied or bribed into voting for Alice's candidate—because Alice can't check to make sure Bob followed through on the bargain.
This system of secret ballots had a profound consequence, however: If a voter can never share their ballot, they can never verify it either. The moment your vote is cast, it becomes dissociated from you, indistinguishable from the others in a stream of paper. You can never know if your vote was counted, or counted accurately—whether your ballot sailed through, got jammed in the machine, or was abandoned in a lobby with a sack full of other votes (as happened in Connecticut in 2010).
In short, modern elections enshrine privacy at the cost of transparency, and try to compensate for the loss with a host of bureaucratic patches: voter-registration schemes to prevent people from voting twice, tally systems that ensure the number of voters matches the ballot total, and centralized polling places where rival election monitors can scrutinize the proceedings, all to impart legitimacy to a system of vanishing ballots. “If you want to understand why elections are hard, it's because of the secret ballot,” says Adida—that's the single variable “that introduces all of the operational complexity and trust.” Not for nothing did a leading technology conference recently declare voting the “hardest problem in IT security.”
The moment your vote is cast, it becomes dissociated from you, vanishing into a stream of ballots.
At MIT, Rivest tossed a paper onto Benaloh's desk that contained a clue to how that problem might be cracked. Mathematicians had noticed something funny about the structure of RSA encryption, which Rivest suspected might have beneficial uses. When a piece of text is digitized, it's rendered into a series of 1s and 0s; and when it's encrypted, those underlying 1s and 0s are transformed, through multiplication with a very large, randomly generated prime number, into what's called a ciphertext. What the mathematicians had understood was that when two ciphertexts are added or multiplied together, the result maintains a stable mathematical relationship with the original, unencrypted “plaintexts”—a relationship called a homomorphism. Say you wanted to add 2 + 4. This homomorphic principle allowed you to encrypt those two numbers, then add them together without decrypting them, and the sum would be an encryption of the number 6.
Benaloh's curiosity was set ablaze; he quickly understood that homomorphic cryptography, as it came to be called, had a perfect use case: voting in elections. On its face, traditional cryptography would seem pretty useless in an election, given that encrypting a vote is like sticking it inside a lockbox. How do you tally votes trapped inside a sea of lockboxes, which can't be opened and can't be seen? But an election, of course, is most fundamentally a process of counting votes—of adding things together. Homomorphic encryption made it possible to tally a set of votes even though they were encrypted. And at the same time, it unlocked a host of other benefits.
In 1987, Benaloh's thesis at Yale spelled out how a homomorphically encrypted voting scheme would come to life. First, voters would need access to a machine that could perform advanced cryptography. When they cast their ballot, each digital vote would start out as a simple binary—1 for Biden, 0 for Trump—but its ciphertext might be thousands of characters long. Rather than send voters home with a binder full of hexadecimal gibberish, the computer would print the ciphertext as something much smaller: a hash code, much like how a URL is shortened into a Bit.ly. That would serve as the voter's unique receipt, which they would keep and carry away with them.
At the end of the night, when the computers stopped whirring, all those encrypted votes would be added together. A small number of election officials—the county clerk, the secretary of state—would possess a key that allowed them to decrypt the sum. They'd compare the columns of votes for each candidate and reveal the winner.
Thanks to the nature of the math involved, those resulting sums would also be verifiable by independent outside observers. After the election, all the encrypted votes could be posted on a public, online bulletin board for all to inspect. Using a set of mathematical operations called Chaum-Pedersen protocols, auditors would be able to crunch all those ciphertexts to arrive at what cryptographers call a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof: “Proof that the vote is correctly captured,” Benaloh explained, but without any way to know whose ballot said what.
But the thing that excited Benaloh most was what this scheme would mean for individual voters. When a voter left the polling place, clutching a receipt that bore their unique hash code, they could go home and perform a search for its twin among all the encrypted ballots on that massive public bulletin board. For the first time, elections would not only be verifiable, but people could be certain whether their specific vote had been counted, all without violating the secret ballot.
Crucially, Benaloh was not setting out to design an “unhackable” voting machine, an idea he regarded as a chimera. “We don't know how to build bug-free code,” he says. Instead, what homomorphic cryptography offered was a beguiling twist on the congressional jumbotron. While the Russians or Chinese might wish to hack such a system, little would be achieved in the effort: In a network whose votes are rendered as gibberish, how could you know whose votes you stole? Moreover, should Fancy Bear attempt to delete 30,000 ballots in Milwaukee, the verifiability protocols meant they would be caught, probably minutes into the act—a downstream effect of giving voters a receipt to track their ballot from home. “The whole notion of end-to-end verifiability is not to say that a system can't be attacked,” says Benaloh. “Rather than ‘prevention,’ it's all about detection.”
For the first time, elections would not only be verifiable, but people could be certain whether their specific vote had been counted, all without violating the secret ballot.
His paper, he says, was “just a small step” in the broad scheme of cryptography. But that step contained the kernel of a radical notion. Since RSA, nearly every aspect of life had become verifiable, from the groceries we bought on our credit card to the suspicious-looking stereo we didn't. It seemed odd to Benaloh how few people had thought the same way about voting—what seemed to him like an act of public faith, when it should be a process of verifiable math. In 1994, Benaloh went to work for Microsoft, where he put his voting proposal on the shelf. But for the next 15 years, he never stopped evangelizing about homomorphic cryptography to any person who would listen.
One of them was Dan Wallach, whose crusade against unsafe voting machines was already underway. In 2007, Benaloh and Wallach discovered they were both at the same technology conference—convened in a sprawling castle near the Germany-Luxembourg border. On a forest hike, Benaloh relentlessly pressed his idea for more than an hour, just long enough for Wallach to get his head around the concept.
By then, Wallach had been involved in some of the most damning research on DREs, including a major investigation by the state of California. He was fixated on preventing malware from getting in. He had never considered a voting system that, by its nature, wasn't worth hacking in the first place. “That,” Wallach says, “was the turning point.” He became a convert. With his grad students, Wallach even built an experimental system called VoteBox, a bubble-gum-and-band-aid project that replicated the homomorphic approach.
DeBeauvoir knew none of this history when she turned up in San Francisco in 2011. When she extended her hand from the podium, beseeching the room's technologists to build a new system, Wallach and Benaloh locked eyes from across the room. “Are you punking me?” Wallach recalls thinking. In the laggardly world of elections, he says, “this just never happens.”
The truth was, DeBeauvoir had no interest in reinventing elections. She was simply tired of feeling trapped by bad technology. “I got angry,” she says. “The election vendors pissed me off.” So did the math professors, “wasting all that brainpower.” She had no clue a system like Benaloh's was even conceivable. But she sensed that her predicament was unconscionable: Google was busy building self-driving cars. How was it that our voting technology was routinely hacked by grad students?
A week later, DeBeauvoir called Wallach. Would he lead the design for a new kind of voting system? Wallach agreed on one condition, which he put in the form of a question. “Can I bring some friends?”
Rice University computer science professor Dan Wallach had been involved in some of the most damning research on direct-recording electronic voting machines, including a major investigation by the state of California.
While news about the project spread in the elections world, Wallach started to assemble a posse. Exactly what they would be building, no one was quite sure. But the goals of the design were laid out early—a voting machine that would be secure, transparent, auditable, and reliable. They called it STAR-Vote.
The team that Wallach put together was like a fantasy sports roster of election security luminaries. Benaloh, still at Microsoft, would be the lead cryptographer. A host of interdisciplinary players would join him. One was Philip Stark, a statistician from UC Berkeley who had invented a ballot auditing system, called risk-limiting audits. There were professors specializing in human factors, the psychology of how voters interacted with machines—the types who could have predicted the hanging-chads fiasco from a mile away. Then there was DeBeauvoir and her team of clerks, who could guide the group through the vagaries of election administration.
But it was when MIT's Rivest came on board that everyone understood the group had reached an ethereal level. When word of STAR-Vote reached an expert in homomorphic cryptography living in Brussels, Belgium, he was so excited that he copped for a plane ticket and, as Wallach tells it, “flew his ass to Austin.”
The team assembled for its first meeting in Austin during the spring of 2012. They gathered in the county courthouse, a solemn art deco building on Guadalupe Street, and piled into a conference room. Things got off to a slow start. A chill still lingered between Wallach and DeBeauvoir. “We needed to break the ice. He'd been ugly to me,” she recalls. But when Benaloh began scrawling diagrams on the whiteboard, they were off. The marathon weekend lasted four days, with little sleep and raucous debate, punctuated by beer-infused dinners at barbecue joints around town. “By the end of the weekend,” says Wallach, “we had a design.”
That design looked a lot like a typical voting machine. It included a screen interface from which voters could print a ballot for review. The software came with Stark's automatic audits baked in. There was a paper trail. And the code would be entirely open source.
The defining riddle, however, was how to convince voters to trust the encryption at all. It would be utterly alien to watch a candidate's name snap into a series of numbers and letters—the hash code that would appear onscreen, and later on their printed receipt. Would voters believe it was their candidate underneath that ciphertext? Benaloh's answer to the problem was a “challenge” system. Once the voter had finished at the machine and printed out their encrypted paper ballot, they could either cast it in the ballot box to be counted or they could “challenge” it by taking it to a poll worker who would mark it as “spoiled.” Then the citizen would vote again. After the election they could then look up their decrypted, spoiled ballot to see whether the machine had really recorded a vote for the right person.
That design looked a lot like a typical voting machine. It included a screen interface from which voters could print a ballot for review. The software came with Stark’s automatic audits baked in. There was a paper trail. And the code would be entirely open source.
Propagated across precincts on the scale of a national election, the cumulative challenges would add up: If 10,000 people out of 100 million spoiled their votes, the odds that an evil machine could swap your vote without being detected were 0.01 percent.
STAR-Vote also took the idea of verification further. Benaloh wanted to give voters the opportunity to help prove that the outcome of an entire election was correct. Since all the code was open source, a cryptographic verification program could be written by anyone. True, the odds that the average Joe would learn the requisite Chaum-Pedersen protocols were slim. But the odds were better that well-financed groups—like the League of Women Voters or the Republican National Committee—could build their own in-house verifiers. They might be apps or web programs, which could be distributed among the groups' members. Voters could run the program and see for themselves that the tally was accurate.
The innovation struck its designers as well suited to the divisive currents of American politics. “What it allows you to do is choose who you're going to trust,” says Benaloh. But no matter who you choose, everyone's verifying the same math.
That summer, the STAR-Vote team published their design in a journal. Their ambitions were steep: to develop the country's first publicly owned, open source voting system. Once it was developed, they would make the system available to other local governments—freeing thousands of clerks from the shackles of weak security and the retrograde manufacturers that enforced it.
For DeBeauvoir, this was no theoretical exercise: Her mission now was to build a machine that would pass certification under Texas law, and do it before her Hart eSlate machines were due to be decommissioned. She was gambling her constituents' future on an idea that no one had attempted before. What's more, she told voters that Travis County could build STAR-Vote for cheaper than the machines the manufacturers were trying to sell. “Little old me is going to take on the national manufacturing sector!” she recalls. “It wasn't so much chutzpah as it was—genuinely—we thought we could do it.”
But that would require getting STAR-Vote built. To keep the technology publicly owned, DeBeauvoir's office looked for a partner outside the private market. Immediately, she ran into problems. First she pursued a West Coast nonprofit. Then she tried the state government, pitching the idea to a publicly funded tech incubator. But in an email, she was informed that Texas counties shouldn't be investing taxpayer dollars in an open source design simply to “put the product out for the world to copy and use.”
By the end of 2014, DeBeauvoir still had no takers. Throughout the next year, she chased down a medley of financial suitors: the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts. She badgered Lloyd Dogget, Austin's US representative, to see whether Congress might chip in. She explored social impact bonds. She flew some officials in from Los Angeles who were also thinking about designing their own open source voting system, and proposed that they double up. They declined. She couldn't get other clerks interested either. Once, she and Wallach drove to a Texas Association of Counties conference to press their case. “Quite frankly,” she says, “they were a little intimidated by the level of math.”
As the 2016 election loomed, DeBeauvoir was becoming desperate. The STAR-Vote team continued to fly into Austin for strategy sessions, tweaking the design and searching for solutions. DeBeauvoir relied on Ben, her polymath husband, as a sounding board and a source of antic brainstorms. She also confided regularly in Wallach. In one email, she agonized that time was running out. “I'm frustrated with how long this process is taking,” she wrote. What if the county's eSlate machines started to break down? “No funding and no available replacement voting system would be a terrible predicament.” Later, she fretted that she might be the source of the trouble. “It will be obvious that I am such a newbie at this,” she wrote. “I don't want my inexperience to hurt STAR-Vote.”
Finally, it became clear there wouldn't be money for a publicly owned system. The STAR-Vote team decided to solicit bids from the private vendor market. DeBeauvoir was reluctant to cast the project's fortunes with the companies whose security weaknesses and lack of transparency had put her in this predicament to start with. But during 2016, just as Russian hackers had begun poking around DNC servers and state election websites, DeBeauvoir began work on a request-for-proposal announcement.
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When the document finally went out to potential bidders, it was unlike anything that had come through the fax machine in the elections market. It spelled out the math for a random number generator and the specs for a 16- to 20-digit originating hash code. DeBeauvoir was optimistic. “It took us three years,” she emailed one colleague. “I anticipate getting a variety of responses to build it. At least I hope to.”
All that hope, however, was misplaced. In the winter of 2016, 12 dismal responses came back. One company, ES&S, flatly declined to build the machine and politely steered DeBeauvoir to its standard brochure of offerings. Another proposal, obtained by WIRED, came from Hart, the company that had previously sold DeBeauvoir the eSlate; the company simply offered up its existing model with a few perfunctory modifications, and with palpable uneasiness toward its open source requirements. Wallach called the proposal a “check-the-boxes” exercise. DeBeauvoir had hoped to cobble together a system from a hodgepodge of proposals. But, she says, “there wasn't amongst all of them a single proposal that could build it.”
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say they wouldn't build it. As a report published by the Wharton School of Business would reveal that same year, the election technology business was a heavily consolidated industry—a cartel, essentially, of just three vendors, all owned by private equity firms—that was starved for profit and all but incapable of innovation. Subsequent research suggested that the companies earned their most stable revenue through a maze of fees: maintenance, upkeep, software licenses. Their core business model seemed to involve locking clients into relationships of “ongoing annual payments.” Small wonder, then, that the firms hadn't leapt to DeBeauvoir's idea of building a machine with open source code that aimed to liberate local governments with cheap, self-sustaining technology.
Now things had turned dire for DeBeauvoir. “I could hear the voices of the critics,” she says. “You're just a fool!” In a last effort, she threw a Hail Mary: She formed her own company to house STAR-Vote as a nonprofit LLC. It was a measure of pure devotion, and also a reflection of the absurd dimensions her dilemma had taken. “What I didn't realize was, basically, I was becoming a startup,” DeBeauvoir says. “I was setting up a whole company, a whole product line, a whole dual budget and development system.”
By that time, however, Travis County's eSlate DREs—the machines Austin had been using since 2001—were about to hit their expiration date. Finally, in October 2017, she relented. “I had nothin',” she says. She contacted one of the big vendors and began negotiating for a new fleet of machines. They would last until 2030. STAR-Vote was effectively a dead letter.
DeBeauvoir had been trying to build STAR-Vote for six years. “We worked so hard, for so long. And then it was just—” She pauses. “I just couldn't push it anymore.” DeBeauvoir laughs. “Even stubborn wasn't going to work.”
During the middle of her negotiations for a new contract on voting machines, DeBeauvoir received a horrifying call. Her husband had suffered a massive heart attack. DeBeauvoir rushed out of the county courthouse. But by the time she reached the hospital, he had died.
Not long after her husband, DeBeauvoir lost her mother too. “It was the worst year of my life,” she says. Ashen with grief, she experienced a sensation she had long forgotten: despair. “All I had ever done was fight back. And I couldn't reach up and grab this one by the throat,” she says. For the first time since she was a little girl, she felt unable to cope.
Ben's death detonated like a bomb in DeBeauvoir's life. But when she searched her feelings, she was startled by how much grief also came from the death of what she saw as her life's work. “Ben, mother, and STAR-Vote,” she says. “That losing STAR-Vote would be up there so high—that surprised me.”
“Now I tell myself the truth,” she says. “Maybe it was always doomed.”
“That would be the inscription on my tombstone—‘Be competent,’” DeBeauvoir laughs. “Either that or ‘She ate life with a big spoon.’”
In the winter of 2017, shortly after STAR-Vote was declared a loss, Josh Benaloh was sitting in his office at Microsoft when he received an email from unusually high up in the chain of command. A team from the company's Legal and Policy Division wanted Benaloh's advice on a sensitive idea, which hadn't been made public yet.
Benaloh worked at Microsoft Research, the corporate Goliath's private Darpa. There he could quietly tend the flame of his interest in elections, but mostly he worked on other problems. Every once in a while, he'd pitch his superiors on cryptography and voting, but got little interest. Eventually, he understood why. “There's no way that it makes sense for Microsoft to make a business out of elections,” Benaloh explains. “Elections are a tiny business. Microsoft is a mass-market software company.” Nor had Benaloh's pathfinding work on STAR-Vote attracted anything more than a cursory thumbs-up as one of a million interesting things going on in a place like Microsoft.
Then, all at once, something happened that completely reoriented Microsoft's stance. “What happened,” Benaloh says, “was 2016.”
As the scope and fallout of Russia's meddling in the presidential election became clear, Microsoft had quietly initiated an elaborate fact-finding process, searching for anything it could do in elections that wouldn't clash with the company's business imperatives. And now the brass wanted to know: Could Benaloh replicate what he'd attempted in Austin, this time for Microsoft? Benaloh's feet were practically out the door before he could say yes.
In 2019, Microsoft launched its project under the name ElectionGuard. Once again, the technology would rely on Benaloh's dissertation about homomorphic cryptography. Voters could still challenge their ballot and walk away from the voting booth with a hash code. But in key ways, ElectionGuard was different from STAR-Vote, especially in how it proposed to solve the problem of private industry. ElectionGuard would be built as a software development kit—a highly sophisticated plug-in, essentially, that would augment existing machines. The plan was to laboriously tailor ElectionGuard to several kinds of election technology, and then give it away to the big vendors for free. Microsoft wasn't becoming a rival so much as it was housing the massive R&D division that voting companies couldn't.
For ElectionGuard, yet another dream team has assembled. Benaloh is leading the cryptography, while Wallach is designing a risk-limiting audit system that would use Benaloh's encryption. The secure systems firm Galois, STAR-Vote's only bidder for its cryptography software, won a contract to assist ElectionGuard. And Microsoft has partnered with a nonprofit called VotingWorks—run by Ben Adida, the other student of Rivest's at MIT—to build the hardware on which ElectionGuard would be demonstrated.
Earlier this year, Microsoft went searching for a real-life election where they could introduce ElectionGuard as a pilot. They settled on the town of Fulton, Wisconsin, population 3,000, about an hour's drive west of Milwaukee. In February, the town would be voting in a tiny primary: a state Supreme Court seat and the local school board. For weeks leading up to the election, a squadron of Microsoft programmers parachuted into Wisconsin farmland, running test votes on dummy ballots with the names of Fulton's favorite sons. (Willem Dafoe was one.) The people of Fulton were only too happy to be guinea pigs. Lisa Tollefson, the county clerk there, has a degree in industrial technology; she was fascinated, not intimidated, by ElectionGuard's math. “You can actually add while it's still encrypted, which is a-mazing,” she beamed.
Not everyone is so thrilled about ElectionGuard. The election vendors have varied in their degree of openness toward Microsoft's complimentary toy. In part, that may be because they know that what's free for them is also free for us—and for the next Dana DeBeauvoir who might come along to build a better voting machine. Indeed, VotingWorks, the nonprofit that built the Fulton demo, has its own ambitions to disrupt the voting industry. The vendors also say that, if they sign on, ElectionGuard will still need to run through a gauntlet of regulatory certifications—an expensive proposition. Innovation is simply harder under a mountain of regulation. “Like Silicon Valley, we'd like to ‘move fast and break things,’ but we do not have that luxury,” said a spokesperson for the vendor Hart. (Microsoft says it is optimistic that all three vendors will eventually jump aboard.)
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Remarkably, some other skeptics can be found on the teams that designed STAR-Vote and ElectionGuard itself. Philip Stark told me he wishes he'd pushed for a radically different design on DeBeauvoir's project. Sure, Benaloh's system allowed for easy detection of fraud; but what would happen when you did detect fraud? You could rerun the election or conduct a massive audit, unleashing chaos in either case. The perfect knowledge afforded to voters by ElectionGuard might draw an even bigger target on elections, Stark speculated, especially for hackers who simply wanted to cause confusion and undermine trust. Another conscientious objector was Adida, the guy who was literally building the hardware for Microsoft's demo in Fulton. With some heartache, he had concluded the field was moving too fast for its own good. What voters really needed was an affordable machine that worked. Would they even show up to vote on a system they couldn't really understand?
At 8 am on an arctic-cold morning, voters in Fulton began shuffling into their squat town hall. Benaloh was on hand, along with several others from Microsoft. Wallach beamed in over Zoom. One by one, voters stooped over the machine, printing two sheets—a ballot and a hash code—before they fed their vote into the tabulator and left with a strange new receipt in their hand. In all, 398 came and went. Fulton would keep track of the paper ballots, then match them against ElectionGuard's encrypted tally.
When the polls closed at 8 pm, Benaloh and his programmers hunched around a computer, running the Chaum-Pedersen protocols and poring through the data. By 9, they had a verdict: The paper ballots and the program were in perfect unison. ElectionGuard tallied the vote flawlessly. “It was 398 votes. I sweated bullets over those 398 votes,” one of the programmers, R. C. Carter, told me. Convinced he had just seen the future of American voting, Carter—who has worked in tech for years—describes the night he spent shivering in Wisconsin as “one of the peaks of my career.”
Among the team, everyone knew whose shoulders they stood on. “The Fulton demonstration was the modern interpretation of STAR-Vote,” Wallach says. Benaloh saw things the same way. “STAR-Vote was not a failure,” he says, and DeBeauvoir's efforts hadn't been wasted. “She deserves tremendous credit for this.”
No one will be voting with ElectionGuard in November 2020. “This is long-term for us,” says Benaloh. “If we get a significant use in 2022, 2024, and beyond—we're happy.” But this election makes it particularly easy to see the appeal of a voting system built for verification and trust.
Of course, a complicated new homomorphically cryptographic reinvention of the franchise is not going to assuage this crisis of trust overnight. One person who knows all too well that trust is more than an encryption protocol is DeBeauvoir—who has spent the summer and fall managing an election for which she knows no precedent. “It's not a good situation in Texas right now,” she sighs. “They are fighting tooth and nail down to the last sick voter, trying to prevent people from voting by mail.” Requests for mail ballots have skyrocketed, and DeBeauvoir has been busy concocting ways to outmaneuver the obstacles to those votes. “It's really going to hurt voters if I don't do something,” she says. But just as quickly, her ardor returns: “I'm working on it.”
As for STAR-Vote, DeBeauvoir seems content simply to know that her efforts were of use. “It's not my baby anymore,” she says, laughing. But she's revised her sense that the project was always doomed. “We were a little ahead of our time,” she says slyly. “That was the only mistake we made.”
This article appears in the October issue. Subscribe now.
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Special Series: A More Perfect Election
Fraud-proof. Hacker-proof. Doubt-proof. Across the country, people are working hard to reboot the American voting system.
The International Playbook for Foiling Russian Interference
The Facebook Defectors Turning Trump’s Strategy Against Him
Stacey Abrams on How We’ll Beat Back Voter Suppression
How We’ll Know the Election Wasn’t Rigged
One Data Scientist's Quest to Quash Misinformation
Benjamin Wofford (@BenWoffordDC) is a writer in Washington DC. He has written for Rolling Stone, Vox, Washingtonian and other magazines.
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19.09 – 10.10.1969 Warsaw 1945 in the photography of Leonard Sempoliński
Zachęta Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions (CBWA)
exhibition design: Stanisław Zamecznik
poster design: Stefan Bernaciński
number of works: 135
attendance: 8,525 (Rocznik CBWA [CBWA Annual])
In the 1960s, photography exhibitions organised at the Zachęta Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions were becoming more and more numerous. Between 1968 and 1970, their number amounted to 44 out of the grand total of 143 exhibitions hosted at Zachęta.[1] Photography became particularly useful in the activities of the CBWA’s Field Office Department — for example, 1968 saw as many as 8 photography exhibitions, out of 21 exhibitions organised in total.[2] In some cases, the materials presented in Warsaw or collected on the occasion of Warsaw exhibitions would be abridged to create smaller, ‘travelling’ collections, which would then visit other centres, usually peripheral ones.[3] Thanks to their small size, photographs were very useful for this purpose. Undoubtedly, its information, educational and propaganda potential should not be underestimated.
1969 saw two simultaneous exhibitions, held from 19 September to 10 October. The first was titled 25 Years of the Polish People’s Republic in Photography, while the second was the exhibition in question — Warsaw 1945 in the Photography of Leonard Sempoliński. Both exhibitions were later showcased outside Warsaw and widely commented on in the national papers.[4]
While the first exhibition was an attempt to establish a diverse, optimistic image of the Polish People’s Republic in 1969, carried out mainly using the language of reportage photography, Leonard Sempoliński’s exhibition brought the viewers back to the symbolic ‘starting point’ of the Polish People’s Republic by presenting documentation of the ruins of Warsaw, made shortly after the liberation of the city by the Polish People’s Army and the Red Army. ‘This is the first year of the capital of the Polish People’s Republic’, said Emilia Borecka about these photographs.[5] When leaving the exhibition of Sempoliński’s photographs and entering the space devoted to the 25 years following the war, one could say with emphasis: ‘moving to another Zachęta Hall is like seeing the sun right after the darkness of the night.’[6]
The entirety of the collection of photographs of Warsaw ruins was taken in 1945–1946 by Leonard Sempoliński (1902–1988), who debuted as a photographer just before the war. The collection numbered several hundred photographs.[7] The author was the first photographer who was not embedded with the army to document the ruins of the capital city, starting in January 1945. He would often set off across the Vistula River, but he did not do so on a regular basis.[8] Sempoliński’s collection is distinguished among the vast number of photographs depicting the ruins of Warsaw not only by their early date of creation and scale, but also by the high technical level for that time and a variety of capturing methods. It included a variety of motifs and themes, ‘from panoramas to detail close-ups; . . . from objects as symbolic as the remains of St John’s Cathedral, to the elements of metal fences’.[9] One should not also forget about the documentation of human remains in the burnt-out ruins of townhouses and in field hospitals.
The exhibition at Zachęta featured 135 photographs, which were larger prints specially prepared by the author from copies of negatives. Earlier, photographs of ruins taken by Sempoliński were presented on various occasions at group exhibitions, one of which was probably the famous First Modern Art Exhibition in Kraków, which the photographer participated in thanks to his relations with the ‘modern artists’ circles.[10] It was not until February 1968 that Sempoliński submitted the design of an exhibition of the ruins to the Association of Polish Art Photographers board, receiving a positive response a month later — this also proves the active involvement of the photographer in the shape of the exhibition.[11] After the opening of the exhibition at Zachęta in September 1969, which turned out to be a great success, at last according to press reviews, the collection of photographs of destroyed Warsaw was regularly presented, among others in 1977 in Zagreb and once again in Warsaw in 1984.[12]
In 1975, the album Warszawa 1945 [Warsaw 1945] was released on the initiative of Emilia Borecka,[13] thanks to which Sempoliński’s became even more popular than before, and which also gave it a specific interpretation. The photographs were accompanied by quotations from the press, literature and official documents (lists of exhumed bodies), describing the ambiguous condition of the survivor of the turmoil of war — an experienced participant of the events, who was also a romantic observer. The overall mood of the album is reflected, among others, in the words of Paweł Herz: ‘Why do you cry, traveller of dreams, tourist of ruins, who once journeyed through the dead cemeteries of ancient civilisations? What do you think about when you see the white of human bones peeking from under a destroyed wall? . . .’[14] For decades, the corpus of photographs by Sempoliński was the most famous visual collection of the post-war ruins of Warsaw.[15]
The exhibition at the CBWA placed Sempoliński’s photographs in yet another context, mainly by combining them with the parallel exhibition devoted to the 25th anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic. The press reported: ‘This exhibition is worth seeing, particularly given that there is another contemporary exhibition parallel to it, for which the first serves as the starting point and the backdrop’.[16] Juxtaposition of photographs showing wartime destruction with photographs of places after they were rebuilt, was common practice, used mostly in albums and educational exhibitions, mainly those connected with the anniversaries of the Polish People’s Republic. Even the previously mentioned album by Borecka was initially also supposed to have a similar layout.[17] By doing so, the photographs of the ruins were assigned a propaganda function, because their ‘accusatory’ tone was apparent when they were juxtaposed, further highlighting the optimism of the anniversary narrative.[18] In 1974, the photographer himself justified the need for such juxtapositions, saying: ‘We need to preserve the memory of the tragic times of armed struggle and destruction of the city. However, we need to do it not in order to mourn forevermore, as some tend to claim, nor to hold grudges and foster the urges to exact revenge, because these days it is all about something else. . . . By looking at what we have found, we can better assess our achievements and the extent of work put into building of the new tomorrow thus far.’[19]
The propaganda appropriation of Sempoliński’s photographs, which were used as a kind of a ‘backdrop’ for the other exhibition, is made even more complicated by the arrangement of the exhibition, designed by Stanisław Zamecznik, one of the leading figures of the modern exhibition industry. Individual prints were put on tall aluminium pulpit-racks,[20] placed relatively densely and evenly in the room, at viewers’ eye level. These structures resembled tombstones, encouraging visitors to move between photographs in a way that resembled walking among the graves. This simple, and yet very sophisticated idea proposed by Zamecznik, who not only elevated, but also invigorated the ruins of the city, gains a new meaning in relation to the ways of depicting the images of the post-war ruins. Graphic artists and painters often resorted to anthropomorphisation (which can be seen in the famous The Stones Are Screaming series by Bronisław Wojciech Linke, also based on photographic studies). A similar device was also used in literature: ‘Some districts had to die in a special way’, Kazimierz Brandys wrote.[21]
Contemporary reviews seem to suggest that the qualities of the arrangement contributed to the overshadowing of the parallel exhibition: ‘The excellent exposition (prepared by Stanisław Zamecznik) elevates and emphasises the message of these documentary photographs. I do not seem to remember another exhibition with such artistic qualities in quite a long time.’[22] This all tells us that Sempoliński’s exhibition, even if it was initially considered to serve as a backdrop of sorts, seemed to be the main exhibition instead. This can be also further evidence by the reprinting of the catalogue text on the first page of the Fotografia monthly — the only magazine in Poland devoted to artistic photography, while the other exhibition of photographs was completely overlooked in the periodical and not mentioned in any way or form.[23] A similar situation could be seen in Przegląd Artystyczny, where the list of the most interesting exhibitions prepared by Anna Trojanowska featured a paragraph devoted to Sempoliński’s exhibition, while there was not a single mention of the exhibition on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the People’s Republic of Poland.[24] One can only make educated guesses regarding the extent of influence of individual elements on the whole situation — the value of the presented photographs, Zamecznik’s spatial arrangement and the propaganda character of the second exhibition, which Wojciech Kiciński described in Trybuna Ludu as a ‘collection of wall bulletins’.[25]
Both the comments in the press, as well as the photographer’s own reflections, reveal yet another ambiguity — it appeared at the moment of stylistic definition of the exhibition and the collected visual material. On the one hand, the photographs were seen as an ‘objective and shocking report’ and ‘documents, the authenticity of which recalls the vivid memories of the horror and cruelty of war’,[26] and the author was said to be driven by the desire to ‘preserve and save the image of the annihilation of the capital’.[27] On the other hand, Sempoliński’s shots were not denied their artistic qualities, which was indirectly pointed out by the photographer himself, who said: ‘I was surprised that the sunlight, which usually makes photographs of architecture more lively, further highlighted the hopeless terror of the ruins. This experience was so strong that while photographing, I tried not only to document individual objects, but also to convey the overall tragic landscape of the dead city and its atmosphere.’[28] Contemporary commenters, who noted that ‘Sempoliński’s . . . exhibition is more than just a documentary’,[29] might have unconsciously pointed to the difficulty of assigning an unambiguous aesthetic category. In the exhibition catalogue, Andrzej Osęka stated that ‘Leonard Sempoliński did not acquire a taste for the poetics of ruins, he did not search for effective themes in this landscape . . . His vision is free from any attempt to falsely enhance its expression . . .’ Further in the text, he added: ‘He was able to wait until the right light at noon or at sunset brought out the shape and its destruction. He perfectly understood the role of the light and the clouds — the only living elements in this immobile and petrified landscape, and he lets us understand it too.’[30] The interpenetration of both aspects was noticed only by Emilia Borecka: ‘Sempoliński does not look for aesthetic qualities in the landscape of the ruined city . . . Nevertheless, his photographs are at an outstanding technical level, and the shots — although perhaps not intentionally — often constitute a perfect artistic and compositional whole.’[31]
The tension between the documentation and artistic functions of photography is a theoretical and methodological problem that remains current to this day. While looking at the exhibition from this perspective, it is worth noting that the commenters raised the importance of a number of contexts, including the historical and — indirectly — propaganda contexts, but also psychological and existential ones — the biographical dimension of the photographs. Sempoliński was a born Varsovian, which is why it can be assumed that his experience of seeing the destruction did not have a lot to do with the attitude of a tourist fascinated by the horror; that he experienced it as an empathetic, but also desperate resident-witness, who tries to accuse the perpetrators of an atrocity.[32] This experience deepened the emotional attitude towards the ‘theme’ and also intensified the ‘surrealism’ of the observed reality, activating both a kind of moral imperative to giving a testimony, as well as distancing the photographer from the paradigm of cold, objective documentation in favour of compulsive, empathetic action: ‘I walked around the places of execution and the rubble, feeling some kind of a strange excitement. I experienced and read the tragedy of Warsaw from every piece of rubble and scrap metal found among the ruins.’[33] The ‘poetics of ruins’, rejected by the contemporary viewers and by the photographer himself, could function based on different principles, not as an attempt to aestheticise the tragedy, or even as a ‘passion’ of a documentary photographer facing the strangeness of the experienced reality, but as a metaphor for the gaze of a modern subject who looks at their own life, and through it at the meanders of history.[34] This aspect is where we should look for the reason for the constant attractiveness of the subject of the ruins of Warsaw, both to viewers and scholars of post-war visual culture.
A slightly abridged version of the exhibition, featuring 123 photographs, was presented in Katowice (Youth Palace; 5 December–28 December 1960; attendance: 1,320). Leonard Sempoliński’s photographs returned to Zachęta with his retrospective exhibition in 2005.
Kamila Leśniak
Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw
This text was prepared as part of the National Programme for the Development of Humanities of the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education — research project The History of Exhibitions at Zachęta — Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions in 1949–1970 (no. 0086/NPRH3/H11/82/2016) conducted by the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw in collaboration with Zachęta — National Gallery of Art.
Warszawa 1945 w fotografii Leonarda Sempolińskiego, exh. cat., introduction: Andrzej Osęka. Warsaw: Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików, Centralne Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych, 1969
Source texts:
(ibis). ‘Warszawa, której nie wolno zapomnieć’. Życie Warszawy, no. 235, 1969
Kiciński, Wojciech. ‘Dokumenty i ilustracje’. Trybuna Ludu, no. 273, 1969, p. 6
(oe). ‘Obejrzyjcie te wystawy’. Dziennik Ludowy, no. 232, 1969
Osęka, Andrzej. ‘Warszawa 1945 Leonarda Sempolińskiego’. Fotografia, no. 9, 1969, pp. 194–199
Trojanowska, Anna. ‘Przegląd galerii warszawskich’. Przegląd Artystyczny, no. 1, 1970, p. 58
Press mentions:
Dziennik Ludowy, no. 224, 1969
Dziennik Zachodni, no. 290, 1969
Express Wieczorny, no. 222, no. 227, no. 235, 1969
Głos Pracy, no. 224, 1969
Poglądy, no. 1, 1970
Trybuna Ludu, no. 259, 1969
Trybuna Robotnicza, no. 288, 1969
Other source materials:
Photographs from the exhibition: Stanisław Zamecznik’s family deposit in Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
[1] In comparison, between 1965 and 1967, out of a grand total of 166 exhibitions organised at the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions, 22 of them were devoted to photography.
[2] In 1969, the CBWA’s Field Office Department organised a total of three exhibitions, including two exhibitions of photographs.
[3] This is how the Photography Exhibition Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic, which was probably created out of alternative photographic material, which could be also analogous to the 25 years of the Polish People’s Republic in Photography exhibition opened in September at Zachęta, was disseminated. Both collections were created in June and July of 1969 (marked as ‘collection A’ and ‘collection B’). These exhibitions visited places such as the International Press and Books Club in Lublin, as well as the Sugar Factory Workers’ Hotel in Przeworsk or the Civil Militia Higher Officers’ School in Szczytno. They were displayed as late as January 1971.
[4] Both exhibitions were presented simultaneously in slightly abridged versions — the 25 years of the Polish People’s Republic in Photography exhibition featured only 160 photographs out of the original 220, while Warsaw 1945 . . . included 123 out of 135 photographs — at the Youth Palace in Katowice in December of the same year.
[5] Emilia Borecka, ‘Posłowie’, in Warszawa 1945, Warsaw, 1985, p. 295.
[6] Express Wieczorny, no. 227, 1969.
[7] The exact number of photographs in the collection was never determined — some sources point to the existence of about 1,500 unique photographs, while others indicate that there may be as many as several thousand photographs. A collection of about 500 negatives is held in the Museum of Warsaw, Leonard Sempoliński’s photographs of ruins are also stored in the Department of Iconography of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (prints from the 1960s, the Department also held the lost photograms presented in 1969 at Zachęta), as well as the Iconographic Collections of the National Library of Poland (first prints from 1945–1946), and the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (10 prints made in the 1970s.). Based on Magdalena Wróblewska, ‘Obraz jako dokument, dokument jako obraz. Fotografie Leonarda Sempolińskiego’, in „Robię tylko dokumenty” — fotografie Leonarda Sempolińskiego, Warsaw: Zachęta National Gallery of Art, 2005, pp. 14–22, Borecka, p. 304, Karolina Puchała-Rojek, ‘Uwagi na temat digitalizacji archiwum Leonarda Sempolińskiego’, organizacja.home.pl/projekty/sempolinski/archiwum.php?str=3 (accessed 26 June 2017) and searches conducted by the author in 2009.
[8] The first photographs of the destroyed capital were taken by Czołówka, the Polish Army film team, which entered the city on 17 January 1945. Cf. Wróblewska, p. 15.
[9] Puchała-Rojek.
[10] Karolina Lewandowska, ‘Nowocześni 1948 roku’, in Budowniczowie „Świata Fotografii”, exh. cat., Poznań: Centrum Kultury Zamek, 2009, n.pag.; I Wystawa Sztuki Nowoczesnej. 50 lat później, exh. cat., ed. Józef Chrobak, Marek Świca, Kraków: Galeria Starmach, 2000.
[11] See the calendar in ‘Robię tylko dokumenty” — fotografie Leonarda Sempolińskiego’, p. 31.
[12] Exhibition of Polish photography in Zagreb and Milan (1977), curated by Urszula Czartoryska and 1945 Warsaw exhibition at the Association of Polish Art Photographers (1984). See the calendar in ‘Robię tylko dokumenty” — fotografie Leonarda Sempolińskiego’, p. 31.
[13] Re-released in 1985.
[14] Paweł Herz, ‘Umarłe i żywe’, Życie Literackie, no. 5/6, 1945.
[15] It was not until 2017 that photographs of the ruins of Warsaw (not only those created after the Second World War), taken by other authors, were published separately: Ruins of Warsaw: Photographs from 1915–2016, ed. Łukasz Gorczyca, Michał Kaczyński, Warsaw: Raster Gallery, 2016. Also noteworthy is a documentation of the post-war ruins of Warsaw carried out a few years beforehand by photographers Zofia Chomętowska and Maria Chrząszczowa: The Chroniclers. Zofia Chomętowska, Maria Chrząszczowa. Photographs of Warsaw 1945–1946, ed. Karolina Lewandowska, Warsaw: Archaeology of Photography Foundation, 2011.
[16] (ibis), ‘Warszawa, której nie wolno zapomnieć’, Życie Warszawy, no. 235, 1969.
[17] Wróblewska, p. 22.
[18] The ranks of people who perceived these photographs as ‘accusatory’ included Andrzej Osęka; Andrzej Osęka, ‘Wstęp do katalogu wystawy’, in Warszawa 1945 w fotografii Leonarda Sempolińskiego, exh. cat., Warsaw: Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików, Centralne Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych, 1969, n.pag.
[19] Leonard Sempoliński, ‘Dlaczego fotografowałem Warszawę?’, in Warszawa 1945, p. 294.
[20] The use of aluminium frames is indicated by Wróblewska, p. 21.
[21] Kazimierz Brandys, Miasto niepokonane, Warsaw, 1946, p. 280.
[22] (ibis).
[23] Andrzej Osęka, ‘Warszawa 1945 Leonarda Sempolińskiego’, Fotografia, no. 9, 1969, pp. 194–199.
[24] Anna Trojanowska, ‘Przegląd galerii warszawskich’, Przegląd Artystyczny, no. 1, 1970, p. 58.
[25] Wojciech Kiciński, ‘Dokumenty i ilustracje’, Trybuna Ludu, no. 273, 1969, p. 6.
[26] Dziennik Ludowy, no. 224, 1969.
[27] Borecka, p. 304.
[28] Sempoliński, p. 292.
[29] (oe), ‘Obejrzyjcie te wystawy’, Dziennik Ludowy, no. 232, 1969.
[30] Osęka, ‘Wstęp do katalogu . . .’.
[32] This aspect was noted by Karolina Puchała-Rojek, who followed the reflection of Andrzej Osęka.
[34] Regarding the image of the ruins and its meaning, see Grażyna Królikiewicz, Terytorium ruin — ruina jako obraz i temat romantyczny, Kraków, 1993; Iwona Kurz, ‘Obraz ruin — obraz świata w ruinach. O tym, co mogą znaczyć gruzowiska’, in Polska fotografia dokumentalna na skrzyżowaniu dyskursów. Materiały z sesji zorganizowanej w dniu 2 IV 2005 z okazji wystawy Leonarda Sempolińskiego, Warsaw: Zachęta National Gallery of Art, 2006, pp. 39–45.
Artist's works in the Zachęta collection
Still Life Leonard Sempoliński1939
Prostokątne szyby Leonard Sempoliński
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<p> Synthetic biology is an emerging field that combines engineering approaches to biological systems. It is defined as “The engineering of biological components and systems that do not exist in nature and the re-engineering of existing biological elements; it is determined on the intentional design of artificial biological systems, rather than on the understanding of natural biology” (Synbiology, 2005).</p>
The most frequently cited ethical issue with synthetic biology is bioterrorism. Many fear that with the decreasing costs of equipment and supplies and the streamlining of lab techniques, anyone could create a deadly weapon. It has been shown that deadly viruses, such as Polio and the Spanish Flu, can readily be recreated (Synthetics, 2007). According to researchers Tucker and Zilinskas, there are really only two types of Bioterrorism threats that could affect us today: the “lone operator” and the “biohacker”. An example of a lone operator would be someone nursing a grudge that has access to, and knowledge of, lab equipment. An example of a biohacker would be someone who recklessly modifies organisms out of curiosity with little of no concern for safety.
However, it is also argued that creating a deadly virus is only one step out of the many needed to initiate widespread bio-terror (Tucker and Zilinkas, 2006). This has led some to conclude that just because the materials are made cheaper doesn’t mean it is any easier than before to create a weapon.
A second issue regarding the ethics of synthetic biology is the regulation and monitoring of the field. Because this is a relatively new area of research, the effects, good and bad, are not yet clear. Unbiased monitoring systems such as The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues have just recently been established to oversee the research done in synthetic biology (Bioethics, 2010). Previously, there was no system of checks and balances that could determine whether specific research is ethical, safe, or even necessary. As our technology advances it is important to keep our ethical viewpoints up to date.
It remains to be seen whether this window of unregulated research will yield the most significant advances in synthetic biology. Limitations due to regulation slow the scientific community and could possibly impede research. An ethical dilemma has arisen where the community will soon have to choose between the advancement of science and the prevention of bioterrorism by limiting technological developments (Synthetics, 2007).
Regardless of the regulation path chosen, it is arguable that now is the time when the public needs to be made aware of synthetic biology and its consequences. The general public is not thoroughly informed of the benefits or risks associated with this research. Some feel that, because of the important implications synthetic biology has on society, the public should “be able to have an input into the manner in which it is regulated” (Synthetics, 2007).
Another widely cited ethical concern of synthetic biology is the conservation of natural genomes. The complex system of gene regulation is not perfectly understood and nobody today can claim to know the effects, positive or negative, of artificial genes existing in the gene pool. As synthetic biology becomes more commonplace artificial genes are beginning to show up in nature. Biosafety is the term applied to preventing the risks associated with synthetic biology. Most labs practicing synthetic biology are aware of the risks and take preventative measures to reduce them.
Naturally occurring organisms that contain synthetic elements have been dubbed “biofacts” (Karafyllis, 2007). There is current debate as to whether these organisms should be considered natural or artificial. No commonly defined boundaries between the two have been established.
The last ethical topic to be discussed here regards the necessity of synthetic biology. This aspect of synthetic biology is not as frequently examined as other areas but deserves a significant amount of thought and consideration. There are numerous technological advancements made possible through the use of synthetic biology. However, these advances may not even be necessary. As so eloquently suggested by Michael Crichton in his classic novel, Jurassic Park, scientists become so preoccupied with whether or not they can do something, they never stop to think whether or not they should. Considering the possible risks associated with synthetic biology, scientists are asking themselves now more than ever if the research is worth it.
One example of this is the creation of a cheaper malaria drug. It is very possible to engineer a cheap way of producing a malaria drug that could be used to help large portions of poorer, southern countries (Ro, 2006). However, dispersing this drug could “lead to an increased dependence on rich countries and companies” (Synthetics, 2007). It is well known that there are other ways to reduce mortality rates due to malaria that do not stunt the development of these countries. Therefore, the community must ask and decide if synthetic biology is necessary in this instance.
Synthetic biology has the potential to greatly transform our world in positive and negative ways. We all have the responsibility to consider the ethical implications of our research and the research of those around us. Advances in a scientific area require advances in the way the area is applied to and interpreted by society. We must review outdated ethical conceptions of scientific technology to ensure they accurately address the issues at hand. Because of the significant impacts synthetic biology could have on our lives we must seriously consider the ethical arguments for and against it.
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150 years of poster art on the Underground
1933, Christopher Greaves
2013 is the 150th anniversary of London's Underground transport system - the tube. The Transport Museum in Covent Garden is staging an excellent exhibition of 150 of the posters that have been used to promote the Tube, to advise passengers of rules and regulations and to promote a whole range of activities to Londoners over a century and a half. I finally managed to see this exhibition last week on my third attempt. On my two previous visits the queue for the exhibition snaked out of the museum door and into the piazza. This time not only did I not have to queue, I had the exhibition almost to myself. Great.
The poster is a very simple, an amazingly effective and relatively cheaply produced marketing tool. A striking image with just a few key words to convey an idea can capture the attention and guide the behaviour of millions of people if it is designed well. Just think of the impact of Alfred Leete's image of Lord Kitchener on the World War One recruitment poster - Your country needs you, known and remembered by millions of people born long after the conclusion of that war. As well as serving the practical use of message, the best posters are also works of art. It was this dual purpose that Frank Pick, London Transport's Chief Executive may have had in mind when addressing the Royal Society of Arts in 1935 when he said
"...underneath all the commercial activities of the Board, underneath all its engineering and operation, there is the revelation and realisation of something which is in the nature of a work of art...it is, in fact, a conception of a metropolis as a centre of life, of civilisation, more intense, more eager, more vitalising than has ever so far obtained".
This was a philosophy Pick implemented both in the design of new stations and through commissioning artists to produce posters with the dual purpose of communicating information and acting as works of art. You can read more about Pick and his work here.
The exhibition covers different decades and also different themes. Some of those themes seem to be for all time. I was especially taken with a series of posters from 1944, demonstrating the etiquette expected on the Tube, encouraging passengers to have their ticket ready at the gate, to let passengers off before trying to get on and to move down once you are in the carriage so that others can board. Things don't change much. These were the work of cartoonist Cyril Kenneth Bird who was a regular contributor to Punch the humorous magazine and who signed his work as Fougasse. Fougasse used minimalist designs to convey a simple, effective message without talking down to those it was aimed at. His skills were used extensively during the Second World War including by Government agencies who produced a plethora of public do and don't notices that ran the risk of being ignored if produced in the (then) normal dull and wordy municipal style.
1944, Fougasse
The theme of passenger etiquette on the Tube is something that has continued to feature - remember the posters that asked us to keep our "personal stereo personal" - that is, not to blast other passengers with our choice of music? And then there were the posters asking us not to eat "smelly" food on the trains.
The 1930's saw the world wide popularity of the "modern" style in the arts and whilst Pick embraced this style whole heartedly in the design of new stations, he took more convincing about the posters produced during that period. Some of the century's greatest artists were commissioned to produce posters, including Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Ray's 1938 poster Keeps London going makes clever use of the distinctive London Transport logo, transforming it into the planet Saturn on a black background. The epitome of modernism, the poster was designed in 1936 but didn't hit the streets until 1938. Pick was not keen on Moholy-Nagy describing him as a surrealistic pasticheur but allowed himself to be persuaded resulting in a series of posters with highly stylised technical imagery and dense text showing the inner working of stations. A couple of these, and Ray's Saturn are on display as part of the exhibition.
1938, Man Ray.
The Tube is at the centre of London life, getting us across the city quickly and efficiently (for the most part) to work, to sporting events and to other important activities that make life in London so special. This is also reflected in the Transport Museum's exhibition. In the 1930's as the then outskirts of the city were developed as sleeper suburbs, poster art was used to encourage this exodus to what became known as Metroland. The name came from the fact that the Metropolitan Line served places in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex where Londoners were told they could enjoy the pleasures of country life, just a short and cheap ride away from the city and their work. I really liked the Gardening by Underground poster from 1933, designed by Stanislaus S. Longley. It shows a Metroland dweller with one foot in his garden, mowing the lawn and wearing casual clothes on the right hand side, with the other foot in the busy Metropolis influenced city and wearing much more formal clothes on the left hand side, emphasising the easy journey between the two made possible by the Tube.
1933, Stanislaus S. Longley
My other favourite is a poster designed by female artist Herry Perry for the 1935 FA Cup Final which lists trams and buses as well as the nearest underground stations for the fans making their way to Wembley Stadium. The poster is a collage with three figures in different footballing actions using bus tickets to construct the figures. She also designed posters to direct sports fans to other major events including Wimbledon. Perry was one of a number of women working in the advertising industry in the 1920's and 1930's. She also designed posters for the Great Western Railway and London Midland and Scottish Railway as well as being a book illustrator, designer of playing cards and pub signs!
1935, Herry Perry.
I may have had a long wait to see this exhibition but I am very glad I kept trying. A poster shop at the 55 Broadway headquarters of the Underground opened in 1933 selling copies of the posters to the traveling public. The shop closed during the Second World War due to the impact of purchase tax and paper shortages. The exhibition offers a similar facility with reproductions of many of the posters available for purchase from the museum shop. I have many posters at home that I do not have space to exhibit. That said, I couldn't resist a copy of the Man Ray...
The exhibition continues until 27th October.
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Labels: Design 1900 - 1939 (United Kingdom), London Art Deco, My London
Chagall Modern Master at Tate Liverpool
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Romania Romania - a yiddish musical memory of a di...
Picture post 20 - Budapest's art nouveau treasure
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Giovanni Aroccia
Lo Ruowang
Portuguese Jesuit missionary who entered interior China in the late Ming Dynasty.
Joining the Society of Jesus at age 17, Aroccia left for India in 1586, studying philosophy and theology in Goa and Macau, respectively. In 1597, when Lazzaro Gattaneo temporarily returned to Macau for medical treatment, Aroccia was instructed to look after the residence in Shaozhou and was granted permission to remain in Shaozhou after Cattaneo’s return. He then began his preaching career in inland China.
After Matteo Ricci had established residences in Nanchang and Nanjing, Aroccia was first called to Nanchang, and then to Nanjing, where he stayed for nine years. In 1603, he baptized Xu Guangqi. He also baptized Qu Taisu, who had given much help to Ricci. In 1609, Ricci ordered his return to Nanchang. Following an incident in which Chinese officials brought an accusation against missionaries in 1616, Aroccia went into hiding at a convert’s home in Jianchang, Jiangxi. He later went to Zhangzhou, Fujian, and Jiading, Jiangsu, to continue preaching. In 1622, he succeeded Longobardo as the third leader of the Inland China Jesuit missionaries’ organization in inland China. He died in Hangzhou.
This article is reproduced, with permission, from A Dictionary of Asian Christianity, copyright © 2001 by Scott W. Sunquist, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.
China Group
A Collaboration of China Scholars
Ferdinand Genähr
Missionary among the Cantonese.
Han Wei
Christian Leader, Physician-Scientist, Educator
Maurus Heinrichs
Franciscan missionary in China and Japan.
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Top Blogs for Film Lovers
Films and Art
Posted in Films and Art, Reviews
4 Best Film and Art Events in 2020
Author: cinefile.net.nz Published Date: 25 May 2020
In 2020, art is in all its glory. The artistic talent exhibitions will be promoted this year from New York to Paris, Madrid, and even Oxford. Prepare your tickets to travel to these places and absorb all that art has for you in 2020, which by its numbers represents a well-focused vision.
Raphael’s 500th anniversary of his death – London, Milan, Washington
This year, 500 years have passed since the premature death of the Renaissance grandmaster Raphael, who died at the age of 37 in 1520.
In the National Gallery of London, there will be a large-scale retrospective, while in the Ambrosiana Veneranda Library in Milan there will be a more trivial yet revealing presentation; a preserved high school cartoon from 1509 of the artist’s most iconic work.
An exhibition of the extraordinary prints and drawings of Raphael and his contemporaries will be held at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC, honouring this iconic artist and creator of images.
Artemis Gentileschi – The National Gallery of London
The National Gallery of London will host an exhibition in April of the pioneering female artist Artemis Gentileschi who was a wonderful Italian Baroque painter.
Gentileschi was resourceful and became the first woman to be admitted to the prestigious academy of design art in Florence as a member and artist. Her specialty was allegorical scenes and innovative self-portraits.
Rembrandt van Rijn – Ashmolean Museum
The extraordinary art of Rembrandt van Rijn will be exhibited for the first time at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in England. Rembrandt is admired by all Dutch masters and inspired artists for his unique style in fresh self-portraits in the 1620s.
The Arc de Triomphe will be covered by 25,000 square meters of ghostly blue polypropylene fabric girt around 7000 meters of scarlet rope for 16 days. The iconic monument will be transformed into something rare and extravagant that you cannot miss.
Felix Féneon – New York Arts Museum
At the end of March, the New York Arts Museum will present a fascinating exhibition of critical artist and declared anarchist Felix Féneon. With more than 150 works that demonstrate modernism in post-pressed art, Felix helped fly modern sensitivities and was also precursor and inspiration for “neo-expressionism”.
A single trip will not be enough to see and inspire in so many art wonders exposed this year all over the world. Buy tickets now and exploit your imagination just as if you were playing slots at Visit Vegas.
Author: cinefile.net.nz
← 4 Best Movies of 2020’s First Quarter
Films and Art / ReviewsIn 2020, art is in all its glory. The artistic talent exhibitions will be promoted this year from New York to Paris, Madrid, and even Oxford. Prepare your tickets to travel to these places and absorb all that art has for you in 2020, which by its numbers represents a well-focused vision. Raphael’s 500th anniversary of his death – London, Milan, Washington This year, 500 years have passed since the premature death of the Renaissance grandmaster Raphael, who died at the age of 37 in 1520. In the National Gallery of London, there will be a large-scale retrospective, while in the Ambrosiana Veneranda Library in Milan there will be a more trivial yet revealing presentation; a preserved high school cartoon from 1509 of the artist’s most iconic work. An exhibition of the extraordinary prints and drawings of Raphael and his contemporaries will be held at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC, honouring this iconic artist and creator of images. Artemis Gentileschi – The National Gallery of London The National Gallery of London will host an exhibition in April of the pioneering female artist Artemis Gentileschi who was a wonderful Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi was resourceful and became the first woman to be admitted to the prestigious academy of design art in Florence as a member and artist. Her specialty was allegorical scenes and innovative self-portraits. Rembrandt van Rijn – Ashmolean Museum The extraordinary art of Rembrandt van Rijn will be exhibited for the first time at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in England. Rembrandt is admired by all Dutch masters and inspired artists for his unique style in fresh self-portraits in the 1620s. The Arc de Triomphe will be covered by 25,000 square meters of ghostly blue polypropylene fabric girt around 7000 meters of scarlet rope for 16 days. The iconic monument will be transformed into something rare and extravagant that you cannot miss. Felix Féneon – New York Arts Museum At the end of March, the New York Arts Museum will present a fascinating exhibition of critical artist and declared anarchist Felix Féneon. With more than 150 works that demonstrate modernism in post-pressed art, Felix helped fly modern sensitivities and was also precursor and inspiration for “neo-expressionism”. A single trip will not be enough to see and inspire in so many art wonders exposed this year all over the world. Buy tickets now and exploit your imagination just as if you were playing slots at Visit Vegas....
4 Best Movies of 2020’s First Quarter
Films and Art / ReviewsReviews are very important in your process of assessing the quality of any product or service, and this is true both for sites like River belle Live casino and for movies. Cinefile brings you the reviews for the best movies of the first half of 2020, so you are guaranteed to have a great time watching them. Birds of Prey This movie, already available in theatres, features the outstanding performance of the character Harley Quinn. She joins forces with Margot Robbie, Black Canary, Huntress, and detective Renee Montoya, protecting Cassandra Cain who, apparently will be Batgirl. To all the boys I’ve loved before: PS: I still love you. This second part of love and anguish between teenagers highlights the performance of Lara-Jean Covey and Peter Kavinsky, in a romantic comedy available on Netflix. The first part of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” was released in 2018, and became one of the most viewed movies. Sonic The Hedgehog Starring Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey and James Marsden, Sonic The Hedgehog received much criticism after the first trailer’s release. Its director Jeff Fowler said he would fix his animated character, which will make it look very different from the first trailer. This caused its release to be delayed until Valentine’s Day 2020, although it is already on sale. Onwards An original Disney Pixar film, Onwards shows a magical world previously inhabited by fairies and elves, but now replaced by technology. Starring Chris Pratt actor from Jurassic World, Tom Holland from Spider-Man: Far From Home, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Octavia Spencer, this great film was released on March 6, 2020. The world of cinema can already count on a great future or at least it will be for this year. Whether on the big screen or Netflix’s on-demand, this year you will be able to enjoy the best of cinema such as Birds of Prey, Sonic The Hedgehog, Pixar’s Onward and more....
3 Most Famous Art-Themed Films in History
Films and Art / ReviewsThe creative process that takes place when a filmmaker wants to portray the life of a painter in a movie is far from simple. If you want to learn about the excellent dramatization of many renowned painters’ biographies, Cinefile has just what you need. The following is a top list with the most famous art-themed films, as chosen by renowned critics. Edvard Munch (1976) This biographical film is highlighted by the dramatic focus that the director Peter Watkins gives it. The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is played by Geir Westby and Gro Phrases plays the role of his married lover, Mrs Heilberg. Although Munch’s style was not widely appreciated at the time, his painting The Scream has now become one of the most prominent in the world. Lust for Life (1956) This film was nominated for a three-time Academy Award and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Anthony Quinn. Lust for Life focuses on Painter Vincent Van Gogh’s relationship with his brother Theo, the art dealer. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, the film features the outstanding performance of Kirk Douglas, who plays the tormented artist, and James Donald in the role of his supportive brother. Lust for Life also featured approximately 200 original Van Gogh paintings and got the best comments by well-reputed critics all around. Mr Turner (2014) JMW Turner is recognized as one of the best painters in Britain. His biographic film was released at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Mr Turner was directed by Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall played the painter. This performance earnt the actor various accolades and awards at different film festivals around the world, including the Best Actor Award. Andrei Rublev (1966) Recognized as one of the most compelling representations in an artist’s art, Andrei Rublev has earnt the approval of well-known critics. This film was created in 1966 and premiered at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival where it received the FIPRESCI Award. It was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky as a biographic film for painter Andrei Rublev and shows the creation of his iconic paintings amid political and religious conflicts in Russia. The most reputed critics have approved these films since the quality of the portrayals by the actors and the way the directors executed their vision was flawless. If you are looking to learn more about the world of art and painters, then you should check out these outstanding titles....
5 Facts Everyone Should Know about Eno’s The Man Who Fell to Earth
Films and Art / ReviewsIn this movie, David Bowie represents a rock star who comes from space, as his planet suffered a drought and came to Earth searching for water. Find out more interesting facts about this classic that made history, as Cinefile put together a small list with things every cinephile would love to know. Bowie Born to Play The Role The main part is so well represented by Bowie with his physical characteristics that we could say he was born to play Thomas Jerome Newton, the alien. The film has a few special effects, but Bowie’s interpretation was exquisite. Although he is a rockstar, he performed like a professional actor and enhanced the experience for film watchers. Thomas Became a Millionaire Thomas the alien lands in a remote lake and from there he enters the city cautiously and sells some gold rings to have money. This helped him hire a patent attorney for the contraptions he made to commercialize, as he had to build a spaceship designed to transport water to his planet. The attorney’s name is Farnsworth, played by Buck Henry. He establishes World Enterprise Corp. through which Thomas earnt so much money he became a millionaire. He Was a Loner Thomas’ country is desolate, the clothes of its inhabitants made of a plastic fabric made to hold bodily fluids and stay isolated from other people. Thus, Thomas was mostly alone and only communicated with Farnsworth by phone while staying at a motel. A Woman Shows him Earthly Pleasures Thomas meets a young woman named Mary Lou and starts an adventure with her. She introduces him to television and gin. The alien ends up liking them so much he becomes addicted to both and watches multiple channels at the same time. The Alien Becomes too Human Thomas tries not to act strangely, but his goal of bringing water to his planet seems to be disappearing due to excess gin and a lot of television which makes him too human. We cannot see clearly what feelings he has towards Mary-Lou. He is more of a dreamer than a go-getter, as he isn’t very goal-driven. Finding a science fiction movie with a few special effects and more focus on characters is very difficult nowadays. This is a great work by director Nicolás Roeg that came from a great streak with “Performance” his first film in 1970, “Walkabout” in 1971, “Don’t Look Now” in 1973 voted the best British film of all time. The man who fell to earth is a film about stereotypes from 1976, and had a relaunch in 2011. It truly is a film not to be missed....
Copyright © 2021 Cinefile
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To catch a killer
Scaling The Serpent
Centre Staged
Chaos, crime and paranoia abound in Baghdad Central. Stars Waleed Zuaiter and Corey Stoll and executive producer Kate Harwood tell DQ more about this crime series, set in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent occupation.
When the project was first brought to its attention, Channel 4 was really keen. Perhaps too keen. So once Baghdad Central was handed a six-part commission in July 2017, the hard work really began for writer Stephen Butchard and executive producer Kate Harwood.
“We bought the rights to the book sometime ago. Channel 4 picked it up quickly but it was such a counterintuitive way to start a drama,” recalls Harwood, MD of producer Euston Films. “We needed to make sure we really knew what it is, what it actually is. So we did a lot of talking, thinking and storylining and then plunged in.”
More than 12 months after the commission was announced, filming took place on location in the Moroccan cities of Ouarzazate, Mohammedia and Salé between September and December last year. Support on the ground came from production partner K Films, which helped to put the cast together early on alongside casting director Kate Rhodes James. “She used that time [before filming] to really get an encyclopaedic knowledge of who was out there,” Harwood continues. “She was extraordinary. She was working towards very particular characterisation. It took a long time.
Kate Harwood
“Then in Morocco, we needed to do contemporary Iraq, but most of all we needed to do Baghdad, and that was the hardest thing. We had a very willing production designer, Helen Scott, and a brilliant director in Alice Troughton.”
Waleed Zuaiter (Altered Carbon), Bertie Carvel (Doctor Foster), Clara Khoury (Homeland), Leem Lubany (Omar), Neil Maskell (Humans) and Corey Stoll (House of Cards) lead the international line-up of actors in the series, which is based on the book by Elliott Colla.
Set in October 2003, six months after American forces began their occupation of Baghdad, the disbandment of the Iraqi army, the police and civil leadership in the aftermath of the invasion means there is no one in charge and no effective rule of law.
Amid this chaotic environment, Iraqi ex-policeman Muhsin al-Khafaji (Zuaiter) has lost everything and is battling daily to keep himself and his sick daughter Mrouj (July Namir) safe. But when he learns his estranged elder daughter Sawsan (Lubany) is missing, Khafaji must begin a desperate search to find her.
He soon finds himself up against her enigmatic university tutor, Professor Zubeida Rashid (Khoury) and discovers Sawsan and her two close friends have been leading a hidden life that has put them in great danger.
Khafaji is then recruited by Frank Temple (Carvel), a former British police officer on a mission to rebuild the Iraqi police force, to give his operation credibility. But unknown to Temple and his US adversary, American military police captain John Parodi (Stoll), Khafaji has his own reasons to collaborate with the occupying forces.
Meanwhile, a new threat represented by security op Douglas Evans (Maskell) provides a terrifying and sinister counterforce to his efforts.
“I was told not to read the book, just because it’s very different from the scripts,” Stoll says of his preparation for the role. However, he did go back to reports and articles written at the time of the invasion, “soaking in all the stuff I had forgotten about,” as well as reading the extensive notes provided by the production team. “A lot of us feel that, because of the terrible things currently in the States politically, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, I wish we had [former president George W] Bush back.’ But then you remember how dysfunctional that administration was and the administration of the Iraqi occupation. It was a disaster. The regime change in Iraq was as destructive as anything.”
Waleed Zuaiter leads the Baghdad Central cast as Muhsin al-Khafaji
Stoll praises writer Butchard (The Child in Time, The Last Kingdom) for constantly shifting the allegiances, suspicions and dynamics between the triumvirate of Khafaji, Parodi and Temple. “While there’s never really a Temple-Parodi alliance, Khafaji is definitely played off by the two of them and plays off the two of them,” the actor says. “Within only six episodes, there are so many different switches. Our relationship [Parodi and Khafaji] is constantly going back and forth between mutual respect, suspicion and a very cynical sense of how we can use each other.”
“It’s such an interesting relationship,” Zuaiter agrees, noting his character’s own flaws and the dark past that will confront him during the series. “One of the things Alice told me very early on was this relationship has a lot to do with Parodi’s sense of morality, and our relationship brings out Khafaji’s own sense of morality. Similarly, the relationship with Sawsan is about courage; with Khafaji’s friend Karl (Youseff Kerkour), it’s loyalty; and with Mrouj, it’s intelligence. The moral heart of the story is the questions they wind up covering and the discussions they have and, on a bigger picture, it’s about what we’re doing, what’s happening on a global scale with the world.”
But despite emotional themes swirling with commentary about the Iraqi occupation, Harwood says Baghdad isn’t an issue-led series. Instead, she believes its roots in the crime genre make it “much more accessible and palatable” to viewers. “I love crime drama; it’s a million different things but the great thing is it just kicks the door open when people are at their weakest, their most vulnerable, their most emotionally driven,” she says. “That’s why we keep going back to it. It’s much more than that. Some of the greatest television of the last 30 years has been crime drama in a way, from different perspectives, different worlds [and at a] difference pace. From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, they’re all crime dramas because murder, money and love expose us. It’s in that classic heartland.”
Behind the camera, lead director Troughton (Doctor Who) was very much an actor’s director, Stoll and Zuaiter say, praising her preparation, the numerous opportunities to rehearse on set and her willingness to collaborate with the cast on how scenes should be played.
Doctor Foster’s Bertie Carvel and Homeland actor Clara Khoury also star
“I love it when directors say, ‘I don’t have all the answers.’ You’re looking for the collaboration of what the actors will bring,” Zuaiter says of Troughton. “A couple of times she would come up to Corey, me or Bertie and say, ‘I’m not sure what to do here, do you have any ideas?’ It takes a lot of courage to do that, a lot of trust in your cast and really good casting.”
Harwood picks up: “She was very good at some of the quieter scenes in Khafaji’s apartment, where she really loved the tea drinking. It was really enthralling when you go back into his world each episode and he’s making a cup of tea and having a think. I found those scenes really absorbing because she found the space and time to reflect.”
Distributed globally by Fremantle, Baghdad Central will have its world premiere in France when it plays in competition at the Series Mania festival next week. Stoll says the drama presents a world he’s never seen on film before, while the specificities of the characters and the families in the story will resonate with audiences the world over.
“I’ve never really seen a portrait of what Iraqi life was like under occupation, or even really Iraqi life, period,” he says. “This is a middle-class Iraqi family that seems in some ways very exotic but is having the same conversations a family in Ohio is having. So that specificity draws you in to the uniqueness of it. It’s the story of a family. That really is the core – this man and his children – and that’s obviously completely universal.
“As the American character in this, it’s exciting to be a part of something where it is about the Iraqis. It’s their story. That doesn’t mean Parodi is one-dimensional or just the bad guy. He’s not just the good guy either. Stephen was very clear about the contradictory forces working on all the characters. Nobody is working from purely selfish motives.”
Zuaiter adds that the series marks the first time he has played a character like Khafaji. “This type of role in the US would somehow be subservient to somebody else,” the Colony and Prison Break actor says. “He’s the most ballsy character I’ve ever played – he’s really got huge balls! That is what I get excited about when I’m watching. It’s one of those shows where he’s a father, he’s searching for his daughter, but it’s the first time you see somebody like this making these choices, and he’s up against some really serious competition with the US Army and the Coalition forces. That’s pretty ballsy.”
Harwood concludes: “The great thing about setting a crime drama in a world where you can get your head blown off just by stepping outside of your front door is you don’t have to worry about jeopardy. And you don’t know who is shooting at you.”
tagged in: Baghdad Central, Corey Stoll, Kate Harwood, Waleed Zuaiter
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Information Technology Security Techniques and Code of Practice for Protection
In Q3 of 2014, the International Standards Organisation (“ISO”) published a new standard for the cloud service providers: ISO/IEC 27018 – Information technology – Security techniques – Code of practice…
Charities Regulatory Authority Established
Background The Charities Act 2009 (“Act”) was enacted in February 2009 and commenced on 1 September 2009 (by S.I. 284/2009). The purpose of the Act was to: provide for a regulator…
Article 29 Working Party to Formulate a Common Approach on the “right to be forgotten”
The Article 29 Working Party on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data is an independent advisory body on data protection and privacy, set up…
A new tool for Debt Recovery
On 17 July 2014 a new E.U. regulation (Regulation (EU) 655/2014) came into effect which established a procedure for obtaining a European Account Preservation Order (“EAPO”) by creditors over the…
Data Protection Commissioner investigation results in Prosecution of Private Investigator company and its Directors
M.C.K Rentals Limited (trading as M.C.K. Investigations) was successfully prosecuted, on 6 October 2014, before Bray District Court in relation to twenty three counts of breaches of Section 22 of…
Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014
On 31 October 2014 the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014 (the “Act”) will come into effect. The Act will dissolve the Competition Authority and the National Consumer Agency and…
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Anti-Beyonce Rally Planned For Next Week at NFL Headquarters
Posted on Wednesday, Feb 10th, 2016
Controversy continues to swirl around Beyonce’s Super Bowl halftime show performance.
The pop superstar is being accused of using her performance to attack police officers.
“I think it was outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers, who are the people who protect her and protect us,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CBS2’s Dick Brennan.
Beyonce and her dancers were wearing leather and black berets, which was apparently a nod to the Black Panthers movement.
One dance formation seemed to acknowledge Malcolm X, and other dancers had fists in the air, which was reminiscent of the black power salutes of the 1960s and 70s.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told CBS2 that the NFL should have canceled her appearance.
“I found the entire show objectionable. It was extolling the Black Panthers who were a terrorist organization, killing police officers in the 60s and 70s,” King said.
A protest is even being held against Beyonce next week outside NFL’s headquarters in New York.
Read full story: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/02/09/beyonce-super-bowl-controversy/
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Research and Journal
My Sharing Notes that i had learned.
67th Venice Film Festival
Director Tsui Hark will carry the expectations of all Chinese film-makers for the upcoming 67th Venice Film Festival.
Out of the 23 films, Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame was the only Chinese film nominated for awards.
Other films in the running includes Tran Anh Hun's Norwegian Wood, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere and also Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky who won the coveted Golden Lion award two years ago.
The cast of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame: Andy Lau, Li Bingbing and Carina Lau, were exhilarated at the news as they will now be in the running for Best Actor and Best Actress awards.
Andy felt that the movie was representative of Tsui Hark's style and the nomination bears testament to everyone's efforts in the film.
Since this is the first time Andy has received a nomination at the festival, the star revealed that he will be attending the event to walk the red carpet.
Li Bingbing was also excited to be able to return to the Venice Film Awards again after 10 years.
"Ten years ago, Zhang Yuan won Best Director for his movie Seventeen Years which I acted in; now I'm presented with a chance to step on the red carpet again. I guess you can say this is my 10-year-pact with Venice."
Carina is reportedly going to give the event a miss due to 'matters at home'. Speculations are rife that she is trying to avoid the spotlight due to recent reports that she has been seeing a Chinese businessman behind her hubby's back.
Posted by eSeong at 10:52 AM
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2020: On Pandemics, Genocide, and the Election
How does one even begin a blogpost during the cursed year of 2020 after a four month absence in which we are still in the midst of a pandemic and are mere days away from a presidential election wherein the incumbent has simply, genocidally given up on that pandemic?
Do people even blog anymore? How does a person even dip the ol' toe back into it when so much has occurred between June 2020 and now?
Let me start how I've been trying to stay centered during everything:
Reading - I've been reading about one book per week, almost entirely in the genres of science fiction, memoir, and fiction (no non-fiction or political tomes for me, right now). I log my books on Goodreads, mostly so I have a record of what I've read from year to year, and because I log a lot of notes and quotes from almost everything I read, on my e-reading device.
Exercise - I make time every day for 40-60 minutes of exercise, usually at home (via some sort of online instruction) plus at least one walk per day. I wear a mask on my daily walks, even though it's outside and less risky, primarily because I want to be part of a culture that normalizes mask-wearing during a pandemic.
Pop Culture - I have watched a few TV series that unexpectedly had same-sex relationships in them as major plot points, including Ratched, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Away, and I'm just going to be upfront about it, shows that include LBT women are about 200% more watchable and interesting to me than shows that only feature cishets. Sorry not sorry.
Cooking - The vast majority of our meals have been homemade, although from time to time we do get take-out/delivery. I have always enjoyed cooking, and I find it satisfying to know how to provide basic sustenance for myself and others. Favorites: homemade biscuits, pizza, chili, veggie/tofu stir fry, Shepard's pie.
Political Engagement - A certain segment of extremely online folks think that political activism means "people dunking on people on Twitter" or whatever, but there is a lot, actually, that can be done with and targeting people not in the insular worlds of political Twitter, including contacting voters, helping people register to vote, donating to candidates, and more.
Like many, Joe Biden was not my first choice as a the Democratic nominee, but he ended up being the nominee and is now standing between us and the COVID pandemic - among other things - getting much, much worse. As such, I think every registered voter has a moral obligation to support the Biden/Harris ticket, if only as a matter of harm reduction.
In 2004, after watching in stunned depression as the hated George W. Bush won re-election, I take nothing - no poll, no prediction, no level of assume hatred - for granted in 2020. For, 16 years later, we are working against a Republican party that has only grown more brazenly empowered to cheat and win by any means possible by the vile, hypocritical Mitch McConnell who is ramming through an arch-conservative SCOTUS pick who will possibly serve on the nation's highest court for decades to come, even as he blocked President Obama's "election year" replacement pick for almost all of 2016.
But to take a step back and look more broadly, I think that the COVID pandemic, and more specifically Trump and the Republican Party's genocidal mismanagement of it, should be the defining issue of the 2020 election.
We now know that a national mask mandate in April would have saved roughly 40% of the lives lost to COVID, but Trump and Republicans have largely ridiculed masks and treated the issue as one of "personal choice" rather than as a public health necessity for the common good. Further, Trump largely won the public "debate," such as it was, to reopen businesses before COVID in the US was anywhere near under control and the US, for many months now, has had the highest COVID death toll in the entire world.
At almost 225,000 dead as of today, we see hundreds of COVID-related deaths per day and it barely makes a ripple anymore in the news.
We, as a nation, should be mourning and grieving, and our political leaders should - at the very least - be acknowledging that.
And, while I believe probably most people in the US have become accustomed to a baseline level of cruel, sociopathic abnormality over the past four years, I don't know what to make of the reality that so many people have apparently become inured to this genocide and death toll other than, perhaps, it is overwhelming for most people to think about, some people are in idiotic denial, and/or our checks and balances in the US - both formal and informal - have profoundly failed.
No institution in the US should be treating what is happening as normal. Not newscasters, not debate moderators, not comedians, not Saturday Night Live and their both-sides fucking bullshit, not schools, not professional sports, not your workplaces and their "HOW was your weekend?" gaslighting questions, not too-cool-to-care personalities and entertained-by-it-all asshat pundits on Twitter, and certainly - certainly - not any person nominated to the US Supreme Court under the circumstances of national emergency while a presidential election is ongoing.
I don't know what to say, really. The events of the my political life as an adult, over the past 20 years, have impressed upon me that while we must not ever give up doing, saying, and fighting for what we believe is right, it's also unfair to pass the buck to the next generation by simply saying, "the young people will save us."
Not only are there a lot of young misogynists and racists and homophobes, I'm deeply uncomfortable with, for instance, the way that so many adults are entertained by teen victims of gun violence having to regularly re-traumatize themselves on Twitter, by subjecting themselves to rightwing harassment, as part of their work of "saving the rest of us."
I've said this before, but every generation will have to fight its own battles, eventually, when we're gone. And likely, at least some of these battles will be those that have already been fought and won and lost before. Perhaps it is part of our work to leave them tools they can use, or re-purpose, for that task. But, I also refuse to cynically withdraw while I'm still here. My activism won't look like yours, and vice versa, but I think we can all find ways to contribute, and however we contribute I don't know that any of us can predict the end result(s) of our contributions.
Labels: COVID, Election 2020, Genocide, Joe Biden, LGBT, Trump, Twitter
America: The Broken, 2020 Edition
Who could have predicted, except for hundreds and thousands of commentators, many of them women and/or POC.
Here's me, writing 3 years ago, at Shakesville, for instance:
"Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican politician for a rotten-to-the-core Republican Party that has condoned the use of any means necessary to win. To enact their regressive, cruel agenda, they have enabled a man to become President who is not only temperamentally-unsuited and unqualified for the office he holds, but whose very presence there is a daily, stark reminder of their contempt for both democracy and the people of this nation.
America: we are broken."
The George B. Bush years were bad. Very bad. The Trump years are exponentially worse.
If you'd have asked me the day after the 2016 election if in a few years it would feel like we would be living through some of the worst moments of the 1930s, 40s, and 60s, but also with Twitter, Facebook, a pandemic, and a fascist president who was brought to us by the reality TV-ification of US politics, I'd say, "Yep, Sure. Sounds about right."
Every time I think we've hit rock bottom, things somehow get worse.
And, if anything, the COVID pandemic should be telling everyone in the US, even the most privileged, how drastically our lives can change, pretty much overnight, and not in a good way. I think many white people mean well when they post the memes about their #whiteprivilege and how "safe" they are relative to Black people, and that is true to an extent, but white people also would do well to stop acting like they/we are entirely objective observers of history, rather than people who can also be killed, uprooted, and oppressed by the Trump regime. Especially now.
I wish I could find it now, but when I was perusing the Twitter recently, someone noted that one of the condescending errors of the post-2016-election "safety pin" thing, where white people would wear safety pins to surreptitiously signal to people of color that they/we are "allies," was the simple-minded assumption that we would be entirely untouched, ourselves, by the horrors of the Trump regime.
I also understand that people need hope, and I refuse to give up hope. Still.
But, a lot of people seem to think that the current protests around the country mean we're on the cusp of the leftist, socialist, utopian revolution, rather than on the cusp of a violent, authoritarian dictatorship fully backed by one of our two major political parties, roughly half of US voters, about 2/3rds branches of the US government, and a federal military force commanded by the political right.
The 2016 election was, perhaps even more than 2000, the most pivotal election of most of our lifetimes, and what's done is done.
The US government has never acted with the consent of the majority of those within its borders. The majority of voters, by millions, can and did reject a man like Trump and that still, still was not enough to keep him from power.
The protests we are seeing from city to city in response to the police killing of George Floyd are, first and foremost the result of police violence inflicted upon Black people, and more generally seem to be a release valve for the unrest that results from the reality that the United States was designed to be an unjust, oppressive state that privileges the rights, safety, and well-being of a subset of citizens, and that this fact has been self-evident to millions of oppressed people throughout the history of this nation despite mass efforts to gaslight us into thinking otherwise.
Many people now seem to be making catastrophic miscalculations about the current state of affairs, miscalculations akin to the wishful thinking that Comey or Mueller or Fauci or whoever-the-fuck-white-male-savior would somehow swoop in and save us from the madman.
Please stay safe friends and longtime readers, however you can. I know that's not super useful advice, but the only advice I can muster now is that the time for thinking about politics in soundbite is over so try not to let the memes be your guide.
Oh, and happy fuckin' pride month.
Labels: Election 2016, Election 2020, Politics, Race, Trump, Twitter, Violence, Welp
Femslash ___Day: VillanEve
What day is it? What time is it? What along decade it's been, huh?
I recently realized, only half-jokingly, that I measure time now by when it's time to watch Killing Eve again, and then I realized it's been fully 10 million years since we've had a Femslash Friday in Fannie's Room.
So, why not bring it back pandemic-time's sake?
I can't explain why I like Killing Eve so much, as it's a show I would be extremely not into if either of the two main characters were men.
I just started Season 3. So, I will need to digest the series more before I have anything more intelligent to say than the obvious fact that I, uh, appreciate the Sapphic subtext. And, maybe I will find time to write longform again when we're not in the middle of a fucking pandemic.
On that note, smell you later, and enjoy today's Villanelle/Eve fan vid.
In other news, I love how the Navy has basically confirmed the existence of UFOs and things are so awful right now that nobody even really cares.
Labels: Apocalypse, Femslash, Femslash Friday, LGBT, Pop Culture, TV
Many years ago in college I read Ellen Bryant Voigt's book of poems, Kyrie, which is set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. I've thought of it on and off since then, particularly during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 and, of course, now during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I found my copy of the book in my bookshelves the other day and read through it again. Each poem is written from the perspective of different, recurring people, dealing with the pandemic and/or World War I, in their own ways. The title, Kyrie ("Lord, have mercy") is referenced throughout, with poems alluding to the various characters' feelings of abandonment by their God, (naive?) optimism in the beginning ("Surely He shall deliver us from the snare"), and eventual hopelessness ("Oh yes I used to pray").
Another recurring theme is that of animals, both their ability to sense when something is off and the inescapable fact that humans are embodied animals and a part of nature, ourselves, despite our modern amenities.
In an early poem, foreshadowing the pandemic, she writes:
"Dogs, all kind of dogs - signals
are their job, they cock their heads,
their backs bristle, even house dogs
wake up and circle the wool rug
Outside, the vacant yard: then,
within minutes something eats the sun."
Life is inescapably different, and dark.
In another, she writes:
"Before the weather goes, you slaughter hogs
unless you want to find them on their sides,
rheumy eyes, running snout.
It's simple enough arithmetic,
so don't you think the Kaiser knew?
Get one hog sick, you get them all."
Looking at our present situation, a pandemic would be frightening even if we had trustworthy, competent, mature leadership at the federal level.
What is more clear than ever is that the 2016 election was a catastrophic failure in the history of our nation, as what is making this pandemic exponentially worse for the USA is that Donald Trump is in charge of the federal government.
I don't think he cares about Americans (or anyone) dying, and in fact he probably wants us to if we are Democrats, living in major (Democratic-voting) cities, and/or live in states with Democratic governors.
I think he's a sociopathic narcissist who only cares about the economy, rather than human beings, recovering. (Likewise, I think many of the journalists who covered Trump in 2016, and who continue to do so, are also sociopathic narcissists who are still somewhat entertained by Trump and everything that is happening right now, and that anyone lauding Trump's "change in tone as of late" should be deeply ashamed and resign immediately for incompetence.)
I think Trump will try to use the pandemic as an excuse to try cancel, delay, and/or rig the 2020 election, or to severely suppress turnout.
I think we have to rely more than ever on state, local, and private efforts for relief.
Officials are saying we have a very rough week or weeks ahead of us. I know a lot of people are having a hard time, for all kinds of reasons. So, mostly, I just wanted to drop a note to say hi and give people space to vent, be mad, be sad, be scared, whatever.
But I also want to say this: Rudy Giuliani is a creepy-ass dillrod who looks/acts like one of the Gentlemen from the episode "Hush" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Labels: Books, Election 2016, Health, poetry
Thoughts on Social Isolation and 2020
The past month or so has been a lot, yeah? It appears that Joe Biden is on track to the Democratic nominee for president. And, fine. Whatever. He wasn't my top choice at all, but the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump's massive failures around managing it, is one of many issues that highlights the urgency of defeating Trump in 2020.
It's a low bar, but Biden would be exponentially better than Trump. And, if Bernie Sanders were to pull off a surprise win, he would be as well. Whoever the nominee is just needs to be smart enough to name a progressive woman as vice president.
Anyway, it appears many of us will be stuck indoors, at home, isolating ourselves from others during this pandemic. Also, shoutout to those providing essential services right now who cannot do so, including health workers, firefighters, caregivers, law enforcement, delivery people, and more.
During this time, I've been thinking of doing a Xena rewatch (and possibly recaps, but not sure what I will have time for, given my other responsibilities).
Anyway, I mostly just wanted to check in. Please stay safe and healthy (and at home, if you are able!). How are others occupying themselves during this time?
Labels: Bernie Sanders, Election 2020, Joe Biden, Politics, TV, Xena
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SARS-Cov-2 and Conspiracy Theories
Posted by daniel on Apr 23, 2020 in Essays, Featured Articles, Other Writing | 0 comments
SARS-Cov-2 is a novel virus, meaning that humans have never before encountered it. But it is also just one more in a pattern of pathogens that have, at a particular time, moved from the animal kingdom and spread widely among the human population, striking down some and passing over others. Given these facts—that it is new, and it is deadly—it is little wonder that all sorts of explanations are proffered. People do what people typically do: integrate new information into their existing belief systems. If those belief systems are complex and evidence based, that builds one sort of understanding. If the belief systems are organized around one or two basic attitudes and are generally data-poor, then the result looks a lot like any of the many conspiracy theories circulating. Major belief/attitudes around elites supposedly controlling events make any number of people reflexively doubt just about every official pronouncement about the virus. We are well into the second month of people minimizing the virus and its effects, usually based on little data, or on extreme cherry-picking of what available data there is. Here is a common-sense corrective to a lot of the various attempts.
Facts on the Epidemic
We love numbers. But reality is really tricky to quantify, especially the closer you look. And especially if you have really bad data. And when it comes to SARS-CoV-2 in the US we have really bad data. Because we have so few Covid-19 tests. And we don’t really know how accurate they are. And because people die of a wide variety of causes every day anyway. Which makes saying anything precise about Covid-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus really difficult.
The death rate of Covid-19 is just a wild guess. Because we don’t know how many people actually have it (in the US or in most of the world). Because we aren’t widely testing. Germany is widely testing. Their death rate is way lower than other countries. But that is probably because they are testing everyone, and so they catch all the mild and asymptomatic cases and include these in the count, whereas in the US you can’t get a test unless you are moderately to severely ill and in a hospital already. So the US has a much higher percentage of tested patients dying, and thus an artificially inflated death rate.
But such quibbles about the statistics represent clever people getting lost in the weeds; losing sight of the forest for the trees. The forest looks like this:
The statistics I’ve seen have the Covid-19 death rate for people under 55 at about 0.8%, or about 4x higher than the seasonal flu. Not so bad. Except that 75% of the US population is under 55. That’s 245 million people. If they all got the virus in a two-month period that is 1,960,000 deaths. Divide that number in half if you think only half the population gets it. Divide it in half again. And again, just because. That is still 245,000 deaths, and that is just the under 55’s; you still have to add the quarter of the population who are over 55 and are much more susceptible. In a typical year about 2.8 million people in the US die of all causes, or about 230,000 per month. And our profit-optimized health system runs at about 85% capacity. You can’t add 100,000+ per month to that without utter chaos, even if 96% of the under-55 population doesn’t need hospitalization. Which is why so many people are calling for physical distancing and shutting down public gatherings.
Some people try to dispute the death statistics around Covid-19 by pointing out that just because someone died in a hospital and had the SARS-CoV-2 virus present doesn’t mean that the virus killed them. And this is true. But largely besides the point. Even if a significant number of people who are on the Covid-19 death count would have died anyway, it is the marginal quantity that make this a crisis for the medical system. The marginal ones (economics term for the extra ones beyond what you would have had anyway) don’t have to be a particularly large number to be a problem. They start to stress the system. And they only have to be 20% of the total cases (let’s say that 80% would have died that week anyway) for the extra ones to overload the system. For individual people at the edge of death anyway, it may not matter if they die now or in October. But for the medical system it matters a whole lot if they ALL die during the next month. Why?
Once hospitals are full of Covid-19 patients they can’t see other types of patients. Or even moderately ill Covid-19 patients who would otherwise survive with moderate treatment. They are out of capacity. In plain terms, people who otherwise would have been saved will die of both Covid-19 and other causes. Some of them will be young. And/or rich. And they would have lived for years if the hospital wasn’t over-full. Understanding that, and the full scale of the pandemic, the smart folks are all advocating physical distancing.
So in the end the forest is that most healthy people will be fine. But enough people (both healthy and otherwise) will need intensive care that it is would be utter bedlam in the health care system for months had we all gone about as normal; crisis would have been so acute that millions would have died in a span of a couple months, and many of those would have been from other, preventable causes. With physical distancing having been taken up in much of the US for weeks already, it will still be pandemonium in the health care system for a long time, but the number of non-covid preventable deaths should be a lot lower.
Other logical reasons to flatten the curve include giving researchers time to work on cures and palliative treatments, and giving time for doctors and hospitals to figure out the most effective treatment approaches. Assuming that most of the population will eventually get it, that is a very good reason for a person to prefer to get it later rather than sooner. If we all get it in a month, hospitals are overwhelmed and most people will make it or die on their own. If the burden is spread out, many more people who get serious cases will get patient-centered treatment in settings that are not overloaded, and many more people will get treated with methods that have been established as giving them the best chance at recovery. Personally I’m not counting on an effective vaccine ending the crisis any time soon. But the possibility of one does weigh in favor of physical distancing and flattening the curve.
Common Sense Observations on the Shutdown
So how do we explain the sudden rush around the world to shut things down. Isn’t there something deeper going on? It can’t just be the inexorable logic of an overloaded health care system, can it? My first response, is, why not? But if you care to, you can do an economic interest analysis of who is for it and what they stand to gain. Given that, in the US, the interests of the moderately to very rich tend to be the main ones taken into consideration for political decisions, what do the rich as a class have to gain? Well, their lives, for one. The smart/rich people understand that no amount of money will get them or their loved ones medical care in the middle of a total medical system meltdown. And the rich and politically connected tend to be older, and thus more likely to need it medical care. So many can back the “shut it all down” approach out of simple self-interest. Because this approach is most likely to keep them alive if they happen to need a coronary bypass or have a stroke in the next six months. That is a totally plausible explanation. And that is literally what they are all saying publicly.
What about greed and profiteering being the “real” reason for the Covid crisis? Unfortunately it would appear that greed and profiteering is just normal behavior in our society under any circumstances. You don’t have to posit that the people who are trying to profit off Covid-19 actually caused Covid-19 to explain why either the virus or the profiteering is happening. Far more reasonable is that a significant number of people in our society will try to make money off anything and everything that happens. And we have plenty of evidence for that right out in the open.
As for deeper explanations, it fairly well established that materialism fears death above all else. And plenty of people have observed that in the US as well as other Western countries we have an unhealthy relationship with death. Most people tend to avoid thinking about it, uncertain weather there is anything on the other side. Further, our society also has an unhealthy relationship to physical pain and suffering. We equate suffering to evil, and our highest good is to eliminate it. This is also fundamentally a materialist orientation. Is it really so hard to believe that, when faced with a pandemic that threatens to bring widespread suffering and death, we as a society would choose to do just about anything, sacrificing many pleasures and much wealth, just to minimize it? And is it that surprising that, when framed this way, so much of the population is solidly in support of going along?
So many things about this virus are unprecedented. But that we as a society cannot agree to understand the basic facts is not. Reflexive anti-authoritarianism, lazy thinking, and confirmation bias all guarantee that there will be an unending stream of individuals with their own half-baked theories about what is really going on, backed by random statistics and out-of-context facts. Some of these will be produced by very clever people, some even highly credentialed. Some will bury the reader in technical terms and numbers. Others will be simple assertions full of impressionistic references to assumed tenets of shared belief (the New World Order, Seth Rich, the Deep State, etc.). But they all lack one thing. Balance.
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Spicy version
Chapters 91-100
Chapters 101-110
Mild version
Darcy Townhouse
William's Health & Family Tree
The CD Covers
The Bingo Card
An Unexpected Song
A modern, musical take on Pride & Prejudice
“I bet the Garden of Eden looked just like this,” Elizabeth said, her eyes shining as she watched a black bird land on a branch bearing fuchsia blossoms. She had expected Pemberley’s garden to be beautiful, but she hadn’t anticipated this lush tropical wilderness.
William grinned. “Does that make me Adam or the serpent?”
“Oh, the serpent, definitely. You haven’t convinced me to eat forbidden fruit, but you’ve tempted me in lots of other ways.”
She curled her hand into his and they continued down the path, his unabashed pleasure in sharing his home tugging at her heart. Rarely had she seen him so relaxed and—she paused for a moment to summon the right word—peaceful? Fulfilled?
They wandered along, pausing occasionally to inspect an exotic bloom or to examine a tiny lizard hanging onto a tree or skittering across the sun-dappled path. A canopy of trees wrapped the garden in seclusion, the silence punctuated by the twittering of birds and the occasional forlorn cry of a gull wheeling overhead. Through a clearing in the trees she could see the ocean, an expanse of glittering sapphire stretching to the horizon.
The path curved toward a gazebo tucked beneath the trees, its roof weathered with age. Elizabeth squeezed William’s hand. “I love it! It’s like a secret hideaway.”
“Exactly. When I was a boy, I used to come out here when I wanted to be alone. I’d sit here and read, and they’d find me hours later.”
She could easily imagine him, a solemn dark-haired child, trudging through the garden with a book. “We should have dinner here tonight.”
“We could do that if you want. Insects can be a problem in the evenings, but I’m sure Mrs. Shepherd could arrange for some citronella candles.”
They sat on the low stone wall beneath the roof, still holding hands. “I can see why you love it here,” she breathed. It seemed important to speak in hushed tones, as though they had stumbled onto a serene, leafy chapel.
“My best childhood memories are from Pemberley. My mother loved to come here. She could relax and be herself and not Mrs. Edmund Darcy, society matron.”
“And your father? Did he enjoy it too?”
William swallowed and pressed his lips together. “He was too busy. I don’t remember ever being here with him.”
Sensing his discomfort, she stepped back into more comfortable territory. “I bet your mother loved this garden.”
“She did. I knew the names of most of the exotic plants by the time I was six or seven.” His smile was wistful. “And later I taught Georgie, since she never had a chance to learn from Mamma.”
The catch in his voice made her ache for him. She released his hand and began to rub his back gently. “Georgie was just a baby when your mother died, wasn’t she?” He had occasionally spoken of his mother, but Elizabeth knew little about the circumstances of Anna Darcy’s death.
“She was about three months old.” He closed his eyes, relaxing under her ministrations.
“The poor girl, to have no memories of her mother. How did it happen?”
“A car accident. I thought you knew that.”
“I meant, how did the accident happen?”
“It was late in the summer.” He looked away from her, staring into the distance. “She was at a house in the Hamptons with a … friend. She’d spent a lot of time there all summer, and of course she always took Georgie with her, but I stayed in the city to work with my tutor, finishing high school so I could start at Juilliard in the fall.”
“So the accident happened in the Hamptons?”
He nodded, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. “They were on their way back from a party late at night, and another car broadsided them.”
“Was your mother driving?”
“No.” His jaw tightened, and she felt the tension in his back muscles.
“Her friend was driving? Did she survive the accident?”
“Yes. He was only slightly injured.”
“He?” Elizabeth had noticed the hesitation in his voice when he mentioned his mother’s “friend.”
He sat up ramrod straight, his eyes hard and cold. “He. My mother’s ….” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to call him.”
“They were lovers?” she asked gently, still stroking his back.
He sighed. “When I was thirteen, I started performing more, with symphony orchestras and in competitions. It consumed most of my mother’s time. She always traveled with me, and in effect she was my agent, handling all the contracts and other arrangements. She didn’t have time to run the foundation and manage my career, so she hired a director for the foundation. He and Sonya handled day-to-day operations, and Mamma and Gran made the big decisions.”
“And your mother and this man ….”
He sighed. “It took me a while to notice; teenaged boys aren’t particularly observant about things like that. But about a year after he started the job, I walked in on them kissing in her office.”
“You must have been so embarrassed. And I’m sure they were, too.”
“Mamma was horrified, but he didn’t seem to care; he just gave me a cocky grin. I wanted to rip that smirk off his face.”
Elizabeth became aware of the scent of rain, and then she heard the sibilant whisper of the droplets bathing the dense foliage. “Did she talk to you about it later?”
“She tried. She said she was lonely, that she’d been alone ever since Father left us. She tried to say more, but I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to forget what I’d seen.”
“Your father left you? I didn’t think they ever got divorced.”
“They didn’t, but they lived separate lives. Father had an apartment a few blocks away, overlooking the park. On Sundays he usually went to church with the family and had brunch at the house afterwards. That’s Gran’s weekly command performance, and apparently a failed marriage wasn’t an adequate excuse to opt out.”
“So you only saw your father once a week?”
“If that. Once I started traveling to perform, we missed plenty of Sundays. But he also came to the house on ceremonial occasions: Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and the like. And he made appearances at social events where his absence would have been remarked on. I’m sure everyone knew what was going on, but the public façade had to be preserved. Gran insisted on that.”
“I’m surprised he moved out of the townhouse,” she remarked. It mystified her that Edmund, whose birthright included the house, had been the one to leave instead of Anna.
“That’s how much he wanted to get away from us. And I suppose it gave him more latitude to live as he chose. He had more than his share of affairs over the years. Discreetly, of course, at least in theory, but the gossip mill always found out.” He leaned forward again, staring at the ground.
She longed to smooth the harsh lines from his face. “You poor thing. I knew your parents had problems, but I had no idea ….”
After a moment he raised his head and turned his searching gaze on her. “Are you sure you want to be with me?” he asked. “The Darcys are short on models of domestic bliss.”
Despite his casual tone, doubt clouded his watchful eyes. She stretched an arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Besides, my parents aren’t much of an example either. Well, not unless you want to know what happens when two people share nothing in common but their species. If tomorrow my mom were to vanish into a crack in the earth’s crust—which isn’t as improbable as it might sound, considering where they live—I think it would be several days before Dad even noticed.”
His rueful smile faded as quickly as it appeared, little more than a twitch of the cheek muscles. “We’re quite a pair.”
“We’ll just have to figure this stuff out together.” She brushed a small insect away from his cheek. “Thank you for telling me about it.”
Despite his solemn expression a hint of amusement glimmered in his eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t run off screaming at the news that the Darcys have skeletons piled to the rafters.”
“Well, I would have,” she declared with a deadpan expression, “but it’s raining pretty hard.”
His smile came out of hiding at last and he pulled her close. “Afraid you’ll melt?”
“I’ll get you, my pretty,” she cackled. “And your little dog too!”
“Please don’t turn green,” he said, flashing a sweet, dimpled grin. “I’d have a problem with that.”
A filament of sunlight touched the ground outside the gazebo. The brief shower had passed, though raindrops still dripped from the trees. The moisture-laden air carried the heady perfume of damp earth, green leaves, and spicy tropical blooms.
“Did your grandmother know about … the man?” She didn’t know what else to call him, since William hadn’t mentioned his name.
“I assume so. Gran doesn’t miss much. But of course we’ve never discussed it. If she found out, I’m sure she had plenty to say in private, but her public position would have been ignorance.”
“What about your father? Do you think he knew? How did he react?”
William shrugged. “He must have, but I have no idea how he felt. Considering his own behavior at the time, he was hardly in a position to criticize.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to ask an important question, but she bit back the words when the indelicacy of her thought struck her full force. He had shown unprecedented trust by sharing painful details of his childhood. Although he had omitted a key puzzle piece, she would not press him beyond his comfort zone. At least, not yet.
A fresh breeze swirled through the garden, dislodging a blizzard of fragile pink petals from a nearby tree and floating them into the gazebo. She brushed them from his hair, and he returned the favor with his usual courtly grace.
She cleared her throat. “I have a question, but I’m not sure quite how to put it.”
“Just ask.”
“I’d have expected, when your parents separated, that your father would have been the one to stay; after all, it was his family home. And then later if your grandmother found out about your mother’s affair ….” It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, but she hoped it might elicit further confidences.
“Ah. You’re wondering why Gran would willingly shelter the woman cuckolding her son.”
Elizabeth grimaced. “I’m not passing judgment on your mother, but it seems odd.”
“Gran was fond of Mamma. They got off to a rough start when we first arrived from Italy, but they bonded not long after when a crisis arose.”
In a flash of insight, the pieces fell together. “Because of you, and your illness.”
He nodded. “It took Gran a while to warm up to her new daughter-in-law, but apparently I won her over at first sight.”
“Of course you did.” She covered his clasped hands with one of hers. “I bet you were the most beautiful child she’d ever laid eyes on. And Mrs. Reynolds told me once that you were a sweet little boy.”
“Whatever the reason, I’ve always been special to Gran. So it was hard for her—and my mother too, of course—when I was hospitalized. After my surgery when complications arose, Gran and Mamma leaned on each other while they waited to see if I was going to live or die.”
“You mentioned once that it was pretty serious.” She tightened her grip on his hands. “It must have been excruciating for them. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to wait and watch, with your child at the brink of death. For them to know they might lose you ….” She shook her head, feeling a small measure of Anna’s distress.
“When Father asked for an official separation a few months after I came home from the hospital, Gran told him he’d have to be the one to leave; I was staying, and she couldn’t separate me from Mamma after all we’d been through. Apparently he and Gran had a bitter argument; he thought living in a house full of women was turning me into a weakling. But Gran held firm. At least, that’s the way I heard it from Sonya, years later.”
“So she chose you over your father.”
“Perhaps she thought if she issued an ultimatum he’d change his mind and stay, but instead he called her bluff. Besides, I think Gran knew my mother needed me as much as I needed her. Gran has a tough exterior, but when she loves someone there isn’t anything she won’t do to protect them from harm.”
“In that way, she sounds a lot like her grandson.” Elizabeth smiled up at him.
“Regardless of her feelings, if Gran had known about Mamma’s affair, she would have been upset. And I think she must have known, or at least suspected. It would have been difficult to deceive someone living in the same house, especially since it must have gone on for a while.”
Something wasn’t adding up. “For how long?”
“I can’t be certain, of course, but I was about fourteen when I walked in on them kissing, and fifteen when she—when the accident happened. And he was with her that night.” He stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from his tan shorts. “Shall we move on? You haven’t seen the lily pond.”
She nodded and rose to her feet, her mind whirling from the impact of his story. The timeline of the last two years of Anna Darcy’s life led her to an inevitable and troubling conclusion. She wished William would tell her the rest, and again she fought the temptation to give voice to her suspicions.
The pond came into view around the next turn, a profusion of lily pads floating on its placid surface. She heard a faint meow and turned to see a slender cat at the edge of the path, eyeing them warily. She bent over and extended her hand. The cat stretched forward, sniffing her fingers. It allowed her to scratch its head, but then it trotted away. She straightened and turned to William. “Is the cat yours?”
“He lives in the garden, but he more or less belongs to the Shepherds. At least, she feeds him and keeps an eye on him.”
“That makes sense. I’d never take you for a cat person.”
“Definitely not.” He plucked a pink hibiscus bloom from a nearby bush and tucked it behind her ear. “Though there’s a certain lady whose eyes are a bit cat-like, and I’m very fond of her.”
They completed their tour of the garden and stepped out onto the lawn. “I’d love to go down to the beach now,” she said. “I know it’s a special place for you, and it’s special to me, too, because it brought us back together.”
“Even if we hadn’t met on the beach, I would have found you.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”
“Me, too. It’s been a while since brunch. I’ll ask Mrs. Shepherd to pack a picnic basket with a bottle of wine and some snacks.”
They found Mrs. Shepherd dusting in one of the upstairs bedrooms. At William’s request for a snack suitable for a beach picnic, the housekeeper smiled. “I know just the thing,” she said genially. “Won’t take me but two shakes.” She set down her dustcloth and made her ponderous way down the hall toward the stairs.
William drew Elizabeth into his bedroom. “Why does she have to be so efficient?” he grumbled. “Two shakes isn’t much time. If she’d said ‘a little while’ ….” He lifted an eyebrow, his grin rakish as he ran his hands down her bare arms in a sinuous motion.
Goose bumps rose up on her arms. “You, sir, are insatiable.” She almost snickered at her involuntary thought: Pot, kettle.
“With you, I am,” he murmured, his voice husky. “Have I mentioned how sexy you look today?”
“In a tank top and shorts?” Her protest sounded weak but she wasn’t sure where she found the will to argue with him at all while his body surrounded hers with insistent heat and his lips flitted across her cheek.
“Absolutely.” His warm breath tickled her ear.
She lost track of time after that, absorbed in the mindless thrill of his kisses, until a voice in the hall recalled her to reality. “Mr. Darcy? I assume you want some wine with your picnic, but I wasn’t sure—” Mrs. Shepherd’s words ceased abruptly. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Elizabeth flinched and yanked her hands from William’s bare chest, easily accessible through his half-unbuttoned shirt, as though the touch of his skin burned her palms. Her face aflame, she tugged down the hem of her tank top and crossed her arms over her chest.
William met the housekeeper’s amused gaze with imperturbable dignity. “We’ll be down in a minute, and I’ll choose a wine then.”
“I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Elizabeth ground her teeth until Mrs. Shepherd was out of earshot. “How do you do that?” she spat out in a taut whisper.
“How do I do what?”
“Take it in stride when we’re practically caught in flagrante delicto?”
He shrugged. “You never have complete privacy when you live in a house with staff. Believe me, she’s seen far worse during Richard’s visits. But we should be more careful about shutting the door when we want privacy.” He stepped toward her, his hands skimming her shoulders. “Now, are we going to the beach, or shall we stay here and pick up where we left off?”
“Definitely the beach.” Elizabeth extricated herself from his embrace, her amorous mood drowned in a sea of humiliation. She doubted she’d ever be able to make love to William again with Mrs. Shepherd, or anyone else, within a mile of the house.
“I figured as much. Let me find my sunglasses, and then we can go.”
“I think I left mine in the front hall. I’ll meet you down there.”
The sight of the empty table in the front hallway filled her with dismay. Based on their earlier path through the house, she must have left her sunglasses in the kitchen. Her mind raced to find an alternative to facing Mrs. Shepherd again so soon. Finding none, she adjusted her ponytail, lifted her head high, and strode into the kitchen assuming a counterfeit air of breezy confidence.
Mrs. Shepherd greeted her with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I interrupted something, didn’t I?”
Elizabeth felt the blood rising to her face but she willed it away. “We’re the ones who should be apologizing.”
“Not at all. You’re supposed to be enjoying yourselves.” Mrs. Shepherd’s small, wide-set eyes gleamed with interest and her generous mouth turned up at one corner. “No wonder you two are hungry. You’ve been burning calories the best way there is.”
Elizabeth resisted the urge to dive under the table. Mrs. Shepherd must have noticed her distress, because she wiped her hands on a towel and patted Elizabeth’s arm.
“Don’t be embarrassed. Of course you want to make the most of having a handsome man like Mr. Darcy around.” She shook her head. “But there I go again. It’s like Winston always says. Every thought that pops into my head falls right out of my mouth.” Winston, the laconic Mr. Shepherd, had responded to Elizabeth’s friendly remarks in polite monosyllables yesterday morning while driving her back to the hotel.
It was impossible to imagine this forthright woman building a comfortable working relationship with Rose Darcy. With a mental shrug, Elizabeth retrieved her sunglasses and slipped them into her pocket. “Thank you for fixing us a picnic.”
“I’m happy to do it. By the way, I’ll ask him myself when he comes downstairs, but do you think Mr. Darcy would mind if Winston and I went to Holetown tonight after I fix dinner? Our daughter has three sick kids and I think she could use some help. I’ll be back in time to fix breakfast tomorrow, of course, but we’d be gone all night.”
Even without the overt emphasis on those last two words, Elizabeth would have guessed from the mischievous glint in Mrs. Shepherd’s eye that this was merely a pretext. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” No, William wouldn’t mind at all.
> Story
> Spicy version
> Part 3
> Chapters 101-110
> Chapter 101
© 2020 Rika Hopewell Contact Me
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You are at:Home»Life Issues & Bioethics»Contraception & Abortion»Pray, Fast to Protect Life, Marriage, Religious Liberty: U.S. Bishops Launch New Campaign
Pray, Fast to Protect Life, Marriage, Religious Liberty: U.S. Bishops Launch New Campaign
By John Jalsevac on December 9, 2012 Contraception & Abortion, Featured, Government & Politics, Marriage, The Homosexual Agenda
Citing “unprecedented challenges” to life, marriage and religious liberty, the bishops of the United States have called on all the faithful to fast, pray a daily Rosary, have regular Holy Hours and Masses, and attend rallies, “for the sake of renewing a culture of life, marriage, and religious liberty in our country.”
In explaining the reasons for the campaign, the bishops specifically singled out the HHS mandate. That mandate coerces employers, including heads of religious agencies, to pay for sterilizations, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraceptives. The bishops also called on Catholics to resist increased efforts to redefine marriage.
“The pastoral strategy is essentially a call and encouragement to prayer and sacrifice—it’s meant to be simple,” said Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.
“It’s not meant to be another program but rather part of a movement for life, marriage, and religious liberty, which engages the new evangelization and can be incorporated into the Year of Faith,” he said. “Life, marriage, and religious liberty are not only foundational to Catholic social teaching but also fundamental to the good of society.”
In a press release the bishops outlined the five parts of the strategy:
1. Starting with the Sunday after Christmas (the Feast of the Holy Family) and continuing on or near the last Sunday of every month through Christ the King Sunday in November 2013, cathedrals and parishes are encouraged to hold a Eucharistic Holy Hour for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty.
2. Families and individuals are encouraged to pray a daily rosary, especially for the preservation of life, marriage, and religious liberty in the nation.
3. At Sunday and daily Masses, it is encouraged that the Prayers of the Faithful include specific intentions for respect for all human life from conception to natural death, the strengthening of marriage and family life, and the preservation of religious liberty at all levels of government, both at home and abroad.
4. Abstinence from meat and fasting on Fridays are encouraged for the intention of the protection of life, marriage, and religious liberty, recognizing the importance of spiritual and bodily sacrifice in the life of the Church.
5. The celebration of a second Fortnight for Freedom at the end of June and the beginning of July 2013 is being planned. This Fortnight would emphasize faith and marriage in a particular way in the face of the potential Supreme Court rulings during this time. The Fortnight would also emphasize the need for conscience protection in light of the August 1, 2013, deadline for religious organizations to comply with the HHS mandate, as well as religious freedom concerns in other areas, such as immigration, adoption, and humanitarian services.
“With the challenges this country is facing, it is hoped that this call to prayer and penance will help build awareness among the faithful as well as spiritual stamina and courage for effective witness,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “We also hope that it will encourage solidarity with all people who are standing for the precious gifts of life, marriage, and religious liberty.”
A website with resources from the USCCB is available here.
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John Jalsevac
goral
It usually takes a crisis situation to mobilize the faithful. I applaud the bishops for taking this spiritual step. In the temporal world the bishops are generals of the church. They are obligated to take physical steps. As far as I know, there has been no formal, public excommunication of the evil woman – Sebelius. She a catholic lawyer/politician and she’s publicly flaunting her opposition to the Church.
This statement is now an American tradition.
How about getting on your horses bishops and driving a lance through this travesty, or at the very least, send her to Gilligan’s Island.
We, the faithful can help but we can’t do your job for you.
Unfortunately, this statement is also becoming an American tradition.
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You are at:Home»Columnists»Ronald Reagan: Same-Sex Marriage Advocate?
Ronald Reagan: Same-Sex Marriage Advocate?
By Dr. Paul Kengor on May 2, 2013 Columnists, Featured, The Homosexual Agenda
Pres. Ronald Reagan – Official White House Portrait
Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter, recently speculated on where her father might stand on same-sex marriage. Politico published her thoughts under the headline, “Patti Davis says Reagan wouldn’t have opposed gay marriage.”
The impact of the article was immediate. A quick Google search yielded multiple follow-up articles and blog posts. Liberals nationwide were off and running with a new same-sex marriage endorsement: this one from Reagan, the conservative’s conservative.
This is not the first time liberals have rushed to recast Reagan according to their policy preferences. Immediately after his death in June 2004, he was trotted out as a poster-boy for embryonic stem-cell research.
Please, not so fast.
In Davis’ defense, she starts with a crucial point about her father, one liberals had utterly refused while the man was alive: “He was a very tolerant person.”
Indeed, Reagan was tolerant — on religion, on race, on ethnic differences, on differences of opinion on many things, and also toward gays. As Davis notes, “He did not have prejudices against gay people.” Davis gives just a few of many examples.
But she then goes where I don’t think we should. She states of her father and same-sex marriage: “I don’t think he would stand in the way of it, at all. I don’t think he would stand in the way of two people wanting to make a commitment to one another.”
Davis then uses an argument that is libertarian (which Reagan was not), and which fails to understand the essence of conservatives’ objection to same-sex marriage: “I also think because he wanted government out of peoples’ lives, he would not understand the intrusion of government banning such a thing. This is not what he would have thought government should be doing.”
The problem with that statement, applied to the same-sex marriage debate, is this: Conservatives object to the federal government rendering unto itself the unprecedented ability to redefine marriage. Such is a massive step toward government intervention (one that should worry libertarians), toward powerful government, toward big government — not restrained and limited government.
It is a step that breaks entirely new ground in not only American history but human history, one with unimaginable and extraordinary effects yet to come on the family, the culture, the economy, government services and (among others) the court system.
The essence of conservatism is to preserve and conserve time-tested values that have endured for good reason and for the best of society and for order. Conservatives — which is what Reagan was — aim to conserve. By their nature and definition, conservatives do not rush into radical changes or what they fear may be another fad or fashion or popular demand. They also, by their definition, ground their ideals in both natural law and biblical law.
I know that secular liberals don’t want to hear religious arguments against same-sex marriage, but, if we’re talking about Reagan (and conservatives), we cannot exclude them.
Contrary to the image of him as president, Reagan was very religious and would not have so easily consented to a culture suddenly demanding the right to redefine what the scriptures (Old Testament and New Testament) say clearly about a man and a woman leaving their parents and coming together to form one flesh in marriage.
Reagan’s religious roots were deep, inculcated by his mother, an extremely devout, traditional Christian, and others who profoundly influenced him in Dixon, Illinois, in the 1920s. He said that “everything” he learned about the values that shaped his life and presidency he learned back in Dixon. It was his “inheritance,” one that never left him. Needless to say, Reagan did not learn to support same-sex marriage in Dixon.
Moreover, Reagan was unwavering in his conviction of the importance of a father and a mother raising children and the next generation of American citizens and understood marriage as a vital bond between a man and a woman.
To cite just one example from the final days of his presidency (January 12, 1989), Reagan insisted that “we must teach youngsters the beauty of the loving, lifelong relationship between husband and wife that is marriage.”
Yes, Reagan was tolerant of gay people — as is everyone I know who opposes same-sex marriage — but that in no way means he would have advocated redefining marriage. Toleration of something certainly does not automatically translate into advocating its legalization.
We could list innumerable things that we tolerate — including from friends and family and loved ones — but wouldn’t argue legalizing. Even then, that’s not quite the issue. The issue, after all, isn’t whether homosexuality should be legal (no one objects to that) but whether marriage will now begin a long process of continual redefinition.
It’s a form of intellectual laziness for liberals/progressives to reflexively assume that anyone who disagrees with them on redefining marriage is a recalcitrant bigot with no possible legitimate reasons.
After all, same-sex marriage opponents are adhering to the prevailing definition of marriage according to its literal and ancient roots; they believe in the cross-cultural norm that humanity has adhered to since the dawn of humanity, to a human understanding as old as the Garden of Eden. It’s remarkably short-sighted to dismiss them as hopeless bigots.
That brings me back to Ronald Reagan.
It’s funny, people on the political left spent eight years calling Reagan a bigot. When liberals weren’t denouncing him as an unregenerate racist — the single most unfair charge unceasingly flung at Reagan — they were saying that he didn’t like gay people and did nothing about AIDS because he was happy to let gays die.
Davis remembers this well, as she does the vicious accusation that her father was a nuclear warmonger. To say that liberals were unhinged in their nastiness to Reagan is insufficient. Now, in his death, they’d like to remold him in their own image, crowning him a poster boy for same-sex marriage.
The simple truth is that Reagan was a committed and principled conservative who had thoughtful and firmly grounded reasons for his positions. That, too, ironically, is a fact that liberals ignored, caricaturing Reagan as an idiot, a simpleton, an “amiable dunce,” as Clark Clifford famously called him.
He would not have merrily hopped on the same-sex marriage bandwagon without first carefully considering how the issue fit with his understanding of the laws of nature and nature’s God, of the first things and first principles that conservatives of Reagan’s generation spent years discussing at great length in their books and publications and conferences.
Could we at least agree on this much?
Reagan was silent on same-sex marriage, as was everyone of his generation. He, like all liberals of his time, could not have conceived of same-sex marriage, and he, like the entirety of the Democratic Party just a decade or two ago, unwaveringly supported traditional marriage.
Let’s leave it at that.
[Editor’s note: this article first appeared at CNN.com.]
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Dr. Paul Kengor
Paul Morphy
Fine article and thank you for posting it.
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Newest U.S. Supreme Court Justice wows McConnell Scholars
and Mark Hebert
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch spoke to more than 500 people during a public event at Comstock Hall, but it was the time he spent behind closed doors with the University of Louisville’s McConnell Scholars that may have left the greatest impression.
“He was down-to-earth and very humble” said UofL freshman Emma Lawson. “He didn’t treat us as being beneath him and he was wanting to know more about us.” Fellow McConnell Scholar Molly Baldock agreed saying “he’s very charismatic but not a politician.”
Lawson, Baldock and 30 other McConnell Scholars had a private question and answer session with Gorsuch who was on campus as a guest of the McConnell Center and its Distinguished Speakers Series.
Freshman Grayson Ford told Gorsuch he hopes to become a lawyer but isn’t sure what area of the law he wants to pursue. According to Ford, Gorsuch told him “I wasn’t so sure either and now I’m a Supreme Court justice!”
Gorsuch showed more flashes of humor during his 40 minute prepared speech. While praising the United States’ separation of powers between the branches of government, Gorsuch said giving federal judges the power to make laws would be a bad idea. “Wouldn’t that be sort of like asking Lamar Jackson to do the kicking?” he joked. Jackson is the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback on UofL’s football team.
Gorsuch also recounted his predecessor’s fondness for an elk he had killed and mounted on a wall in his chambers. When Justice Antonin Scalia died, the Supreme Court staff wasn’t quite sure what to do with the elk that Scalia had named “Leroy” so they gave it to Gorsuch as “a welcome to the neighborhood gift”. Gorsuch has “Leroy” in his office now and says he has some things in common with the elk: “we’re both natives of Colorado; we both received a rather shocking welcome to Washington, D.C. and neither of us will ever forget Justice Scalia.”
Much of the justice’s speech focused on the concept of originalism in interpreting the U.S. constitution. Gorsuch says originalism isn’t perfect but “may be the least worst option available” to judges.
Gorsuch says he’s optimistic about the future of the politically divided country and its courts. “I do not believe in red judges or blue judges. We wear black” he said.
While on campus, Gorsuch also met with 30 soldiers taking part in the McConnell Center’s 30 day Strategic Broadening Seminar, a leadership and training program for the U.S. Army.
Gorsuch is the third U.S. Supreme Court Justice to take part in the McConnell Center’s Distinguished Speaker Series joining Clarence Thomas and John Roberts.
Mark Hebert
Following a 28-year career as a radio and television reporter, Mark Hebert joined the University of Louisville as the Director of Media Relations in 2009, serving as the main spokesperson. In 2015, Mark was named Director of Programming and Production. He’s now producing and hosting a radio show about “all things UofL”, overseeing the university’s video and TV productions and promoting UofL’s research operation. Mark is best known for his 22 years as the political and investigative reporter for WHAS-TV in Louisville where he won numerous awards for breaking stories, exposing corruption and objectively covering Kentucky politics. In 2014, Mark was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.
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Home » Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) was the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1930-41) which sent Patterson v. Alabama, involving the jury makeup of one of the Scottsboro Trials, back to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1935 with an expectation that the court would reverse its verdict. Hughes previously had served as governor of New York and U.S. Secretary of State, and campaigned for president in 1916.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
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Revision as of 09:18, 23 October 2018 by Ppdock (Talk | contribs)
1 List of publications
3 Chapters in Books
4 Articles in Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings
5 Invited Papers in Conference Proceedings
6 Other Publications
V.D. Milman, H. Wolfson, Minkowski Spaces with Extremal Distance from the Euclidean 'Space', Israel J. of Math.29 (2-3), 113--131, (1978).
J. Bourgain, V. Milman, H. Wolfson, On Type of Metric Spaces, Transactions of the American Math. Soc., 294(1), 295--317, (1986).
H. Wolfson, E. Schonberg, A. Kalvin, Y. Lamdan, Solving Jigsaw Puzzles by Computer Vision, Annals of Operations Research, 12, 51--64, (1988).
G. Burdea, H.J. Wolfson, Solving Jigsaw Puzzles by a Robot, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation 5(6), 752--764, (1989).
H.J. Wolfson, On Curve Matching, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 12(5), 483--489, (1990).
Y. Lamdan, J.T. Schwartz, H.J. Wolfson, Affine Invariant Model-Based Object Recognition, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 6(5), 578--589, (1990).
E. Kishon, T. Hastie, H. Wolfson, 3-D Curve Matching using Splines, J. of Robotic Systems 8(6), 723-743, (1991).
H.J. Wolfson, Generalizing the Generalized Hough Transform, Pattern Recognition Letters 12(9), 565-573, (1991).
R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Efficient Detection of Three – Dimensional Motifs in Biological Macromolecules by Computer Vision Techniques, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 88, 10495-10499, (1991).
E. Sali, H. Wolfson, Texture Classification in Aerial Photographs and Satellite Data, Int. J. on Remote Sensing 13:18, 3395-3408, (1992).
D. Fischer, O. Bachar, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, An Efficient Automated Computer Vision Based Technique for Detection of Three Dimensional Structural Motifs in Proteins, J. of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, 9(4), 769-789, (1992).
O. Bachar, D. Fischer, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, A Computer Vision Based Technique for 3-D Sequence-Independent Structural Comparison of Proteins, Protein Engineering 6(3), 279-288 (1993).
D. Fischer, R. Norel, H.J. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Surface Motifs by a Computer Vision Technique: Searches, Detection and Implications for Protein-Ligand Recognition, PROTEINS: Structure, Function, and Genetics, 16, 278-292, (1993).
D. Fischer, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Spatial, Sequence-Order-Independent Structural Comparison of α/ β Proteins: Evolutionary Implications, J. of Biom. Struct. & Dynamics 11(2), 367-380 (1993).
R. Norel, D. Fischer, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Molecular Surface Recognition by a Computer Vision based Technique, Protein Engineering 7, 39-46, (1994).
S. L. Lin, R. Nussinov, D. Fischer, H.J. Wolfson, Molecular Surface Representations by Sparse Critical Points, PROTEINS: Structure, Function, and Genetics, 18, 94-101, (1994).
R. Norel, S. L. Lin, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Shape Complementarity at Protein-Protein Interfaces, Biopolymers 34, 933-940 (1994).
D. Fischer, H.J. Wolfson, S. L. Lin, R. Nussinov, Three-dimensional, sequence-order independent Structural Comparison of a Serine Protease against the Crystallographic Database Reveals Active Site Similarities : Potential Implications to Evolution and to Protein Folding, Protein Science 3, 769-778 (1994),
D. Fischer, S.L. Lin, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, A Geometry-Based Suite of Molecular Docking Processes, Journal of Molecular Biology, 248, 459-477, (1995).
R. Norel, S. L. Lin, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Molecular Surface Complementarity at Protein-Protein Interfaces: The Critical Role Played by Surface Normals at Well Placed, Sparse Points in Docking, Journal of Molecular Biology, 252, 263-273, (1995).
D. Reisfeld, H. Wolfson, Y. Yeshurun, Context-Free Attentional Operators: The Generalized Symmetry Transform, Int. J. on Computer Vision, 14(2), 119-130, (1995).
B. Sandak, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, An Automated Computer Vision and Robotics-Based Technique for 3-D Flexible Biomolecular Docking and Matching, Computer Applications in the Biosciences (CABIOS), 11(1), 87-99, (1995).
D. Fischer, C.J. Tsai, R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, A 3-D Sequence-Independent Representation of the Protein Databank, Protein Engineering, 8(10), 981-997 (1995).
D. Naor, D. Fischer, R.L. Jernigan, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Amino Acid Pair Interchanges at Spatially Conserved Locations, Journal of Molecular Biology, 256 (5), 924-938 (1996).
C.J. Tsai, S.L. Lin, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Techniques for Searching for Structural Similarities Between Protein Cores, Protein Surfaces and Between Protein-Protein Interfaces, Techniques in Protein Chemistry, VII, 419-429, (1996).
C.J. Tsai, S.L. Lin, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Protein-Protein Interfaces. Architectures and Interactions in Protein-Protein Interfaces and in Protein Cores. Similarities and Differences, Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 31(2), 127-152, (1996).
C.J. Tsai, S.L. Lin, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, A Dataset of Protein-Protein Interfaces Generated with a Sequence Order Independent Comparison Technique, Journal of Molecular Biology, 260(4), 604-620, (1996).
K.Y. Kupeev and H.J. Wolfson, A New Method of Estimating Shape Similarity, Pattern Recognition Letters, 17, 873-887, (1996).
V. Alesker, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, Detection of Non-Topological Motifs in Protein Structures, Protein Engineering, 9(12), 1103-1119, (1996).
C.J. Tsai, S.L. Lin, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Studies of Protein-Protein Interfaces: A Statistical Analysis of the Hydrophobic Effect, Protein Science, 6, 53-64, (1997).
S.L. Lin, D. Xu, A. Li, M. Rosen, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Investigation of the Enzymatic Mechanism of the Yeast Chorismate Mutase by Docking a Transition State Analog, Journal of Molecular Biology, 271(5), 838-845, (1997).
H.J. Wolfson and 'I.' Rigoutsos, Geometric Hashing: An Overview, IEEE Computational Science and Engineering, 4(4), 10-21, (1997).
E. Azarya-Sprinzak, D. Naor, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Interchanges of Spatially Neighboring Residues in Structurally Conserved Environments, Protein Engineering, 10(10), 1109-1122, (1997).
M. Rosen, S.L. Lin, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Molecular surface comparisons in searches for active sites and functional similarity, Protein Engineering, 11, 263-277, (1998).
B. Sandak, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Flexible Docking Allowing Induced Fit in Proteins: Insights From an Open to Closed Conformational Isomers, PROTEINS, 32, 159-174, (1998).
B. Sandak, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, A Method for Biomolecular Structural Recognition and Docking Allowing Conformational Flexibility, J. of Computational Biology, 5(4), 631--654, (1998).
G. Verbitsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Flexible Structural Comparison Allowing Hinge Bending, Swiveling Motions, PROTEINS, 34, 232--254, (1999).
R. Norel, D. Petrey, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Examination of Shape Complementarity in Docking of Unbound Proteins, PROTEINS, 36, 307--317, (1999).
R. Norel, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Small Molecule Recognition: Solid Angles Surface representation and Molecular Shape Complementarity, Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening, 2, 223-236, (1999).
S. Kumar, B. Ma, C.J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Folding Funnels and Conformational Transitions via Hinge-Bending Motions, Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics, 31, 141--164, (1999).
R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, Efficient Computational Algorithms for Docking and for Generating and Matching a Library of Epitopes I. Rigid and Flexible Docking Algorithms, Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening, vol. 2, 249--259, (1999).
R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, Efficient Computational Algorithms for Docking and for Generating and Matching a Library of Epitopes II: Computer Vision-Based Techniques for the Generation and Utilization of Functional Epitopes, Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening, 2, 261--269, (1999).
Z. Hu, B. Ma, H. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Conservation of Polar Residues as Hot Spots at Protein Interfaces, PROTEINS, 39, 331--342, (2000).
N. Leibowitz, Z.Y. Fligelman, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, An Automated Multiple Structure Alignment and Detection of a Common Substructural Motif, PROTEINS: Structure, Function and Genetics, 43, 235--245, (2001).
N. Leibowitz, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, MUSTA - a General, Efficient, Automated Method for Multiple Structure Alignment and Detection of Common Motifs: Application to Proteins, J. of Computational Biology, 8(2), 93--121, (2001).
S. Kumar, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Protein Flexibility and Electrostatic Interactions, IBM J. of Research and Development (Special Issue on Deep Computing in the Life Sciences), 43(3-4), 499--512, (2001).
C-J. Tsai, B. Ma, Y.Y. Sham, S. Kumar, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, A Hierarchical Building-Block-Based Computational Scheme for Protein Structure Prediction, IBM J. of Research and Development (Special Issue on Deep Computing in the Life Sciences), 43(3-4), 513--523, (2001).
B. Ma, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Protein Functional Epitopes: Hot Spots, Dynamics and Combinatorial Libraries, Current Opinion in Structural Biology, 11(3), 364--369, (2001).
C-J. Tsai, B. Ma, S. Kumar, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Protein Folding: Binding of Conformationally Fluctuating Building Blocks via Population Selection, Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 36(5), 399-433, (2001).
B. Ma, M. Shatsky, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Multiple Diverse Ligands binding at a Single Site: A Matter of Pre-existing Populations, Protein Science, 11, 184-197, (2002).
I. Halperin, B. Ma, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Principles of Docking: An Overview of Search Algorithms and a Guide to Scoring Functions, Proteins, 47, 409-443, (2002).
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Flexible Protein Alignment and Hinge Detection, Proteins, 48(2), 242-256, (2002).
N. Haspel, C-J. Tsai. H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Hierarchical protein folding pathways: A computational study of protein fragments, Proteins, 51, 203—251, (2003).
H. Benyamini, K. Gunasekaran, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Conservation and Amyloid Formation: A Study of the Gelsolin-Like Family, Proteins, 51, 266—282, (2003).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, Y. Inbar, V. Polak, M. Shatsky, H. Benyamini, A. Barzilay, O. Dror, N. Haspel, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, Taking Geometry to its Edge: Fast Unbound Rigid (and Hinge-bent) Docking, Proteins, 52, 107—112, (2003).
N. Haspel, C-J. Tsai, H. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Reducing the Computational Complexity of Protein Folding via Fragment Folding and Assembly, Protein Science 12, 1177—1187, (2003).
A. Oron, K. Gunasekaran, H. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Using 'DelPhi' to Compute Electrostatic Potentials and Asses their Contribution to Interactions, Current Protocols in Bioinformatics, 8.4.1-8.4.12, (2003).
B. Ma, T. Elkayam, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Protein-protein Interactions: Structurally Conserved Residues Distinguish between Binding Sites and Exposed Protein Surfaces, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc., USA, 100(10), 5772—5777, (2003).
I. Halperin, H.J. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, SiteLight: Binding Site Prediction using Phage Display Libraries, Protein Science, 12, 1344-1359, (2003).
H. Benyamini, K. Gunasekaran, H. Wolfson & R. Nussinov, 2-Microglobulin Amyloidosis: Insight from Conservation Analysis and Fibril Modelling by Protein Docking Techniques, J. Mol. Biol. 330, 159—174, (2003).
O. Dror, H. Benyamini, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, MASS : A Method for Multiple Structural Alignment by Secondary Structures, Bioinformatics, Vol. 19, suppl. 1 (ISMB’03 issue), pp. i95-i104 (2003).
Y. Inbar, H. Benyamini, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Protein Structure Prediction via Combinatorial Assembly of Sub-structural Units, Bioinformatics, Vol. 19, suppl. 1 (ISMB’03 issue), pp. i158-i168 (2003).
O. Dror, H. Benyamini, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Multiple Structural Alignment by Secondary Structures: An Algorithm and Applications, Protein Science 12, 2492-2507, (2003).
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, FlexProt: Alignment of Flexible Protein Structures without a Predefinition of Hinge Regions, J. Computational Biology, 11(1), 83—106, (2004).
O. Dror, A. Shulman, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, Predicting Molecular Interactions in Silico: I. A guide to Pharmacophore Identification and its Applications to Drug Design, Curr. Med. Chem. 11(1), 71--90, (2004).
D. Schneidman, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, Predicting Molecular Interactions in Silico: II. Protein-Protein and Protein-Drug Docking, Curr. Med. Chem. 11(1), 91—107, (2004).
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, A Method for Simultaneous Alignment of Multiple Protein Structures, Proteins 56, 143—156, (2004).
O. Keskin, C.-J. Tsai, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, A New, Structurally Non-Redundant, Diverse Dataset of Protein-Protein Interfaces and its Implications, Protein Science, 13, 1043—1055, (2004).
A. Barzilay, 'S. Kumar', H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, A Potential Folding-Function Inter-relationship in Proteins, Proteins, 56, 635—649, (2004).
T.Gidalevitz, C. Biswas, H. Ding, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, H.J. Wolfson, F. Stevens, S. Radford, and Y. Argon, Identification of N-terminal peptide binding site of GRP94, J. Biol. Chem., 279(16), 16543—16552, (2004).
A. Shulman, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, Recognition of Functional Sites in Protein Structures, J. Mol. Biol., 339, 607—633, (2004).
I. Halperin, H. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Protein-Protein Interactions: Coupling of Structurally Conserved Residues and of Hot Spots across Interfaces. Implications for Docking, Structure, 12, 1027—1038, (2004).
M. Shatsky, O. Dror, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, R. Nussinov, H. Wolfson, BioInfo3D: A Suite of Tools for Structural Bioinformatics, Nuc. Acids Res., 32 (NAR, web server issue), W503—W507, (2004).
D. Zanuy, 'N. Haspel', H.H. Tsai, B. Ma, K. Gunasekaran, H. J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Side chain interactions determine the amyloid organization: A single layer -sheet molecular structure of the calcitonin peptide segment 15 – 19, Phys., Biol., 1, 89—99, (2004).
H. J. Wolfson, M. Shatsky, D. Duhovny, A. Shulman, B. Ma, and R. Nussinov, Structural Bioinformatics: Advanced Tools for Structural Pattern Discovery in Proteins, Current Protein & Peptide Science, 6 (2), 171—183, (2005).
Y. Inbar, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Multiple Docking for Protein Structure Prediction, Int. J. Robotics Research, 24, 131--150, (2005).
N. Haspel, D. Zanuy, B. Ma, H. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, A comparative study of amyloid fibril formation by residues 15-19 of the human calcitonin hormone: A single b-sheet model with a small hydrophobic core, J. Mol. Biol., 345(5), 1213—1227, (2005).
S. Mintz, A. Shulman-Peleg, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Generation and Analysis of a Protein-Protein Interface Dataset with Similar Chemical and Spatial Patterns of Interactions, Proteins, 61, 6--20, (2005).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, Y. Inbar, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, Geometry Based Flexible and Symmetric Protein Docking, Proteins, 60, 217--223, (2005).
Y. Inbar, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, I. Halperin, A. Oron, R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, Approaching the CAPRI Challenge with an Efficient Geometry Based Docking, Proteins, 60, 224--231, (2005).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, Y. Inbar, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, PatchDock and SymmDock: servers for rigid and symmetric docking, Nuc. Acids Res., 33 (NAR, web server issue), W363—W367, (2005).
A. Shulman-Peleg, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, SiteEngines: Recognition and Comparison of Binding Sites and Protein-Protein Interfaces, Nuc. Acids Res. 33 (NAR, web server issue), W337—W341, (2005).
Y. Inbar, H. Benyamini, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, Prediction of Multi-Molecular Assemblies by Multiple Docking, J. Mol. Biol., 349(2), 241—449, (2005).
O. Dror, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, ARTS: Alignment of RNA Tertiary Structures, Bioinformatics, Vol. 21, (ECCB’2005 issue), ii47—ii53, (2005).
H. Benyamini, K. Gunasekaran, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Fibril Modeling by Sequence and Structure Conservation Analysis Combined with Protein Docking Techniques: 2-Microglobulin Amyloidosis, Biochim Biophys Acta, 1753, 121—130, (2005).
Y. Inbar, H. Benyamini, R. Nussinov, and H. J. Wolfson, Combinatorial Docking Approach for Structure Prediction of Large Proteins and Multi-Molecular Assemblies, J. Phys. Biol, 2, S156—S165, (2005).
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Optimization of Multiple Sequence Alignment Based on Multiple Structure Alignment, Proteins, 62, 209—217, (2006).
C. Aleman, D. Zanuy, A.I. Jimenez, C. Cativiela, N. Haspel, J. Zheng, J. Casanovas, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Concepts and Schemes for the Re-engineering of Physical Protein Modules: Generating Nanodevices via targeted Replacements with Constrained Amino Acids, J. Phys. Biol, 2 (4), 156—165, (2006).
M. Shatsky, A. Shulman-Peleg, R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, The Multiple Common Point Set Problem and its Application to Molecule Binding Pattern Detection, J. of Computational Biology (special RECOMB’2005 issue), 13(2), 407—428, (2006).
I. Halperin, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Correlated Mutations: Advances and Limitations. A study on Fusion Proteins and the Cohesin-Dockerin Families, Proteins, 63(4), 832—845, (2006).
H. Benyamini, A. Shulman-Peleg, H.J. Wolfson, B. Belogorodsky, L. Fadeev and M. Gozin, Interaction of C60-Fullerene and Carboxyfullerene with Proteins: Docking and Binding Site Alignment, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 17(2), 378—386, (2006).
G. Weinreb, N. Haspel, H. J. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, A permissive secondary structure-guided superimposition tool for clustering of protein fragments toward protein structure prediction via fragment assembly, Bioinformatics 22(11), 1343—1352, (2006).
O. Dror, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, The ARTS web server for aligning RNA tertiary structures, Nuc. Acids Res. 34 (NAR, web server issue), W412—W415, (2006).
N. Haspel, D. Zanuy, C. Aleman, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, De novo tubular nanostructure design based on self-assembly of beta-helical protein motifs, Structure, 14 (7), 1137—1148, (2006).
O. Dror, K. Lasker, R. Nussinov and H. Wolfson, EMatch: An Efficient Method for Aligning Atomic Resolution Subunits into Intermediate Resolution cryo-EM Maps of Large Macromolecular Assemblies, Acta Cryst. Sect. D63: Biological Crystallography, 42—49, (2007).
K. Lasker, O. Dror, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, and H. Wolfson, EMatch: Discovery of High Resolution Structural Homologues of Protein Domains in Intermediate Resolution Cryo-EM, IEEE/ACM Trans. on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 4(1), 28—39, (2007).
C-J. Tsai, J. Zheng, D. Zanuy, N. Haspel, H. Wolfson, C. Aleman and R. Nussinov, Principles of Nanostructures Design with Protein Building Blocks, Proteins, 68(1), 1—27, (2007).
D. Fishelovitch, S. Shaik, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov , Structural dynamics of the cooperative binding of organic molecules in the human Cytochrome P450 (Cyp450) 3A4, J. Amer. Chem. Soc. (JACS), 129(6), 1602—1611, (2007).
U. Emekli, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, H. J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, T. Haliloglu, HingeProt: Automated Prediction of Hinges in Protein Structures, Proteins, 70(4), 1219—1227, (2007).
N. Haspel, D. Zanuy, J. Zheng, C. Aleman, H. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Changing the charge distribution of -helical based nanostructures can provide the conditions for charge transfer, Biophysical J., 93(1), 245—253, (2007).
N. Andrusier, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, FireDock: Fast Interaction Refinement in Molecular Docking, Proteins, 69, 139—159, (2007).
A. Shulman-Peleg, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, Spatial chemical conservation of hot spot interactions in protein-protein complexes, BMC Biology , 5:43 (11pp), (2007).
N. Miled, Y. Yan, W-C. Hon, O. Perisic, M. Zvelebil, Y. Inbar, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, H. J. Wolfson, J.M. Backer and R. L. Williams, Mechanism of two classes of Cancer Mutations in the Phosphoinoisitide 3-Kinase Catalytic Subunit, Science, 317 (5835), 239—241, (2007).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, R. Nussinov and H. J. Wolfson, Automatic Prediction of Protein Interactions with Large Scale Motion, Proteins, 69 (4), 764—773, (2007).
D. Fischelovitch, C. Hazan, H. Hirao. H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, S. Shaik, QM/MM study of the active species of the human cytochrome P450 3A4, and the influence thereof of the multiple substrate binding, J Phys Chem B., 111(49), 13822—13832, (2007).
M. K. Julsing, N. P. Vasilev, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, R. Muntendam, H. J. Woerdenbag, W. J. Quax, H. J. Wolfson, I. Ionkova, O. Kayser, Metabolic stereoselectivity of cytochrome P450 3A4 towards deoxypodophyllotoxin: in silico predictions and experimental validation, European J. of Medicinal Chemistry , 43(6):1171--1179, (2008).
M. Topf, K. Lasker, B. Webb, H. Wolfson, W. Chiu. A. Sali, Protein Structure Fitting and Refinement Guided by Cryo-EM Density, Structure, 16(2), 295—307, (2008).
I. Kifer, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Constructing Templates for Protein Structure Prediction by Simulation of Protein Folding Pathways, Proteins, 73(2):271-289, (2008).
E. Mashiach, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, N. Andrusier, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, FireDock: A Web Server for Fast Interaction Refinement in Molecular Docking, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), Voll. 36, W229—232, (2008).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, O. Dror, Y. Inbar, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, PharmaGist: a Web Server for Ligand Based Pharmacophore Detection, Nucleic Acids Research. (NAR), Vol. 36, W223--228, (2008).
A. Shulman-Peleg, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, MultiBind and MAPPIS: Web servers for multiple alignment of protein 3D binding sites and their interactions, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), Vol.36, W260--W264, (2008).
E. Yaffe', D. Fischelovitch, H. J. Wolfson, D. Halperin, R. Nussinov,' MolAxis: A server for Identification of Channels in Macromolecules, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), Vol. 36, W210—215, (2008).
A. Shulman-Peleg, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, Prediction of interacting single-stranded RNA bases by protein binding patterns, J. Mol. Biol, 379 (2), 299—316, (2008).
E. Yaffe', D. Fischelovitch, H. J. Wolfson, D. Halperin, R. Nussinov,' MolAxis: Efficient and Accurate Identification of Channels in Macromolecules, Proteins, 73(1):72--86, (2008).
N. Andrusier, E.Mashiach, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, Principles of flexible protein-protein docking, Proteins, 73(2):271-289, (2008).
D. Schneidman-Duhovny, O. Dror, Y. Inbar, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, Deterministic Pharmacophore Detection via Multiple Flexible Alignment of Drug-Like Molecules, J Comput Biol., 15(7): 737-754, (2008).
O. Dror, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, A. Shulman-Peleg, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson and R. Sharan, Structural Similarity of Genetically Interacting Proteins, BMC Systems Biology (2008), 2:69 (7pp.); doi:10.1186/1752-0509-2-69.
M. Abraham, O. Dror, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, Analysis and classification of RNA tertiary structures, RNA, 14: 2274-2289, (2008).
A. Shulman-Peleg, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H. J. Wolfson, RsiteDB: a database of protein binding pockets that interact with RNA nucleotide bases, Nucleic Acids Research, Vol.37, D369-|D373, (2009) ; doi: 10.1093/nar/gkn759.
K. Lasker, M. Topf, A. Sali, H.J. Wolfson, Inferential optimization for fitting multiple components into a cryoEM map of their assembly, J. Mol. Biol. 388: 180-194, (2009).
D. Fischelovitch, S. Shaik, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Theoretical characterization of substrate access/exit channels in the human cytochrome P450 3A4 enzyme: involvement of phenylalanine residues in the gating mechanism, J Phys Chem B., 113(39), 13018—13025, (2009).
I. Buch, B.R. Brooks, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Computational Validation of Protein Nanotubes, Nano Lett., 9(3), 1096—1102, (2009).
O. Dror, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, Y. Inbar, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Novel approach for efficient pharmacophore-based virtual screening: method and applications, J Chem Inf Model., 49(10), 2333-2343, (2009).
E. Mashiach, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, FiberDock: Flexible Induced-fit Backbone Refinement in Molecular Docking, Proteins, 78(6), 1503—1519, (2010).
D. Fischelovitch, S. Shaik, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, How does the reductase help to regulate the catalytic cycle of cytochrome P450 3A4 using the conserved water channel?, J Phys Chem B., 114(17), 5964—5970, (2010).
E. Mashiach', R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson,' FiberDock: A Web Server for Flexible Induced-Fit Backbone Refinement in Molecular Docking, Nucl. Acids Res. 38(suppl 2), W457-W461, (2010), doi:10.1093/nar/gkq373.
E. Mashiach, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, A. Peri, Y. Shavit, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, An Integrated Suite of Fast Docking Algorithms, Proteins, 78(15), 3197—3204, (2010).
K. Lasker, A. Sali, H.J. Wolfson, Determining macromolecular assembly structures by molecular docking and fitting into an electron density map, Proteins, 78(15), 3205--3211, (2010).
I. Buch, D. Fischelovitch, N. London, B. Raveh, H. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Allosteric Regulation of Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3: A Theoretical Study, Biochemistry, 49(51), 1890—1901, (2010).
I. Buch, C.J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Symmetry-based self-assembled nanotubes constructed using native protein structures: the key role of flexible linkers, Protein Pept Lett, 18(4), 362--372 (2011).
I. Kifer, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Protein Structure Prediction using a Docking-based Hierarchical Folding Scheme, Proteins, 79(6) 1759—1773, (2011).
I. Kifer, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, GOSSIP: A Method for Fast and Accurate Global Alignment of Protein Structures, Bioinformatics, 27(7), 925—932, (2011).
E. Mashiach-Farkash, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, SymmRef: A Flexible Refinement Method for Symmetric Multimers, Proteins, in press, (2011), doi:10.1002/prot.23082
E. Tjioe, K. Lasker, B. Webb, A. Sali, H.J. Wolfson, Multifit: a web server for fitting multiple protein structures into their electron microscopy density map, Nucl. Acids Res., in press, (2011).
I. Banitt, H.J. Wolfson, ParaDock – a Flexible DNA rigid protein geometric complementarity based docking algorithm, submitted.
F. Karchemsky, E. Drug, E. Mashiach-Farkash, H. Wolfson, M. Gozin, O. Regev, Milk – a Surprising Diameter-Sensitive Dispersant for Carbon Nanotubes, submitted.
G. Burdea, H.J. Wolfson, Solving Jigsaw Puzzles Using a Robot, In "Intelligent Robotic Systems" (S. Tzafestas, ed.), Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, Chapter 17, 637-671 (1991).
Y. Yeshurun, D. Reisfeld, H. Wolfson, Symmetry: a Context Free Cue for Foveated Vision, In ``Neural Networks for Perception" (H. Wechsler, ed.), Academic Press, Vol. 1, Chapter II.15, 477-491, (1992).
H.J. Wolfson, Y. Lamdan, Transformation Invariant Indexing, In ``Geometric Invariants in Computer Vision" (J. Mundy, A. Zisserman, eds.), MIT Press, Chapter 17, 335-353 (1992).
H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, From Computer Vision to Protein Structure and Association, In ``Computational Methods in Molecular Biology” (S. Salzberg, D.B. Searls, S. Kasif, eds.), Elsevier Science B.V., Chapter 14, 313-334 (1998).
H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Geometrical Docking Algorithms: A Practical Approach, In ``Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 143 : Protein Structure Prediction", (D. Webster, ed.), Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, Chapter 17, 377-397, (2000).
C. J. Tsai, R. Norel, H. Wolfson, J. V. Maizel, and R. Nussinov, Protein-ligand interactions: Energetic contributions and shape complementarity, In ``Encyclopedia of Life Sciences" (S. Robertson, ed.), London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Nature Publishing group, 8pp., web-based encyclopedia www.els.net, (2001) .
B. Ma, S. Kumar, C. J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson, N. Sinha, and R. Nussinov, Protein-ligand interactions: Induced Fit? , In ``Encyclopedia of Life Sciences" (S. Robertson, ed.), London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Nature Publishing group, 8pp., web-based encyclopedia www.els.net, (2001) .
R. Nussinov, B. Ma, and H.J. Wolfson , Computational Methods for Docking and Applications to Drug Design: Functional Epitopes and Combinatorial Libraries, In "Current Topics in Computational Biology" (T. Jiang, Y. Xu, M.Q. Zhang, ed.’s), MIT Press, Chapter 19, 503-524, (2002).
N. Haspel. C-J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, From the Building Blocks Model to Protein Structure Prediction, In "Protein Structure Prediction : Bioinformatic Approach" (I.Tsigelny, ed.), International University Line, La Jolla, CA., chapter 8, 201-226, (2002).
S. Kumar, A. Barzilai, N. Haspel. Y.Y. Sham, C-J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Critical Building Blocks in Proteins: A Common Theme for Folding and Function, In "Recent Research Developments in Protein Folding, Stability and Design" (M.M. Gromiha and S. Selvaraj, ed.’s), Chapter 15, Research Signpost, Kerala, India, (2002).
H.J. Wolfson, Spatial Pattern Detection in Structural Bioinformatics, In “Mathematical Methods for Protein Structure Analysis and Design”, (C. Guerra and S. Istrail, ed.’s), Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics 2666, Springer Verlag, Chapter 2, pp. 35-56, (2003).
N. Haspel, D. Zanuy, H.H. Tsai, B. Ma, H. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Computational approaches and tools for establishing structural models for short amyloid-forming peptides, In “Amyloid Proteins: The Beta Pleated Sheet Conformation And Disease”, (J.D. Sipe, ed.), VCH-Wiley, Chapter 13, pp. 301—316, (2005).
O. Dror , A. Shulman-Peleg , R. Nussinov , H.J. Wolfson, Predicting molecular interactions in silico: 'I.' A updated guide to pharmacophore identification and its applications to drug design,. "Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry", Vol.3, (A.U. Rahman and A.B. Reitz, eds), Bentham Science, pp. 551—584, (2006).
D. Schneidman, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, Predicting Molecular Interactions in Silico: II. Protein-Protein and Protein-Drug Docking, "Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry", Vol.3, (A.U. Rahman and A.B. Reitz, eds), Bentham Science, pp. 585—613, (2006).
'N. Haspel', G. Weinreb, Y. Inbar, H.H. Tsai, C.J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, A hierarchical protein folding scheme based on the building block folding model, [javascript:AL_get(this, 'jour', 'Methods Mol Biol.'); Methods Mol Biol.], vol. 350, 189-204, (2007).
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Algorithms for Multiple Structure Alignment and Structure Derived Multiple Sequence Alignment, [javascript:AL_get(this, 'jour', 'Methods Mol Biol.'); Methods Mol Biol.], vol. 413, 125--146, (2008).
'I. Buch, C.J. Tsai, H.J. Wolfson, R. Nussinov, Self-assembly of fused homo-oligomers to create nanotubes, In Nanostructure Design: Methods and Protocols (Gazit, E. Nussinov, R., eds.), Vol. 474, pp. 117-131. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, (2008).
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings
E. Kishon, H. Wolfson, 3-D Curve Matching, Proc. of the AAAI Workshop on Spatial Reasoning and Multi-Sensor Fusion, St.Charles, Illinois, Oct. 1987, pp.250-261.
H. Wolfson, On Curve Matching, Proc. of the IEEE Computer Soc. Workshop on Computer Vision, Miami-Beach, Florida, Nov.30-Dec.2 1987, pp.307-310.
Y. Lamdan, J.T. Schwartz, H. Wolfson, On Recognition of 3-D Objects from 2-D Images, Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Philadelphia, Pa., April 1988, pp. 1407-1413.
Y. Lamdan, J.T. Schwartz, H.J. Wolfson, Object Recognition by Affine Invariant Matching, Proc. of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Ann-Arbor, Michigan, June 1988, pp. 335-344.
J. Hong, H. Wolfson, An Improved Model-Based Matching Method using Footprints, Proc. of the 9'th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Rome, Italy, Nov. 1988, pp. 72-78.
Y. Lamdan, H.J. Wolfson, Geometric Hashing: A General and Efficient Model-Based Recognition Scheme, Proc. of the Second International Conference on Computer Vision, Tampa, Florida, Dec. 1988, pp. 238-249.
H.J. Wolfson, Model Based Object Recognition by `Geometric Hashing’, Proc. of the First European Conference on Computer Vision, Antibes, France, April 1990, pp. 526-536, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 427, Springer Verlag.
E.Kishon, H. Wolfson, T. Hastie, 3-D Curve Matching using Splines, Proc. of the First European Conference on Computer Vision, Antibes,France, April 1990, pp. 589-591, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 427, Springer Verlag.
D. Reisfeld, H. Wolfson, Y. Yeshurun, Detection of Interest Points Using Symmetry, Third International Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 62-65, Dec. 1990, Osaka, Japan.
E. Sali, H. Wolfson, Texture Classification in Aerial Photographs and Satellite Data, Proc. of the 7'th Israeli Conference on AI, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Dec. 1990, pp. 325-334, Elsevier, North-Holland.
D. Reisfeld, H. Wolfson, Y. Yeshurun, Realization of the Intuitive Notion of Symmetry for Feature Detection, Proc. of the 7'th Israeli Conference on AI, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Dec. 1990, pp. 335-344, Elsevier, North-Holland.
H.J. Wolfson, On the Recognition of Articulated Objects (Generalizing the Generalized Hough Transform), Proc. of the IAPR International Workshop on Visual Form, pp. 603-612, May 1991, Capri, Italy, Plenum Press.
A. Beinglass, H.J. Wolfson, Articulated Object Recognition, or: How to Generalize the Generalized Hough Transform, Proc. of the 1991 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 461-466, June 1991, Maui, Hawaii.
Y. Lamdan, H.J. Wolfson', On the Error Analysis of `Geometric Hashing, Proc. of the 1991 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 22-27, June 1991, Maui, Hawaii; (also Courant Inst. Robotics Report 213, Oct. 1989).
D. Fischer, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, 3-D Substructure Matching in Protein Molecules , 3’rd Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, April 1992, Tucson, Arizona, USA, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 644, pp. 136-150, Springer-Verlag.
D. Fischer, R. Norel, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, 3-D Docking of Protein Molecules, 4'th Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, June 1993, Padova, Italy, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 684, pp. 20-34, Springer-Verlag.
B. Sandak, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, 3-D Flexible Docking of Molecules,Workshop on Shape and Pattern Matching in Computational Biology (held in conjunction with the 1994 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition), June 1994, Seattle, Washington, pp. 41-54.
E. Cohen, H.J. Wolfson, Partial Matching of 3-D Objects in CAD/CAM Systems, 12’th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Oct. 1994, Jerusalem, Israel, pp. 483-487.
K. Kupeev, H.J. Wolfson, On Shape Similarity, 12'th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Oct. 1994, Jerusalem, Israel, pp. 227-231.
D. Fischer, S. Lin, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Docking of Protein Molecules, 12'th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Oct. 1994, Jerusalem, Israel, pp. 145-149.
K.Y. Kupeev, H.J. Wolfson, Perceptual Convexity, SPIE International Symposium on Vision Geometry IV, 1995, USA, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 2573, pp.125-136 .
B. Sandak, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Docking of Conformationally Flexible Proteins, 7’th Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM'96), June 1996, Laguna Beach, California, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1075, pp. 271-287, Springer-Verlag.
B. Sandak, H.J. Wolfson and R. Nussinov, Hinge-Bending at Molecular Interfaces : Automated Docking of a Dihydroxyethylene-Containing Inhibitor to the HIV-1 Protease, Biological Struct. & Dynamics, Proc. of the Ninth Conversation, State Univ. of New York, Albany, Eds. R.H. Sarma & M.H. Sarma, pp. 233-248, Adenine Press, Albany, NY, 1997.
R. Norel, S.L. Lin, D. Xu, H.J. Wolfson, and R.Nussinov, Molecular Surface Variability and Induced Conformational Changes upon Protein-Protein Associations, Structure, Motion, Interaction and Expression of Biological Macromolecules, Proc. of the Tenth Conversation, State Univ. of New York, Albany, Eds. R.H. Sarma & M.H. Sarma, Vol. 2, pp. 33--51, Adenine Press, Albany, NY, 1998.
N. Leibowitz, Z.Y. Fligelman, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Multiple Structural Alignment and Core Detection by Geometric Hashing, Proc. of the 7'th International Conference on Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology, Heidelberg, Germany, August 1999, pp. 169--177, (T. Lengauer et al., ed.’s), AAAI Press, Menlo Park, California. Received the ISMB'99 outstanding paper award.
M. Shatsky, Z.Y. Fligelman, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Alignment of Flexible Protein Structures Proc. of the 8'th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, San Diego, Ca., August 2000, pp. 329-343, (R. Altman et al.,ed.'s), AAAI Press, Menlo Park, California.
M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, MultiProt - a Multiple Protein Structural Alignment Algorithm, 2’nd Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI’02 as part of ALGO’02), Rome, Italy, Sept. 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2452, pp. 235-250, Springer Verlag.
D. Duhovny, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Efficient Unbound Docking of Rigid Molecules, 2’nd Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI’02 as part of ALGO’02), Rome, Italy, Sept. 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2452, pp. 185-200, Springer Verlag.
'A. Shulman-Peleg, S. Mintz, R. Nussinov and H. Wolfson, Protein-Protein Interfaces: Recognition of Similar Spatial and Chemical Organizations, 4’th Int. Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI’04 as part of ALGO’04), Bergen, Norway, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3240, pp. 194--205, Springer Verlag (2004).
M. Shatsky, A. Shulman-Peleg, R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, Recognition of Binding Patterns Common to a Set of Protein Structures, 9’th Int. Conf. on Research in Comp. Bio. (RECOMB’2005), Boston, MA, USA, Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, Vol. 3500, pp. 440—455, Springer Verlag (2005).
K. Lasker, O. Dror, R. Nussinov, H.J. Wolfson, Discovery of protein structures in EM maps, 5’th Int. Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI’05 as part of ALGO’05), Mallorca, Spain, Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, Vol. 3692, pp. 423--434, (2005).
A. Shulman-Peleg, M. Shatsky, R. Nussinov, and H.J. Wolfson, MAPPIS: Multiple 3D Alignment of Protein-Protein Interfaces, 1’st Int. Symp. on Comp. Life Sc. (CompLife’05), Konstanz, Germany, Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, Springer Verlag , Vol. 3695, pp. 91—103, (2005).
Y. Inbar, D. Schneidman-Duhovny, O. Dror, R. Nussinov and H.J. Wolfson, Deterministic Pharmacophore Detection via Multiple Flexible Alignment of Drug-Like Molecules, 11’th Int. Conf. on Research in Comp. Bio. (RECOMB'2007), Oakland USA, Apr. 2007, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Vol. 4453, pp. 412-429, (2007).
Invited Papers in Conference Proceedings
H. Wolfson, E.Schonberg, A.Kalvin, Y. Lamdan, Solving Jigsaw Puzzles by Computer, ORSA/TIMS J. Nat. Meeting, Miami Beach, Fl., Oct. 1986, p. 127 (abstract). Also 3'rd Israeli AI and Computer Vision Conf., Dec. 1986.
J.T. Schwartz, H.J. Wolfson, Improved Shape-Signature and Matching Methods for Model-Based Robotic Vision, Proc. of the Workshop on Space Telerobotics, (ed. Rodriguez), Vol.II, NASA, Jet Propulsion Lab., Pasadena, California, January 1987, pp. 103-109.
R. Hummel, H. Wolfson, Affine Invariant Matching, Proc. of the DARPA Image Understanding Workshop, April 1988, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 351-364.
H.J. Wolfson, Object Recognition by Transformation Invariant Indexing, ESPRIT Workshop on `Invariants for Recognition and Positioning' in conjunction with the 2'nd European Conf. on Computer Vision, May 1992, Genoa, Italy.
H.J. Wolfson, Application of 3-D Pattern Matching to Drug Design, Proc. of the Japan-Israel Workshop on Computer Vision and Visual Communication (CVVC'94), Oct. 1994, Jerusalem, Israel, pp. 51-53.
V.D. Milman, H. Wolfson, Topics in Finite Metric Spaces, Israel Seminar on Geometrical Aspects of Functional Analysis (1983-1984), Lecture No. IV.
H. Wolfson, J.Bourgain's Proof of the Equivalence of Metric and Standard Types, Israel Seminar on Geometrical Aspects of Functional Analysis (1983-1984), Lecture No. XIII-1.
I. Kirsh, H. Wolfson, A New Method for Character Recognition of Hebrew Handwriting, Eskenazy Inst. of Computer Sciences, Technical Report 241/92, Tel Aviv University, (1992(.
Retrieved from "http://rack-wolfson2.cs.tau.ac.il/wk/index.php/Publications"
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Estonia Opens Museum of Banned Books
By Thom PeartDecember 15, 2020Inspired by Literature, Literary Places, News
In Tallin, Estonia, a museum has been opened dedicated to books from around the world that have been banned, burned, or censored. The project was spearheaded by Joseph Maximillian Dunnigan, originally from Scotland, but has lived in Estonia for the past five years while studying at Tallinn University. Dunnigan had previously lived in China, where he became interested in censorship and freedom of speech. During his studies for a master’s in social entrepreneurship, Dunnigan decided to create the museum.
“In the museum, books from different parts of the world will be exhibited to tell their stories and discuss issues related to the free expression of ideas,” said a statement from the museum.
“In addition, the aim is to conduct initial research on the history of censorship in Estonia, focusing on the period of Soviet occupation. In the museum, visitors can read books, touch them, read them and buy most of them.”
As Estonian World reports, books are sorted by category, and there are books that have been banned from many different countries, including the UK, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. There is also a section highlighting books that have been burned throughout history for numerous reasons.
“With the museum, we want to raise people’s awareness of the long history of censorship and the importance of freedom of speech. Freedom of thought and expression is not a universally accepted human right to this day. I am happy to contribute to the dissemination of freedom of speech with the museum,” said Dunnigan
“Estonia is an ideal place for such a project, because here we can present books that are still banned in so many big countries.”
If you happen to be in Estonia, you can visit the museum every Friday and Saturday from 11 AM to 6 PM.
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Plant Characteristics: Very vigorous, with narrow crowns and strong, upright cane growth
Fruit Characteristics:Large berries (up to 2.5 g and greater), strong blue color
Chill Hours:500 hours
Camellia is a mid-season southern highbush blueberry that has highly attractive berries, especially with regards to color and size. Plants are very vigorous with narrow crowns and strong, upright cane growth.
Commercial growers who want a high-quality, mid-season blueberry that takes them up to early rabbiteye ripening time should consider Camellia in areas where southern highbush are successfully grown. Camellia should also be a good choice of southern highbush for pick-your-own since flowering is a little later than most southern highbush varieties and the ripening period is somewhat extended.
A large berry size and strong blue fruit color make this selection desirable for marketing. Berries are large (up to 2.5 g and greater), firm and flavorful.
One of the more outstanding characteristics of Camellia is its high degree of plant vigor as compared to many other southern highbush cultivars, both with and without pine bark mulch. The variety has proven to be adaptable across a wide range of growing conditions. Camellia flowers and ripens five to nine days after Star in south Georgia. Camellia requires 500 chill hours.
Care should be taken to not over fertilize Camellia, as it can grow excessively. Recommended companion variety for cross pollination is Suziblue for commercial growers and Palmetto for home gardens.
Tested as TH-621, the Camellia blueberry was selected in 1996 at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station in Tifton, Ga., from a cross of MS-122 X MS-6 made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Camellia has been tested in plantings at Alapaha, Ga., since 1998.
Developed by D. Scott NeSmith of the University of Georgia, Camellia is a joint 2005 release by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the University of Georgia Agricultural Experiment Stations and the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service. This protected blueberry variety can be sold only by individuals licensed by the University of Georgia Research Foundation (UGARF) and Georgia Seed Development (GSD). USPP 18,151.
D. Scott NeSmith
Dr. D. Scott NeSmith’s blueberry research program at the University of Georgia emphasizes new variety development as well as cultural management of blueberries for the southeastern United States.
Since taking over the UGA blueberry breeding program in 1998, Dr. NeSmith has released and patented 10 new commercial blueberry varieties and two ornamental blueberry varieties. His breeding program is now considered one of the most active low- to-mid chill blueberry programs in the world. He joined UGA in 1990.
Dr. NeSmith has expanded UGA’s program globally through collaborative projects throughout the U.S. and many other countries including South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Japan, Europe, Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Peru, and Mexico. Much of his cultural management research has been with growth regulators in blueberries. He also conducts experiments on plant establishment, pollination, and post-harvest quality.
Dr. NeSmith is a member of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences (ASHS) and the International Society for Horticultural Sciences. He is a past President of the Southern Region ASHS and has served as an Associate Editor for the ASHS journal, HortScience.
Dr. NeSmith has received the D.W. Brooks Excellence in Research Award from UGA and in 2011 was selected as a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences. He has published more than 250 research papers, including more than 97 in refereed journals, and has received two awards for outstanding publications.
He graduated from the University of Georgia with B.S. and M.S. degrees. He obtained his Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
University of Georgia, Griffin Campus
Southern highbush variety
Early to mid-season
Large berries
Consistent blue color
Plant with Suziblue (commercial growers) or Palmetto (home gardens)
Cultivar Release
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Kevin Grigsby relaxes in his office after a Theatre Production class. Photo by Grace Matthews.
MC Technical Director’s door is always open
November 11, 2020 November 10, 2020 Grace Mathews 1 Comment
Kevin Grigsby’s office is eclectic to say the least. Tucked into a back corner of the Scene Shop at the very rear of the Clayton Center for the Arts, the room could not be more than ten feet wide but the crowd of shelves, filing cabinets, desk, and worn blue couch make it seem much smaller. The desk is littered with knickknacks and figurines: a Chewbacca bobblehead, a bright blue dice tower, a stuffed cat with a detachable head, a hand-knitted “F-bomb” teetering on the corner and one of the shelves situated behind the desk is a relic from the Maryville College Theatre department’s 2018 production of “9 to 5,” hand-painted by students on the scenic crew. The room may be small, but for many students in the MC theatre community it is a second home.
Grigsby himself is a bit of a character in the department. He’s been affectionately nicknamed the “Sasquatch” by at least four generations of college students and for good reason. He towers above the majority of his theatre and arts students with an attitude that can be said to match the John Wayne poster pinned to his wall: “Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.”
“I started working for the Clayton Center in August of 2016 and I’ve been the Technical Director since December of 2017,” Grigsby said, settling into his faded orange rolling chair behind his desk, “I graduated from here in May of 2006, I was away for ten years.”
“He spent his whole life running from it,” joked Blake Shepherd, a senior who claims to live in the shop, seated in the office.
There is always a steady flow of students in and out of the Technical Director’s office. They chat about projects, complain about classes, and nap on the little blue couch from the first moment the door is unlocked until its finally shut once the sun goes down. Grigsby likes to joke that he never really wanted kids but somehow ended up with more than 50 anyway. However, that traffic and daily connection has taken a hit in recent days, much like the rest of the theatre department.
“Simply put, absolutely nothing in our life is the way it used to be,” Grigsby said.
Theatre has taken a hefty blow since COVID-19 took its toll on the school. Most of the campus is unlikely to know that within the theatre department shows have been cancelled, senior theses are in jeopardy, and certain required classes are no longer available.
Meeting in large groups, something integral to the subject, is essentially impossible under COVID-19 safety regulations. Theatre operations have shifted so drastically, both academically and otherwise, that even those within the department find the department hard to recognize these days. With no shows to put on, no sets to build, and no projects to accomplish the entire department has changed at its core.
“I shouldn’t say changed, ‘changed’ implies it’s still there,” Grigsby said. “It’s been the death of everything we normally do.”
Despite the unfortunate place the department has found itself in, Grigsby is trying to keep things afloat and on track for his students. In his Theatre Production class, he has changed the typical curriculum of dividing up students to work on different crews to produce a live play or musical and instead has leaned into using this time to teach specific skills.
Students in Theatre Production now learn things like carpentry, lighting, and sound in a more individualized way with smaller projects of their own to work on throughout the semester.
“I felt like it would be a real benefit for people to leave this class with something they crafted that they can be proud of,” Grigsby said. “Because usually we leave this class with a whole show that we crafted and I didn’t want to completely lose that feeling.”
One group, as it turns out, is making a trebuchet, a type of catapult.
“I’m keeping the trebuchet,” Grigsby said.
Although much has changed for the average theatre student, even more has changed for those who oversee the department. COVID-19 guidelines have cut the hours of many theatre staff members, Grigsby included.
In a normal semester, Grigsby arrived early and left late. Even with his own duties as Technical Director and instructor for Theatre Production, Grigsby was the go-to for anyone who had projects in the other art departments and beyond. He facilitated sound systems for choir, built tables for judges for the band, provided tools for art classes, and worked on the multitude of theatre shows besides. Grigsby estimates that he used to work 55 hours a week.
“I was in here so much because I loved it,” he said. “I felt like people needed me.”
These days Grigsby’s usual 55 hours have been cut to 30 hours a week. Where he used to fill his hours with building sets, advising students, and supporting both the theatre department and the greater Clayton Center, he now comes in two hours before his 7 p.m. class starts.
The reduced hours have led inevitably to reduced pay for Grigsby and other Clayton staff. Many have had to make up for their lost income outside their employment at the college. For Grigsby, that has meant several part-time jobs including building fences and working as a bowling alley mechanic.
It has been a difficult adjustment for the Technical Director, who had big plans for the department this year and has now found himself in the debris comprised of scrapped projects, abandoned plans, and a flock of dejected students.
“Every other department in the fine arts, their students still have access to their workspaces to do independent projects,” Grigsby said. “All these kids still have to sign up and have scheduled times, but my students don’t have access to anything. The unfortunate fact of the matter is anything they need access to require dangerous power tools and–in the absence of someone to oversee that–they’ve lost out. And that makes me feel like I’m failing them, like I’m not doing my job.”
But many theatre students do not see things the same way.
“There hasn’t been as much access to this safe space, but under the circumstances he’s been just as accessible and I think that’s what keeps a lot of the students feeling secure,” said Hudson Perrine, a senior and Theatre Production student.
The little home away from home that the theatre department and Grigsby helped cultivate has dwindled in recent days, but his office is still open whenever possible as a safe haven for students. Many of these students have grown to see Grigsby and the department not only as an instructor but as family.
Perrine recalls a time last semester where she was struggling to afford textbooks for her classes. For the first month of that Spring semester Perrine was trying to save money to get the books she needed for her eighteen hours’ worth of courses which only added on to the stress of trying to participate in her classes. She went to Grigsby, like many do, to vent about her anxieties and the undue pressure her situation was putting on her mental state. The very next day, she visited his office, and she found Grigsby had gotten all but one of the books required for her classes, borrowed from a friend of his who owned a bookstore.
Situations like these are not uncommon with Grigsby, who has helped numerous students review resumes, apply for jobs, and apply to graduate schools among the many other seemingly minor moments of support that mean the world to students like Perrine.
“Kevin is an instructor on campus that truly, truly cares about his students development whether it be in regards to technical knowledge or just growth as a person,” Shepherd said, echoing Perrine’s sentiment about the impact Grigsby has had on their college experience.
While Grigsby may lament the loss of a sense of community, he admits he still gets to enjoy his favorite part of the job— seeing the lights come on when for his students when they understand what he is trying to teach. That sense of accomplishment and pride is the part that means the most to him. Those moments may be few and far between due to the situation this year, but they are not lost altogether.
Though outlooks may be bleak now, there is a spark for hope for the spring. Grigsby is still able to see the bright side of the COVID-19 restrictions likely being carried on into Maryville’s next semester.
“I don’t expect things to change much,” he said, “But I know we’ll be better prepared.”
The days may be long and hard, but afterward Grigsby drives home. He sits on his front porch with his wife, lights a cigar, and talks about his day. He tells her about his students “usually until she’s tired of it.” What they’ve achieved, what they’re working on–bits of gossip, who’s mad a who, who started dating so-and-so–the details his gaggle of “children” tell to him throughout the day on his little blue couch. Because, after all, it is what he feels like he’s here for.
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One thought on “MC Technical Director’s door is always open”
Nancy Locklin-Sofer
Kevin Grigsby is a gift and I love this feature. He was a history major, so I’m not surprised by the trebuchet project. I always thought we should work with some engineering group to make one, but trust Kevin to make it a theater project. How awesome.
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WHAT WOMEN WANT will be released on February 17. Director Chen Daming, actors Andy Lau Tak Wa, Gong Li, Banny Chen, Yuan Li and others yesterday attended a Shanghai press conference. Two nights ago at the Beijing premiere, Wa Jai appeared in a black suit while Gong Li wore a silver evening gown.
At the Shanghai press conference, Wa Jai who was able to hear women's thoughts in the film was called "Casanova". Gong Li was called "Queen". They did not seem to care about the titles. The media asked Gong Li whether she felt like she was the queen. She said, "This is just a promotion, it's not bad! I like it very much. Queen in my heart is a very high position, I thank you for giving me this title." Wa Jai joked, "Everyone called me Heavenly King, I wouldn't really think I am a Heavenly King!"
They both have seen the original film but Gong Li felt that the Chinese version had more advantage. "In comparison to the 80s, after adaptation WHAT WOMEN WANT was filled with emotion and more charming. It added even more Chinese culture into it, the advantage is very strong." Wa Jai also said that all remake would be compared with the original. "INFERNAL AFFAIRS (MO GAN DOH) was remade in the U.S. We would feel it wasn't as good as ours but Americans liked it. The markets are different. WHAT WOMEN WANT was remade for the East. The biggest different was we are more reserved, the love and interpersonal relationships are more real."
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EMERGENCY ALERT COVID-19 Information for Teton County Click Here
Property owner participation and education is key to a fair system of taxation. Our goal is to ensure all taxpayers are aware of their rights and to make the process as efficient and painless as possible.
Wyoming Statute 39-13-103 directs that all property will be listed, valued and assessed as of January 1 of each year. Assessment Schedules must be mailed to all property owners on or before the fourth Monday of April. In 2015 Teton County schedules were mailed March 23.
Wyoming Statute 39-13-109(b)(i) requires persons wishing to contest their assessment to file not later than 30 days after the mail date a statement with the Assessor outlining their reason or disagreement with the assessment. The Assessor and Protestant must disclose witnesses and exchange information, evidence and documents relevant to the appeal no later than 30 days prior to the scheduled county board of equalization hearing. Hearings are scheduled for mid June.
Appealing Your Notice of Assessment
The "Total Valuation used to Calculate Tax" listed on the Notice of Assessment should represent the approximate fair market value of your property as of January 1st. If you disagree with the total valuation, we recommend that you first contact our office within 30 days of the "Date Mailed" on the assessment to review pertinent information and data used to calculate the total valuation. You may only appeal your value during the 30 day period by completing a form provided by the assessor’s office or filing a statement with the assessor specifying the reasons why the assessment is incorrect.
During the review/appeal period, you may provide any information you would like to have considered such as prior appraisals, market analysis, special conditions, or influences that may result in a change in value. The owner must provide an action desired, such as an estimate of value. Statements of "it's too high" or "it's wrong" are vague and not definable. An onsite outside and/or inside inspection may be scheduled at this time if necessary.
For residential properties, the Assessor will review the comparable sales for the property. If you desire, a copy of the comparable sales will be provided, but only during the 30-day appeal period.
Sales Information: Not Public Record
Note: Under Wyoming Statute 34-1-142, sales information is not a public record and must be kept confidential. Persons receiving sales information may not disclose it to other individuals. Property owners may disclose this information with the County Board of Equalization in conjunction with any hearing.
Official Appeal of Assessment - General Order of Proceedings
If, after a review, you feel the value of your property is still incorrect, you may file an official appeal with the County Board of Equalization, a board made up of the County Commissioners. Official Appeal of Assessment forms are available in the Assessor's Office. Copies of the form must be filed with the Assessor within 30 days of the mailed date shown on the notice of assessment (April 21, 2015). An appeal may be withdrawn at any time by written notification to the Clerk's and Assessor's offices.
You are notified by mail once a hearing date and time are set. No later than 30 days prior to the hearing, you (the Petitioner) and the County Assessor must disclose witnesses and exchange information, evidence, and documents relevant to the appeal. This should include anything that is to be presented as evidence during the hearing.
The County Commissioners serve as the County Board of Equalization. Other persons attending the hearing will include the hearing officer, recording secretary, secretary to the board, counsel for the board, and parties to the appeal.
Testimony & Evidence Presented
The Petitioner is first to present evidence or witnesses. Any testimony presented may be questioned by the Assessor, the Assessor's attorney, or a member of the board. Next, the Assessor or a representative presents evidence or witnesses. The testimony may be questioned by the Petitioner, his agent, or a member of the board.
After all testimony and evidence is presented, a brief closing statement may be made by each side.
The Board will notify participants in writing of their findings and any appeal action available to them no later than the first Monday in August.
State Board of Equalization Appeal
Evidence supporting your estimation of the fair market value must be included in the appeal. If you do not agree with the County Board of Equalization’s decision, you may appeal to the State Board of Equalization. Appeals to the State Board of Equalization must be filed within 30 days after the final action of the County Board of Equalization.
Agricultural Property
Assessment Schedule
Field Property Review
Present Worth Valuation
Residential Property (PDF)
Administration Building:
200 S Willow Street
Click here for contact information
Recycling Resources
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Core Committee
Chief Guest Mr. Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Managing Director and CEO, Bandhan.
Anjan Thakor is the John E. Simon Professor of Finance and director of the Ph.D. program at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Olin Business School in 2003, Professor Thakor was the Edward J. Frey Professor of Banking and Finance at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he also served as chairman of the Finance area. He has served on the faculties of Indiana University, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Professor Thakor has advised major companies including Whirlpool Corporation, Allison Engine Co., Citigroup, RR Donnelley, Dana Corporation, Anheuser-Busch, Zenith Corporation, Lincoln National Corporation, J.P. Morgan, Landscape Structures, Inc., CIGNA, Borg-Warner Automotive, Waxman Industries, Reuters, The Limited, Ryder Integrated Logistics, AT&T, CH2M Hill, Takata Corporation, Tyson Foods, Spartech, and Bunge. He has also served as an expert witness in federal cases involving banking litigation.
Since 1996, Jay R. Ritter has served as the Joseph Cordell Eminent Scholar in the Department of Finance at the University of Florida. He teaches corporate finance classes at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD level. Prof Ritter is known as “Mr. IPO” for his work on initial public offerings. He is a leading academic authority on the market for newly issued stock. He has previously served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois and was a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. During 2014-15, he is serving as president of the Financial Management Association. He received his BA, MA, and PhD (1981) degrees in economics and finance from the University of Chicago.
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The national public ice and snow season attracts nearly 100 million people, covering 184 cities
This ice and snow season is expected to host nearly 1,200 national or regional linkage mass events.
The seventh national public ice and snow season will start on the 29th. Recently, the Winter Sports Management Center of the State General Administration of Sports held a media briefing at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics training venue-"Ice Altar" to introduce the current situation of the ice and snow season. According to Ding Dong, deputy director of the center, this ice and snow season will cover 184 prefectures and cities across the country, with nearly 100 million people participating.
Since its establishment in 2014, the National Volkswagen Ice and Snow Season has been successfully held for 6 sessions. Over the past six years, tens of thousands of mass ice and snow events have been organized across the country.
With the theme of "inspiring the Chinese dream and brewing a new chapter in ice and snow", this ice and snow season will continue to carry out a series of ice and snow events in various forms, rich in content, and close to the masses. It is expected that mass events with national or regional linkage will be held. Nearly 1,200 games, including not only traditional ice and snow events and activities, but also ice and snow parks, training camps, fun games, Nadam, online answering questions, rollers, etc. The Winter Sports Center will also provide the masses with splendid, online and offline ice and snow events and experiences through demonstration, guidance and display. On this basis, the coverage of this event is expected to reach a new high. 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities and 184 prefectures and cities across the country will participate. More than half of the prefectures and cities across the country will hold related activities to directly participate in ice and snow events and accept ice and snow. The number of sports knowledge propaganda and training has reached nearly 100 million person-times, the largest number in previous ice and snow seasons.
Ding Dong said that the current ice and snow season is the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics preparations for the "sprint", a concentrated display of the development of my country's ice and snow sports in the new era. The organizing committee will actively explore new methods, new methods, new ideas, and new technologies for the promotion and popularization of ice and snow sports under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, and extensive use of modern science and technology such as 5G, combining online and offline, and innovative The design and arrangement of the events are focused, hierarchically and targeted to carry out mass ice and snow events nationwide.
According to the arrangement, the launching ceremony of this ice and snow season will be held at 10 am on the 29th at Jingyuetan Scenic Area, Changchun City, Jilin Province. There will be cross-country skiing competitions, mass ice and snow events and activities, and Northeast folklore exhibitions at the ceremony site. The branch venues in Shijingshan District of Beijing, Chengde City of Hebei Province, Shennongjia District of Hubei Province, and Sanya City of Hainan Province will also hold the launching ceremony simultaneously and start with the host The ceremony was simultaneously presented through 5G video connection, creating a scene of "mass ice and snow gala" and further showing the prosperous situation of the ice and snow sports "south expansion, west expansion, east advancement".
In addition, the "China Ice and Snow Map" jointly created by the Winter Sports Center and related units will also become a highlight of this ice and snow season. Ice and Snow Map is a "data, visualization, and fusion" big data product that integrates ice and snow sports experience, ice and snow event participation, and ice and snow tourism customization. It subsidizes ice and snow sports venues, ice and snow event information, and ice and snow venues across the country. Information, etc., are displayed online in a centralized and unified manner, and the public can enjoy the “one-stop” service of inquiry, ticket purchase, transportation, and accommodation, and easily enjoy the fun of ice and snow sports. (*Article source: Beijing Daily)
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Next:Looking Forward to 2021: Six Opportunities for Culture and Tourism
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Seleni Institute Meets Challenges
Nitzia Logothetis
Seleni Institute of New York, along with its co-founder and Executive Chairwoman, Nitzia Logothetis, was presented with the Archbishop Iakovos Leadership 100 Award for Excellence at the Saturday Forum on February 15, 2014, at the 23rd Annual Leadership 100 Conference, for its innovative work in creating a new modality for the treatment of women and their families. Founded in 2011 by Logothetis with her husband, George M. Logothetis, Chairman and CEO of the Libra Group, the Institute was named for Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon and Eleni, the heroic main character in the book of that name by Nicholas Gage, combining the concepts of emotion and bravery, according to Logothetis.
Logothetis, a trained psychotherapist with a professional background that ranged from work in Latin America, the UK and the USA, spoke of the challenges women face in achieving pregnancy and delivering and raising children. These include accompanying high incidences of infertility, post-partum depression, miscarriage, still births and suicides, along with the underfunding of mental health compared to that of physical diseases. She said the role of Seleni was to destigmatize this “suffering shrouded in silence”, emphasizing that her research and experience had shown that children whose mothers do well, do well themselves and children whose mothers do poorly, do poorly. She went on to describe the three dimensions of Seleni's outreach. The first dimension is the Seleni Institute’s clinic that treats 300 women and their families a week with psychiatry, psychotherapy, parental, sleep and lactation support, as well as a variety of services such as acupuncture. Second is an extensive online presence that offers evidence-based, reasoned and practical wisdom based on modern science and empathy. Third are grants to researches in women’s mental health from both national and international universities.
Andrew Stephanopoulos
In conclusion, she paid tribute to her husband for his personal and professional support and said that Seleni offered women “a shoulder, a comfort, a resource, a community and empathy and healing”, lifting the burden that society places on women and their families, noting that 90% financial support is offered to those in need.
Prior to her address and after an introduction by Connie Cotros, wife of Charles Cortros, outgoing Leadership 100 Chairman, Andrew Stephanopoulos, Clinical Director of the Seleni Institute also addressed the Forum. He stated that the Institute was transforming mental health and wellness treatment describing the phenomenon of stigma as a defense that had to be overcome by connecting women at risk with a community of support. While also speaking of the treatment, online presence and research at Seleni Institute, Stephanopoulos spoke of needed change to the conversation on mental health issues through public information, sound media and the training of physicians, leading to the day when screening for depression and anxiety would be as commonplace as for physical disorders.
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Lancer Productions Preview: The Little Mermaid
William DeMuria, Editor-in-Chief, Pop Culture Editor
Saint John Vianney High School’s Lancer Productions is gearing up for their next big showstopper: Disney’s The Little Mermaid!
In past years, SJV’s Spring Musical has not been one to miss. Most recently, productions of Disney’s High School Musical, Grease, and Footloose have attracted large numbers and have made Lancer Productions a household name at SJV, with each performance almost always being sold out.
The Little Mermaid tells the story of a young mermaid, Ariel (played by senior Sophia Murillo), who longs to live on land with the humans. It isn’t until she rescues and falls in love with Prince Eric (played by senior William DeMuria), a human, that Ariel gets to experience life on land. Standing in the way of the star-crossed lovers are Ariel’s father, King Triton (played by senior Nicholas Hunt), and Ursula (played by junior Ariana Maturi), an evil sea witch.
Despite the show being months away, the cast is filled with excitement as they take on roles unlike ever before. “Playing the role of Ariel has been a dream of mine ever since I was a little girl, and I think many people would say the same thing, which is why I’m so honored to have been given the opportunity to bring this character to life,” shared Murillo, who is set to play the titular role The Little Mermaid.
Sure to blow the crowd away is junior Greyson Riley, who will take on the fun-loving role of Sebastian, a crab who King Triton assigns to watch over Ariel. “I am so excited to play Sebastian because it’s unlike any other role I’ve played before. I love to challenge myself, and perfecting Sebastian’s accent is definitely a challenge that I’m willing to accept,” said Riley.
Hitting the stage is also junior Ariana Maturi, who is thrilled to take on the villainous role of Ursula in this year’s spring musical. “Typically, I find it so much more fun to play the evil role in shows. It’s kind of interesting to take on a dark persona with a role, which is why I love doing it,” Maturi shared. Maturi, in addition to the spring musicals, has also participated in many of the fall dramas, such as The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon and John Lennon and Me.
SJV is anticipating a big crowd for this production, and are expecting many sold-out shows, considering the popularity of the musical. With that being said, The Little Mermaid marks the first time that an additional matinee showing of the Spring Musical will be held on a Saturday, in addition to the Saturday show at 7:00 and the Sunday matinee.
Mark your calendars! Disney’s The Little Mermaid will be performed on April 12 and 13 at 7:00 p.m., April 14 at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., and April 15 at 2:00 p.m.
Prepare to go “under the sea” with this phenomenal cast for one weekend only. You won’t want to miss it!
“SJV Overhaulin’: A Vette for a Veteran”
It’s “Their Time”
“The God Squad” Arrives at SJV
SJV’s Spooky Walk-a-Thon 2017
A New Tradition Begins with SJV’s Homecoming Dance
Spirit Week: From Dress Downs to Homecoming
Spirit Week Arrives at SJV!
Welcome, Class of 2021!
Congratulations to the SJV Class of 2017!
Lancer Productions Presents: Footloose!
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By Date (.pdf)
By Date (.html)
By Member/Senator
Hansard – SVG Parliament
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines House of Assembly
Thur. 28th Jan., 2010
No. 1 Fifth Session Eighth ParliamentThursday 28th January, 2010Prayers Motion Honourable Honourable Honourable Honourable Honourable Honourable Honourable SuspensionSAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD) ADVANCE COPY OFFICIAL REPORT CONTENTS Thursday 28th January 2010Glen Beache Julian Francis Michael Browne Terrance Ollivierre St. Claire Leacock Michelle Fife Conrad Sayers1FIFTH SITTING28th JANUARY 2010THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATESOFFICIAL REPORTPROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE FIRST MEETING, FIFTH SESSION OF THE EIGHTH PARLIAMENT OF SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES CONSTITUTED AS SET OUT IN SCHEDULE 2 TO THE SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES ORDER, 1979.HOUSE OF ASSEMBLYThe Honourable House of Assembly met at 9:15 a.m. in the Assembly Chamber, Court House, Kingstown.Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning, National Security, Grenadines and Legal Affairs Dr. the Honourable Ralph GonsalvesAttorney General Honourable Judith Jones-MorganDeputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Trade Honourable Louis StrakerMinister of National Mobilisation, Social Development, Gender Affairs, Non-Governmental Organisations, Local Government, Persons with Disabilities, Youths and SportsHonourable Michael BrowneMinister of Education Honourable Girlyn MiguelMember for Central WindwardMember for Central LeewardMember for West St. George Member for MarriaquaPRAYERS MR. SPEAKER IN THE CHAIRHonourable Hendrick AlexanderPresent MEMBERS OF CABINET2Minister of Rural Transformation, Information, Postal Service and Ecclesiastical AffairsHonourable Selmon WaltersMinister of Health and the Environment Dr. Douglas SlaterMinister of Urban Development, Culture, Labour and Electoral Matters Rene BaptisteMinister of Transport and Works Honourable Clayton BurginMinister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Honourable Montgomery DanielMinister of Telecommunications, Science Technology and Industry Honourable Dr. Jerrol ThompsonMinister of Tourism Honourable Glen BeacheHonourable Conrad SayersMinister of Housing, Informal Human Settlements, Physical Planning Lands and Surveys Honourable Saboto CaesarHonourable Julian Francis Honourable Rochelle FordeParliamentary Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office Honourable Michelle FifeHonourable Arnhim Eustace Dr. the Honourable Godwin FridayMember for South Central WindwardMember for South LeewardMember for West Kingstown Member for East St. GeorgeMember for North WindwardMember for North Leeward Member for South Windward Member for Central KingstownGovernment SenatorGovernment Senator Government Senator/Deputy SpeakerGovernment SenatorOTHER MEMBERS OF THE HOUSELeader of the Opposition Member for East KingstownMember for Northern Grenadines3Terrance Ollivierre Honourable Major St. Claire Leacock Honourable Daniel CummingsMember for Southern Grenadines Opposition Senator Opposition Senator4SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINESHOUSE OF ASSEMBLY THURSDAY 28TH JANUARY, 2010PRAYERSThe Honourable Speaker, Hendrick Alexander read the Prayers of the House.MOTION HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: Mr. Speaker, I beg to move that under Standing Order 12(5) thattoday’s proceedings be exempted from the hours of Sitting.Question put and agreed to.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: And Honourable Member let me remind you that our charge..., I would suggest that I should read the charge again. I therefore have pleasure in doing so. It is taken from the book of Philippians Chapter 4:8 and it is, “brethren whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.” That was Apostle Paul’s last charge to the Philippians in his Epistle to the Philippians and therefore, I believe that this should guide us throughout our debate during the course of the day and the rest of this week. Let me recognise all those who are visiting with us this morning as we continue the debate in this budgetary exercise debate, Honourable Minister of Tourism.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members, this might be or it might not be, depending on the Honourable Prime Minister, my last Budget debate depends when the bell is rung and I have participated in quite a few not as many as some of my colleagues on this side and on the other side, but quite a few and as we go through this exercise, Mr. Speaker, and we listened to the Prime Minister’s presentation on the Budget and we listened to the Honourable Leader of the Opposition’s reply and we listened to each other, I am always amazed by some of the things that I hear.I listened to the Honourable Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, and one has to wonder, sorry not the Honourable Prime Minister, the Honourable Leader of the Opposition and one has to wonder if the Opposition is living on this planet. I listened to the debate from that side and you can tell they do not sing from the same hymn sheet. You get one idea from one member, another from the other, one you are spending too much at a time like this, another one gets up and said Mr. Speaker, that we need to spend more money here, more money there. And what amazes me about this debate, Mr. Speaker, is simply this, we are dealing with an Opposition that was in 5Government for 17 years, I think they built one school in 17 years, compared to how many have we built so far? How many have we built so far? One new school in 17 years, but what amazes me even more, Mr. Speaker, is that in all the debate from the Opposition, not once, not one time do I hear a new idea of how they will deal with things. Not once do I hear that. I hear the why you do not do this, you are spending too much money, but you need to spend more money here, but never do I hear one idea.I hear the things about victimization and I am sorry you know, Mr. Speaker, because you know the Honourable Leader of the Opposition, every time I speak he is never in this Parliament, never is he in this Parliament when I speak and I would like him to be here, because I do not want him to listen to it on the radio, [interjection] because I was waiting on you, I was waiting on you, because you see, Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines has a habit of waiting on me to speak and then he gets up and then he says some rubbish, sorry, pardon the language, Mr. Speaker, then he says some things that really makes no sense, because he knows I cannot get up and speak of..., [interjection] well I am scared of you, I am scared of you Honourable Mr. Friday, so now that I am scared of you I am dealing with you head on and I am facing my fears. Fair enough? I am facing my fears [laughter] [applause] facing my fears head on.Mr. Speaker, I hear about victimization you know and a number of times I have tried to speak about victimization in this Honourable House and tears have come to my eyes and I have to stop, because Mr. Speaker, I say this, nobody probably with the exception of the Honourable Prime Minister in this Honourable House, oh sorry, and my God brother here sitting to the immediate left of me, has been in politics longer than I have. I have been in it before I was born, I have been it before Sir Vincent knew I was coming and I have been labour through and through and through, born and bred and will remain forevermore. So it amazes me, Mr. Speaker, when I hear the Opposition talk about victimization. This is an Opposition after the 1984 elections, Mr. Speaker, I remember I was 14 years old, they sent two policemen to our house, they took away my father’s passport, they took away his firearm, they cut water, electricity and phone, and this is the same Opposition that is speaking about victimization you know. The same Opposition that is speaking about victimization, Mr. Speaker, but that is not the worst of it, you see I wanted the Honourable Leader of the Opposition to be here this morning you know, because in that same 1984 elections the day after elections, this is the same person that called the Comptroller of Customs at that time and told him not to report to work. He said, there is no job for you at Customs, do not report to work. You know, we will make you Post Master General or something, but do not you dare report to Customs, there is no job for you there.The same Honourable Leader of the Opposition. But Mr. Speaker, not only from the Honourable Leader of the Opposition, I come to the Honourable Senator Leacock, before the 2001 elections, either before the 2001 or the 1998 elections, Mr. Speaker, this is the same person who said, when we win back that those of you who have voted for labour, we will deal with you.HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member is speaking a terrible untruth, I have never, ever in my life made such statement publicly and or privately. Never ever made such statement in my life publicly and or privately and you have asked us this morning to be honest in this debate. Let us lift our debate and be truthful and debate to stop the character of deification. Please Mr. Speaker.6HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Mr. Speaker, you know what I apologise, because what he says is that only NDP people should get work under an NDP Government.HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I also never, ever said that, never, ever said only NDP people should get work. I have never said that in my life.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member, let us move on..., HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, you cannot let it be degenerated like that. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member, let us move on, it seems to me that..., HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: I am not apologising, because...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right, let us just move on. I know there were statements that were assigned to the Senator in relation to an address he made at Sion Hill, I remember that, but let us just move on please.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: All right, Mr. Speaker, I move on from that you see, but I listened to the debate yesterday also from the Honourable Member for Northern Grenadines, Mr. Speaker and you know.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Mr. Speaker, the rules require that if the Honourable Senator Leacock rose on a Point of Order, he said the remark that was made by the Honourable Minister of Tourism was incorrect and you need to make a ruling on it and he repeated it the second time, he still did the same thing.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member made an apology and I asked that we move on with the debate and still stand on that. Let us move on with the debate.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Member for the Northern Grenadines yesterday and you know I have never seen the Opposition so confident since I have been here.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Listen to me, I have made a ruling if you want to protest my ruling there is a particular way you can do it according to order, I am saying if you want to protest my ruling there is a particular way you can do it according to order. I am saying, I asked that this matter be discontinued. The Honourable gentleman decided that he will discontinue his line, the Senator denied making statement, I accepted that, I do not have to say I rule that this is that and this is the other. I accepted that, you cannot tell me how I as Speaker must run this and if I hear you continue as you often do defying my ruling, I will deal with it according to thing, if you have to work against any ruling that I made, there is a principle in the Standing Orders and you do that. You see the thing about it, is that sometimes when the boots is on one foot it is all right, when it is on the other foot it is something else, because there are many things that go on in here that I have not made7a ruling on, on which I should have ruled and you have to understand this. Let us continue with the debate please.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Much obliged, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I am compelled to rise again out of respect for the office and as I have said to you, Mr. Speaker, in recognition of your rule in taking control of this House. On my way here, Mr. Speaker, I heard you repeat a prayer, I had not heard it yesterday, but I hear it for myself this morning one in which I identified, I thought, Mr. Speaker, you would have gone on to reiterate what you said yesterday about being heard in the silence and making disparagement and so on and so forth and I have been as I have said to you privately, Mr. Speaker, going overboard to be of good manners in this House, to be in accord with the rules of the House. We as politicians in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are exposed on a daily basis to all sorts of sad comments by the public, much of it we cannot live with as politicians, both sides of the House, there is therefore no good reason why we as Honourable men should contribute further to that by being disparaging of each other. Let us make no bones about it, it hurts and it hurts terribly at times when things are said about us that we know to be untruthful. I have never, ever in my life made any statements towards only NDP people or if NDP gets into office I will victimize anybody at all, I am not that stupid, never, ever. You said you have heard statements made at public forums.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member, listen to me...,HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: You said you have heard statements. I have made statements in that regard and if you want me to repeat what I have said, I can say that, because I can live with that, because I am a business person in this country for over 30 years, have in my employ now people of both sides of the fence and I think Honourable Mike Browne knows that too and some of them are extremely good people who would never vote for me, they would never vote for my party, but they perform creditably and that is all the basis on which I judge my workers. I do not discriminate against people comments and I have no problems, Mr. Speaker, if you want me to repeat that that a political party that gets into office places some priority of supporting those people who have got them into office, I find that is fair game. I find that is fair game.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Thank you very much..., HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: And therefore do not ascribe unto me statements that I did notsay. I have never said that NDP should hire their own NDP or ULP should hire ULP. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I heard that...,HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: And he said it a second time, Mr. Speaker, but you rule on the first statement.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I heard that and I asked him to discontinue any such discussion. 8HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: But he did not withdraw the remark Mr. Speaker, he should have withdrawn the remark as being untruthful, not discontinue, withdraw it, because it is an untruth.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Well you see the thing about it Senator Leacock...,HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: It is an untruth.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Senator Leacock, the thing about it, he may have proof of what he is saying and I may ask him to prove what he is saying in the mean while, what do I do, wait until he comes up with proof to continue the debate? So I said, look, since we are in doubt about the issue, let us forget..., let us just leave it and move on with the substantial part about the debate. That is all I am saying.HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: But Mr. Speaker, I am in support of you, you know, we have to resolve this...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: That is all I am saying.HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: I am begging for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. We have to be consistent, each time you have been faced with that situation, Mr. Speaker, you asked the Honourable Member to produce the evidence or the proof.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: No, that is not true. HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: That is not true, Mr. Speaker, I give way to you Mr. Speaker. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: No, that is not true, that is not true at all. HONOURABLE ST. CAIRE LEACOCK: Well then I give way to you Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: That is not true at all. Yes, because I made a statement in my opening remarks on Tuesday when I was dealing with the issue and Senator Leacock and I, nobody has to know what transpired between Senator Leacock and I and I would not say what transpired, but out of that I decide that when people make statements I would ask them to prove that statement and that was a decision that I made..., a statement I made on Tuesday asking Members to try not to make any statement that they cannot prove, but it is not something that was always established. It is not so at all, it is not so and let me caution Honourable Members, because we are running against time on this debate. Yesterday, we saw a Member who should have had 45 minutes debating, utilised 1 hour 4 minutes in time because of cross-talk, interruptions, some of course which are relevant and such like and I believe that there are other issues, there are other business that many of us want to get on with and want to complete this debate in the House, that is why I am asking Members, let us make statements that we are sure we can verify. We can say, yes this is the proof that is the proof. Yesterday for some reason the Minister of Health was adamant on an issue and I asked the Honourable Senator Cummings to prove it, he said he had the proof, he did, the Minister came back in the afternoon, I allowed him about a9minute or so to apologise for that stance he took earlier which he did, I believe which is accepted by Senator Cummings and I am still asking Members please, to say things that we know are true, things that you know are honest and things that you know are of good report. Very often sometimes, we say things maybe in the heat of our moment, we do not often recollect and when we hear them back, we deny them. Sometimes this happens to many of us, but let us be very honest with the things we say. Let us get on with the debate, there is so much substance in this issue that we can deal with, let us get on with the debate and as to the cross-talk, I think sometimes it gets too annoying. There are people who actually text me and say that the cross-talk is affecting the quality of the broadcast. So therefore, let us minimize them. We do not have to talk on every issue and today is a very short day. If the Member say something and you have to object to it, there are provisions in the rule, you either can ask to explain it if the Member wants to give way, or you rule on a point of order. Let us move in this direction and let us get on with the debate.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, I agree with you, I think we can go a lot faster if the Opposition just takes everything I say as factual, we can move a lot faster [laughter].Mr. Speaker, since we deal with that, let me go to a first-hand experience of victimization personally. Mr. Speaker at point in [interjection] I withdraw that, Mr. Speaker, not everything I say is factual. Let me go to a personal experience of victimization. Mr. Speaker, in 1997/1988 or 1989 I do not know how many people would remember that time and so on, I was still in Grammar School at that point, Mr. Speaker, I was the faster sprinter in St. Vincent and the Grenadines [interjection] no. fastest period not at my age, period. Mr. Speaker, I cannot remember what games they were but a team was sent in..., was picked and was sent in for approval to the Ministry of Sports, but Mr. Speaker, fastest sprinter in the country at that time and it comes out it one change, one removal from the whole list and that is my name and up to this day cannot give a reason for it that is personal experience that is not me listening anywhere, Mr. Speaker that is what happened to me because I was Sir Vincent’s son [interjection] exactly and because of all of that Mr. Speaker, I did not get an athletic scholarship. So let me hear from the Opposition about victimization, because I have felt it personally and that is how the NDP administration used to operate this country, Mr. Speaker. No regard for anybody, laugh in your face.I will give you another personal experience. I used to have to catch a van every morning to school from Argyle, Mr. Speaker, no problem with that many of us caught vans to school. At that point the then Minister Cruickshank when they used to be abusing Government vehicles up and down St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I remember, his children used to past me on the side and actually stick their heads out and laugh and you see the amazing thing is you know, Mr. Speaker, one of those said children is now an engineer at the Ministry of Transport and Works of which I was the Junior Minister in the first term of this administration, but Mr. Speaker, I was raised better than that, I did nothing, used to stick out their heads and laugh, Mr. Speaker, I got no problem with that. I might be mauger, but I got broad shoulders and I took it ..., and I thank God, Mr. Speaker, I had great parents, I have great parents. But Mr. Speaker, I know of the victimization. But you see, as I was saying before I was interrupted, Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Member for the Northern Grenadines yesterday and he is confident, they are confident, I have never seen them so confident in this Honourable House. Usually, by the time we start speaking, they usually back down in a corner Mr. Speaker, but I think they seem to have gotten some confidence from the Referendum. You know I heard them speak about only in a short time coming10that you know whenever the Prime Minister decides to call elections, well they will be in Government right after that.Mr. Speaker, you know I used to once say I would like somebody to tell me what was accomplished from 1984 into 2001, what significant project could that administration have bragged about, because I was totally shocked yesterday when Ottley Hall was brought up by the Opposition. Because from a political stand point, if my administration was responsible for that failure and that embarrassment to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I would stay away from it as much as possible. So I was shocked when it was raised yesterday, because how could you explain what is it? A thousand US was on the list for coffee maker? I think something like US$8000 for a regular computer; all those sorts of things and you are bringing up Ottley Hall in this Honourable House, where if it was not for this Government we would still be hanging with that debt. Ottley Hall is..., I mean is the Opposition really serious about business that you were still trying to defend it and tell me that well, you know, Sir James Mitchell made it clear that this project would pay off in the end. If this project pays off in the end, Mr. Speaker, it is because of the work that the Prime Minister and this administration have done to clear the debt [applause] not because of anything they have done. A project that is worth what $7 million that we paid US$160 million for and we are still speaking about this? You see, but I know you know, Mr. Speaker, they do not want that investigation to continue, they are hoping that we forget about it. I have heard some of their supporters say; well you all are spending so much money on this investigation. The money we have spent on this investigation, Mr. Speaker, is nothing compared to what Vincentians have lost because of the NDP administration during that time, nothing at all.Mr. Speaker, I listened to them, I heard them speak about tourism and the direction tourism should go in and how important tourism is to the development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I do not think there is anybody in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mr. Speaker, who will not tell you how important tourism is to the development of this country. As I tell my staff and I say many times, this is what is paying the bills, Mr. Speaker. But I always laugh at the Opposition when it comes to tourism because the same issue that the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines spend 25 minutes of his debate on yesterday, the same issue, Mr. Speaker, when they were protesting that outside the cruise ship terminal when a cruise ship was in and we had passengers turned back because they felt that the Opposition was protesting visitors coming to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. As much as my staff and the taxi drivers tried to correct that and some of them came back out, what made it even worse, was a Member of the Opposition being on a (what you call it a mega phone?) mega phone, Mr. Speaker, because I remember it was a Royal Caribbean Ship and there were quite a few Vincentians working on that ship and we had just gotten Royal Caribbean back to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but a Member of the Opposition getting on the mega phone and saying basically, look at you all, you all are just servants for the people on there. I remember that, Mr. Speaker [interjection] yes, Mr. Lynch said it on the mega phone and not one of you corrected him and I brought it up here when it was done in this Honourable Parliament, I brought it up here, not one of them corrected Lynch and you want to tell me about the importance of tourism to you all, when you had no regard for how that was affecting our tourism product. I brought it up here, they say, let us get over this shock face thing, because we know it took place and then we speak about the importance of tourism and how much we want to do with and so on. I agree with the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines, Mr. Speaker, I agree with the walkway in Bequia that it11needs to be done and it is something that we will be looking at. But then Mr. Speaker, I also agree that this is one country. It is St. Vincent and the Grenadines.You know I remember with the good morning America programme the other day, Mr. Speaker, we got some complaints that it was only the Grenadines that were showing on that programme. Mind you, the usual thing with a lot of our media people, they do not ask questions otherwise, they would have known that there was another programme to come soon on St. Vincent. But Mr. Speaker, it does not matter if that programme was on the Grenadines, even though they say at the beginning, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, because it benefits us all. Once we get visitors into St. Vincent and the Grenadines, it does not matter if St. Vincent, Bequia, Mayreau it benefits us all.Mr. Speaker, I also listen as..., you know and I cannot understand why in this lifetime, the Opposition is so much against this international airport. Here is a project that would benefit us greatly, not only for tourism, but for business, for agriculture, it is a project that is multifaceted but yet Mr. Speaker, they are against it. A project that would, I mean I hear about the numbers and I am coming to the numbers, the wrong figures that the Leader of the Opposition give in his debate, Mr. Speaker, I will deal with that a bit later Mr. Speaker, but here is a project that will benefit St. Vincent and the Grenadines in so many ways, not only for tourism, but employment, Mr. Speaker, lots and lots of employment and I want to give Vincentians an idea, Mr. Speaker, of exactly what I am talking about and these are just a few things. Job creation from the operation of the New Argyle International Airport, Mr. Speaker, we will be looking at fuel time co-operators, ICT personnel, electric and electronic personnel, airport police, security personnel, administration, fire department personnel, maintenance of terminal buildings, maintenance of runway and parameter fences etc., cargo shed personnel, that is just to name a few, Mr. Speaker, that is job creation you know when the airport is finished.Then, Mr. Speaker, there are jobs that we already have at the ET Joshua, but because of the magnitude of the Argyle International Airport, you will need to increase personnel. The MET Officers, air traffic controllers, passenger screening officers, immigration officers, taxi drivers, automobile drivers, cleaners, banking personnel, tourism personnel, agricultural personnel, veterinarian personnel and I am not even covering the range of job creation that would take place once the Argyle International Airport is completed. But you know what I have not heard them say is that when the NDP gets into office in 2030, anywhere down there, are you going to close down the airport, since you are so much against it, or are we going to hear from the NDP again that once again they have the money in their pocket, or they are checking their pocket to do something else? You know and if the Opposition is so great with ideas, I mean, I remember last election reading their document, the manifesto, [interjection] or the economic plan, thank you very much, the economic plan. Mr. Speaker, I wouldn’t think that there was an economic leader in that party. No fresh ideas at all.So Mr. Speaker, I go to tourism and I go to some of the things that have been said, some of the untruths that have been said and maybe I should not call them untruths, Mr. Speaker, because I believe the Honourable Leader of the Opposition really got those figures from I cannot remember if he said the CDB or ECCB, but the figures were very wrong, very, very wrong. But Mr. Speaker, I wonder when I listen to them if they understand that there is a financial crisis internationally, but that if they were in office by some miracle, if they would know how to deal with it.12Mr. Speaker, at a time like this, one does not hide their face you know. We have to make sure that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is ready to take advantage of anything when the world comes out of this financial crisis. You do not wait until you come out of it then start to prepare to take advantage of it. We have to be prepared now. So I mean there is still two Members of the Opposition to speak, I am wondering if any of them, Mr. Speaker, would be able to say what they would have done if they were on this side. How would you have dealt with it, what would you have given us, an annual Budget for what $100 million? What would you have done, fired some civil servants and tell them well because of this you know, we have to lay you off? Would you stop the cleaning programmes, what exactly would they have done? And I am hoping one of the two Members that are left to speak will have the guts, Mr. Speaker, to say what it is they would have done, I hope they have the guts to say it.Mr. Speaker, we know what is taking place worldwide right now, we know, but I believe the Honourable Leader of the Opposition using the 2008 figures with strategy to get as much political mileage as possible, because Mr. Speaker, we have much of the 2009 figures. But I am going to go the 2008 figures, because as I have said before, a lot of what was said was not true. Mr. Speaker, I want the camera man to zoom in to something I am going to show here, because it is very important. Mr. Speaker, in my hand I have two charts, one is the chart the visitor arrivals to SVG from 2000 to 2008 that is the top chart and the chart below it is the chart of the Dow Jones Industrials 2000 to 2009, this is it, Mr. Speaker.And Mr. Speaker, when you look at it, you can see that both of them are very similar. As the Dow Jones goes up our figures go up, as they go down our figures go down, Mr. Speaker that is a rocket science, it is common sense, when people have jobs and they have money, of course they are going to travel, when they do not have money they are going to hold back, common sense, Mr. Speaker, but it is funny that the..., yet they are against the international airport. But Mr. Speaker, let us face it, St. Vincent and the Grenadines presently as we speak were at a disadvantage, not only because of where we lie in the Caribbean that was so far down South and our main markets are like North America and England and so on, but also, Mr. Speaker, because we do not have an international airport. We cannot get direct flights into St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Mr. Speaker, you look at Buccama, you look at a lot of the investments that is taking place in the Grenadines, Mr. Speaker and they will tell you that one of the reasons they are putting money into St. Vincent and the Grenadines now is because the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is building an international airport [applause] they say so all the time.But I can tell Vincentians one thing you know, if by some miracle NDP was to win elections next year, they would stop the airport and they could not be able to get the money, because...,DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Mr. Speaker, the point of order is that the Honourable Member is misrepresenting the position of the New Democratic Party which has been stated publicly by the Leader of the Opposition and in this Honourable House with respect to the International Airport that the Government is constructing. And what has been said, the position of the New Democratic Party is that the New Democratic Party would have to assess the project when we get into office. I mean that is just common sense [laughter] I do not know what is so funny and that, Mr. Speaker, is nobody in the New Democratic Party, the leadership of the New Democratic Party or any organs of the New Democratic Party has said that they would13stop the International Airport. Be accurate, do not put up a straw man to try and knock it down. The New Democratic Party conducted the study that the new administration continued. If the New Democratic Party was not interested in the airport development, they would not have done it, this was done, thank you. So the Honourable Member should not mislead this House and the persons who are listening outside. [Interjection]HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Members, would you please allow the Member to make his point of order?DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: That is right, I am finished, Mr. Speaker. Nice tie by the way.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Yes, it is gold; you might be a bit colour blind, not yellow. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member, the Honourable Member denies that they have madestatements in relation to them stopping the International Airport.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Okay, I apologise, Mr. Speaker, they will not stop the International Airport, they will look at the Canouan option, they will look at extending the ET Joshua Airport, those are the options they...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Well he said they will assess the situation. Let us accept that and move on with that.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have heard them..., Mr. Speaker about those two options though, but I apologies, they all will not stop it, they just would not be able to get the money to complete it, Mr. Speaker. But Mr. Speaker, so no fresh idea against the International Airport, yet tourism is so important to the Opposition, Mr. Speaker. This is the same Opposition you know, I think tourism overtook agriculture and I could be corrected by a few years, Mr. Speaker, I could be off by a few years, somewhere around 1992 or 1993 as the chief foreign exchange earner in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I could be wrong by one or two years, Mr. Speaker. So we knew the importance of tourism since then.You are telling me, Mr. Speaker, that up to 2001 when ULP took office, the Budget for tourism was $1.2 million, $1.2 million Mr. Speaker? As a matter of fact tourism was so important to the then Government, it was in its own Ministry, they were side barring the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where was not even enough desk or chairs for members of staff to sit that is how important and how they have embraced tourism so much that up to 2001 when we took office, the marketing Budget was $1.2 million and they tell you how important it was even so Mr. Speaker, the same Government with a Budget of $1.2 million went and spent US$80,000 on a full page ad, I think it was in the Washington Post, a full page ad that they claim to be a tourism ad with a picture of Sir James Mitchell and that was the ad, that was the tourism ad, a picture of Sir James Mitchell.Mr. Speaker, I would like to look at myself and think I am fairly good looking, but even if they put an ad of me, I am sure I am not attracting anybody to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. That is their tourism you know, a full14page ad of Sir James Mitchell in the Washington Post. Mr. Speaker, you just do not feel the love for tourism from the Opposition. It warms my heart.Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Leader of the Opposition made some points. He spoke about the 2008, comparing the 2008 figures to the 2007 figures, Mr. Speaker. He went through it; he spoke about how the rest of the Caribbean was doing so well that even the Canadian market that the Canadian market was down in St. Vincent where the only Caribbean country where the Canadian market was down in figures in the Caribbean Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker that is not the case, Mr. Speaker, in 2008 the Canadian figures were up 2.2% from 2007. I have said in many Press Conferences, Mr. Speaker, that the Canadian market is very important, because out of all the developed countries, Mr. Speaker, they seemed to be withstanding the economic crisis the most and the figures and stats coming out of Canada show that Canadians are continuing to travel. But only that Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Leader of the Opposition also went on to say that our yachting figures for 2008 were down compared to 2007.Mr. Speaker, every single year I debated in this Honourable House, I have to correct the Leader of the Opposition on his figures, every single year. Mr. Speaker, our yachting figures for 2008 were up by 2.4%, so when the Opposition speaks and tells me about being truthful, the need to look at the man in the mirror, Mr. Speaker. I know Michael Jackson is dead, but listen to the song. Those are the figures, Mr. Speaker. Then we have to be realistic on how we are looking at things. He spoke about the cruise ship figures 2008 compared to 2007, Mr. Speaker, the reason the 2008 figures were down for cruise ships were simple. We had a ship that used to come in here every week even in the off season, so for the whole year we had that ship coming in, Mr. Speaker. That company went bankrupt, so we lost that business. Mr. Speaker, that is substantial business that has gone, I cannot do anything about them going bankrupt, the Government here cannot do anything about them going bankrupt, but Mr. Speaker, so far for 2009 up to October, the cruise ship figures are up 50%. But you see, Mr. Speaker, you would not hear that from the Opposition, because they only want to pick out certain things that suit them.But to even go further than that, Mr. Speaker, I am totally shocked that the Opposition can speak about cruise ships. It is this Government, Mr. Speaker, that got Princess to come back here. It is that Government that got Royal Caribbean to come in here. We have never seen such strong figures in the cruise ship industry as we are seeing now, never in the history of St. Vincent and the Grenadines [applause]. This is the Government that just governed without any policy, without any rules, without any laws Mr. Speaker. Kingstown was dirty, so what you leave it that is why Princess moved out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. That is why Princess left here, Mr. Speaker, you know and I know you know, if the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines was speaking after me, I know the first thing he would say, he would say yes, but we are the ones who put the cruise ship terminal up there that is what he will say. Yes Mr. Speaker, they did build the cruise ship terminal up there, they built it in the wrong place without taking any advice from anybody and without listening to the technical people, because right now, Mr. Speaker, that same cruise ship terminal is hindering us from attracting new ships, because the new ships cannot come in.15Ignore the technical people you know Mr. Speaker and built it. As a matter of fact when I became the Minister of Tourism, Mr. Speaker, when I met with the FCCA, the FCCA is the Further Caribbean Cruise line Association, they made it clear, Mr. Speaker, they say, but Minister you all built a new cruise ship terminal, why did not you all not come to us for advice or even possibly financial assistance, Mr. Speaker? Because what happens, when you get the financial assistance from the FCCA, Mr. Speaker, it is a benefit for them to come into that port, so they send as many ships as possible there. But Mr. Speaker, this is a know it all administration; they knew everything about nothing at all. The engineer from Barbados came here, when he came in he say listen, I am getting paid for this job to do the (what is the technical term) piles, he said, but you all sure you want to put this here? He said, it is not in my place to say it, but I mean as an engineer, this is not the right place for this. So what you have caused, Mr. Speaker, is congestion up there also, lots of congestion, but Mr. Speaker, we have put some things in place and we will continue to deal with it, Mr. Speaker and work to the best of our ability to make sure people can travel as easily as possible when leaving the cruise ship terminal.But Mr. Speaker, I want to read some other figures for you, because you see the Opposition loves to come up here and prance around and say certain things...,DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Nothing controversial, but you said something earlier on regarding the yachting figures of 2.2% increase and I just wanted the reference here [interjection] 2.4%.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Yes from the Department of Tourism Statistical Figures DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: For which year? HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Pardon me? DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Which year?HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: 2008 DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: 2008HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Yes, I said it compare..., just like what you all did comparing 2008 to 2007.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Okay, well, Mr. Speaker, then I need to make a correction, because the Honourable Leader of the Opposition and the Honourable Member maybe were misled, because he said he was not sure what source the Honourable Leader of the Opposition was quoting whether it was the Central Bank or Caribbean Development Bank.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: No but I said that you know. 16DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Yes, but he said that the Honourable Leader of the Opposition was wrong. I was just telling you the source again, because he pointed that out that he was quoting from the 2008 Annual Economic Report Economic and Financial Review.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes, I have it written.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: And what that said is that ...,HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Member for the Northern Grenadines, let me say this, I probably should have said it when I was speaking. Mr. Speaker, I had asked the Honourable Leader of the Opposition where he was quoting from and he told me where he was quoting from, but I should also say, Mr. Speaker, that these figures at times change, because sometimes we get in new figures that have been delayed in coming in, so I do not think the Leader of the Opposition was being malicious in that sense, but Mr. Speaker, I have to put it correctly. So I mean...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Just a minute, you cannot have two persons standing on the floor at the same time.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, the impression that he is giving is that the Leader of the Opposition...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I think it is table 49 of the St. Vincent Economic and Financial Review 2008, Central Bank.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: What the Leader of the Opposition quoted was that at page 72 of the Financial Report for 2008 that the number of yacht passengers and excursionists fell by 57.9% and 7.0% respectively and that is from the Central Bank.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes, okay, the ECCB.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Mr. Speaker, let me make this clear, those figures comes from us, they come from the Statistical Department of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines who get the figures from the Ministry of Tourism and well now, the tourism authority, Mr. Speaker and as I have said before, the figures sometimes change, because sometimes immigration will have to correct some figures with some things they might have forgotten or misplaced. So Mr. Speaker, the figures I am quoting here are the correct figures. The document that you have they probably have not had a chance to correct them, but they get the figures from us, Mr. Speaker [interjection] exactly that is what I am saying, they cannot correct now, they have to wait until later on to correct it.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: But Honourable Member, maybe in that case the Central Bank should have at least a note that these figures are subject to change or something of that sort, so maybe communication need to be established with them on these issues, all right okay, or provisional figures, continue.17HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Yes Mr. Speaker. So Mr. Speaker, we have done certain things and we have continued to move forward with tourism Mr. Speaker. We you know listening to the Opposition as I was saying before, Mr. Speaker, certain figures they like to compare to and the figures that suit them they speak about and they love to compare St. Vincent and the Grenadines to other countries. I am one I tend not to like to do that, Mr. Speaker, because there are so many different things that would affect how many visitors come to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and every country has its own issues, Mr. Speaker.But you see, Mr. Speaker, they spoke about the stopovers and how important it is the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines and the fact that it was down and so on, but Mr. Speaker, this is the same Opposition that was against us putting any money into LIAT. They were against us putting any money into LIAT because they were in favour of Caribbean Star staying in the sky forever. But Mr. Speaker and I want Vincentians to know, if Caribbean Star was the lone airline left, where would St. Vincent and the Grenadines be presently.DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: I mean the point of order again is misrepresentation. Where did the Leader of the Opposition did..., the Members of this Opposition ever took a position with respect to Caribbean Star or LIAT as to who should be in the air and who should not be in the air? This debate is degenerating into a tissue of inaccuracies, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Let me deal with that.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Just now, just now. Honourable...DR. THE HONOURABLE GODWIN FRIDAY: If you say that we are critical of the finances and that there were comments that were made about accountability and the future of LIAT, fine, but do not say we prefer one airline over another that is a private business.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Mr. Speaker, the Opposition made it clear when we were pumping money into LIAT, when we were financing LIAT, said let the market take care of it, we should not be putting any money into LIAT, let the market take care of it Mr. Speaker, if it dies, it dies. That is what they say, Mr. Speaker, on many different political platforms, they were against LIAT completely. So this is not..., Mr. Speaker, I am 100% sure of what I have just stated. This is not any misrepresentation. They have too much of a short memory, they are still living in that narrow corridor where they cannot see anywhere outside of it [applause]. They must remember what they say before they get up for points of order. There is not one Vincentian that does not know this Mr. Speaker and if Caribbean Star was left to rule the air in the Caribbean, Mr. Speaker, where will the same tourism that is so important to them be? And that is why I said before you know, Mr. Speaker, the Opposition has no plan at all you know.DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Mr. Speaker, one lives and one learns, is the first time I have seen, Mr. Speaker, in all my years here that an Honourable Member can be so disrespectful of the office of the Speaker that he sits and holds a long conversation and gives you directions. These are depths to which we are sinking. I just draw this matter to your attention, Mr. Speaker. I crave your indulgence so to do.18HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Thank you very much, Prime Minister. Let me put it this way, you see, I am very glad for the observation because you know we have certain incidents that arose this morning and from time to time they arrive and I made the point that sometimes when the issue is on one’s shoe it affects one set of people and on the other it affects another set of people and I actually pointed to that matter this morning about the respecting the Chair and respecting the ruling of the Chair this morning and I had to deal with that aspect obviously if it continues. Where do we put the blame, where do we put the blame? Honourable Minister of Tourism continue please.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Much obliged, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will let that go. As I was saying before, Mr. Speaker, love to compare St. Vincent and the Grenadines to other countries, love it. Last year, I heard all the talk about Anguilla and how well Anguilla was doing and so beautiful and we need to take a page out of Anguilla’s books. I heard about Dominica, I heard I mean, Barbados their tourism figures, I mean, Mr. Speaker, we were to learn from everybody else and Anguilla was doing so.., let me say this, Mr. Speaker, as we speak, Anguilla Stay-Over is down 22.6%, Antigua and Barbuda down 12.7%.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Let me just stop you because now that an idea has been raised and I need to deal with it, because I notice also when it comes to respect that when this House adjourns or suspends even before the Speaker leaves his seat, Members are outside and that is in my mind..., and I noticed that quite clearly and I know who is guilty of that, I know who is guilty of that and I want to say that is a matter of total disrespect for the Chair. These issues I do not normally comment on, because for me I am just a simple humble servant of the people here in this Parliament. I have the authority, but as the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs said, I am a man of the Bible and sometimes these things go to nought, but it is something that I am observing and I would deal with it in due course. Thank you very much.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Mr. Speaker, if you would do me the favour, Mr. Speaker, with so many interruptions I am figuring I have about an hour left.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 41 minutes, you have been speaking for 41 minutes.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Okay, I thought was 21, Mr. Speaker, thank you. Yes, Mr. Speaker, Barbados down 9.6; Bahamas 11.4; Bermuda 12.5; Bonaire 16.7; BVI 17; Grenada 14.4; Montserrat 17.4; St. Martin 9.7 Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on and I can go down this list from CTO. Every single member of CTO with the exception of Cuba which is up 3.3%; Curacao which is up .4% and I know for a fact, Mr. Speaker, Jamaica is not here, but I know Jamaica is also up something like 3% which Mr. Speaker, let me explain that which is really not a true indication of how Jamaica is doing, but that will take a long explanation, Mr. Speaker and I wouldn’t go into that.Mr. Speaker, we are down for this year from January to October we are down 12.1% and I use this, Mr. Speaker, to show that this is not something that only St. Vincent and the Grenadines is going through. The region is going through it and Mr. Speaker, while I am not happy that we are down 12.1% Mr. Speaker, I know that this can be a lot worse and when I look at the October figures, Mr. Speaker, and I look at the November figures of which all seemed to be positive, Mr. Speaker, it looks like by the end of December, because we have had such a good last quarter of 2009 it looks as if we would be breaking even which, Mr. Speaker, if you speak19to anybody in the tourism industry now, breaking even you have to give yourself a clap for that [applause]. It is not an easy world that we are in right now, Mr. Speaker. It is not as much fun to travel anymore and we deal with some of these issues, Mr. Speaker, we just open 14 new sites, 14 Mr. Speaker, refurbished or opened them and a space of eight years in office, Mr. Speaker.I am racking my brain right now to come up with one new site NDP did in their 17 years, or even if we do not want to go back to 17 years from since 1992 when tourism became the bread earner. I am racking my brain right now to come up with one. It is under this administration, Mr. Speaker, that the Tobago Cays got some normalcy. It is under this administration, Member for Northern Grenadines speaks about the dollar and so on, spend 25 minutes on it and you that Bequia is..., Bequia is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. All of us paid the dollar but on top of that Mr. Speaker, I mean Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if people know that electricity is subsidised to the Grenadines, water is subsidised that the boats that leave Kingstown to go to the Grenadines do not pay the business tax, Mr. Speaker, that they are exempt from it, but you would not [hear] that Mr. Speaker, you would not hear those things, that for the NDP that they are so strong in the Grenadines that it was this Government that put electricity in Mayreau that it is this Government that put a new school in Bequia and Union Island, not NDP. As a matter of fact, the Northern Grenadines had the Prime Minister as their representative and you still had children going to the bathroom outside, you are there for 17 years you never saw it fit to look after your constituency and you are the Prime Minister.So if the Prime Minister could not do anything for the constituency, Mr. Speaker, I doubt anybody else on the NDP side will do anything for the constituency, because or much further, Mr. Speaker, for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, you know I doubt they can do anything, Mr. Speaker, because they have no vision whatsoever. Lack ideas you know, a brand new school is what we had to put into Bequia, but that is not a problem, Mr. Speaker, because it is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It is our job as the Government to represent every Vincentian no matter where they are, something that the previous administration never used to, but I am not going back to victimization, I have more you know, I am not going back there, because I have to deal with my Ministry.Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Tourism and the staff of the Ministry and when I say this, by extension the Tourism Authority and National Parks, in 2009 have performed very, very well. When one looks at the condition in which they have had to operate, Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt. Once upon a time, Mr. Speaker, as a country, as a tourism entity, used to have to beg people to come to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, journalists. We use to have to pick up every single cost that was the only reason they would come. At trade shows like World Travel Market, ITB, Sea Trade and so on Mr. Speaker, we used to have to beg for meetings, Mr. Speaker, that is no longer the case. They are now requesting meetings from us, they are requesting to come to St. Vincent and the Grenadines to see what it is we have to offer, what makes this island so beautiful and Mr. Speaker, this does not come without a plan you know and it hasn’t come without hard work.In 2003 Mr. Speaker, no, 2002 we knew we did not have the money to compete with the Barbados, the Jamaica, the Bahamas in terms of their marketing Budget, Mr. Speaker. Barbados is US$50 million, Jamaica is US$45 million, Bahamas is US$79 million and they cut back on that, Mr. Speaker, from US$85 million the US$79 million and when I speak those figures, Mr. Speaker, I mean US and we knew what was most important, Mr.20Speaker, was that we needed to make sure people were aware that St. Vincent and the Grenadines was here and our marketing plans and so on showed this and Mr. Speaker, we continue to do familiarization trips, we continue to do some of the trade shows, some of which, Mr. Speaker, some people might say are not beneficial to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but because of the magnitude of them you have to have some sort of presence there. Our overseas offices have done a remarkable job, Mr. Speaker and we have kept on working hard at it.Mind you, you know, Mr. Speaker, some people do not understand it, it is funny, everybody seems to think there is either a marketing expert or an expert in tourism in terms of what you should do and what you should not do. I remember listening to a radio programme one morning two years ago and a caller called in and saying why does not the Honourable Prime Minister just go to Miami and speak to Michelle Paige and get more ships to come here? Mr. Speaker, that is simplifying the matter on a whole and so Mr. Speaker, we have worked hard to get where we are now and Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that when the International Airport is completed and with all the investments that are taking place in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as we speak, you know Mr. Speaker, something that is remarkable right now, Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines asked me a question last week in Parliament about Adams Bay and I answered him, but something remarkable is taking place right now, in places like St. Lucia where five hotels have stopped construction, Barbados, two other countries in the Caribbean have suffered this, Buccama is still going strong and will be opening its doors for the first phase of 365 rooms on July 2nd of this year, something that the Opposition said will never take place that we would flood. I mean so many things, I mean you would wonder when you listen to the Opposition speak you know, you wonder if they are Vincentians, because I mean when you listen to them, there are so many negative things about St. Vincent and the Grenadines you wonder if this country is doing anything right or if we have anything that worth marketing and it is going all over the internet and they do not realise this.Buccama is still going strong, Mr. Speaker, and as a matter of fact I met with them last week and by next week, they would start taking applications for the running of the hotel, at start-up they will need over 500 people. Presently they are employing over 800 people, three hundred and sixty-five rooms in the first phase Mr. Speaker and to coincide with the opening of the Argyle International Airport, the second phase of which time it would be 1000 units.Mr. Speaker, this administration is doing something right. We are getting the job done, hard time, Mr. Speaker, yes we are in challenging times, but we have projects on our schedule that will create employment. Mr. Speaker, we go through it, we see the developments that are taking place, Adams Bay, Union Island, Canouan and Prime Minister spoke about some of that last week, but Mr. Speaker, it is something that will take time. We are new in the tourism industry, but we are getting there and the proof is in the pudding.Mr. Speaker, I also heard the Honourable Leader of the Opposition speak about the Tourism Authority, about the number of resignations that he heard and he is wondering if we do not have enough staff he is saying that 80% of the Tourism Authority has been staffed and so on. Mr. Speaker, this is a new entity. They have had one or two resignations, nothing significant, they have moved on and they have done their work, they are responsible for good morning America, they are responsible for Christ Robinson, they are responsible for the travel channel, it is an authority full of young professionals who know what they are doing, well educated in21their field, but beyond that Mr. Speaker, know the industry inside out and that is the key you know, Mr. Speaker, knowing the industry inside out.The education, I once heard the Prime Minister say you know, getting your degree and so on is the easiest part, it is what you do with it afterwards that really sets you apart and he is absolutely right, because as I tell some of them I say you know, school has given you a very good base, but when you come out into this world and you understand how the tourism sector works you realise that school is not everything, it does not tell you everything. So have no fear Opposition, the Tourism Authority is strong and will continue to do what is expected of them.Mr. Speaker, I move to National Parks. Some Members on this side do not like to hear me say so, but I am yet to see a Statutory Body that is more efficient than National Parks [applause] they have done wonders with that project, Mr. Speaker [applause] have done wonders with it. Many people did not expect those 14 sites to be completed in the three year time span and they have done it and when you look at the marketing plan for these sites Mr. Speaker that is also something to behold.Mr. Speaker, National Parks is (how should I put it?) an entity or Statutory Body that I am very proud to have under the Ministry of Tourism. They have worked exceptionally well. They have been professional to the utmost. They have delivered on time. One or two hiccups, Mr. Speaker, we all have them, but they have come through with flying colours and I want to thank them and the Board of National Parks especially for the work they have done, Mr. Speaker. I am hoping that Vincentians go out and look at these sites. Visit these sites [applause] you know local tourism is very important to us Mr. Speaker. You do not need to carry your family to North America and Europe and so on, visit Bequia, go down for their Jazz Festival, for their Blues Festival you know, have a rum and coke with the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines. I do not know if is rum he drinks or fruit punch and so on you know or Gonsalves Black Wine or whatever it is, but have a drink with him you know and I know he would be happy to foot the bill because he is all about supporting the local economy you know and plus you are doing so well as a law practitioner, I mean you could afford to do that. I mean after this week I think Friday afternoon you should buy all of us a round of drinks, but Mr. Speaker, go down and support that.And you know it is funny I do not hear the Member speaking about tourism and what tourism does for Bequia you know that for the same Blues Festival, the Tourism Authority is the one that is paying for the ticket, that is paying for the radio and newspaper advertising, yes, because it is a very important part of our product, but you are not hearing that Mr. Speaker, you are hearing all the negatives. But Mr. Speaker, so you hear all these things and we do this with nearly every Regatta, every festival that takes place in the Grenadines. So Mr. Speaker, it does not matter whether it is the Grenadines or St. Vincent, it is St. Vincent and the Grenadines and I wish we would stop trying to divide and conquer. Mr. Speaker, if this administration was a selfish administration, if we had no vision, if we do not respect the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I mean let us look at it politically, if that was the case, really and truly I mean would we bother to do any work in the Grenadines at all? Mr. Speaker, we represent every Vincentian, I will say that again, because I think it is something that needs to be driven home. We represent every single Vincentian including those in the Diaspora and you know it is funny, as a Minister when I travel and it is something that I have never experienced before,22even when I used to travel before as I was a Minister, there is new found respect for St. Vincent and the Grenadines since this administration took office [applause].I mean honestly speaking, Mr. Speaker, I think you would find it hard to find one Caribbean country leader that is more respected than the Honourable Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines [applause] yes, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 15 minutes remaining. HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: 50? HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 15 minutes.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Sorry, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know why, because it is not only a vision for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, it is a vision for the Caribbean that will affect all of us. You know, Mr. Speaker, in the Budget, you will see certain sums of money for one the Coast Guard and two the Airport. Mr. Speaker, I consider these two projects tourism projects, because I heard the Honourable Member speak about yacht crimes and so on, Mr. Speaker that is why we have on order three new Coast Guard Boats, Mr. Speaker, and I cannot remember how may rigs the Coast Guard they are looking at and then, Mr. Speaker, you are looking also at money for the International Airport, they are tourism projects, major tourism projects, but we also, Mr. Speaker, have to be aware and understand that to monitor the waters of a country like St. Vincent and the Grenadines is not an easy job. We are 32 Islands and Cays, it is a lot of water to monitor, but Mr. Speaker, we are on top of it and as the Prime Minister said in his speech under the NDP never once, not one new boat for the Coast Guard in 17 years, but we have put three into this year’s Budget Mr. Speaker and as I said, I cannot tell you how many rigs because I do not have it off hand and well, Mr. Speaker, the International Airport speaks for itself.I have met with British Airways, Virgin, Iberia out of Spain, Air France to speak about this airport and I think, Mr. Speaker, speaking to them we are in a very good position to make some headway because Mr. Speaker, the state of the airline industry as we speak is not good and what is taking place right now is that all of these airlines are looking to get a heads up on their competition. So they are all looking for that new destination that they think is going to take off that they are not going into ride. And so Mr. Speaker, I believe that as we continue to market Argyle International Airport which now falls under the marketing responsibilities which fall under the Tourism Authority. As we continue to market international airport, I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you would be seeing a lot more businesses coming into St. Vincent and the Grenadines, not only tourism wise, but in terms of Agriculture and business so that we can do much more business.Mr. Speaker, I move now to South Windward. Mr. Speaker, I have been grateful to represent South Windward since 2005. At times, Mr. Speaker, there are certain things that I have wanted to get done which sometimes is taking a bit longer than I would have wanted or one of those such projects is the Rescue road and we have done a piece of it, we still have another piece to finish, but that should be done in the first quarter of this year by BRAGSA. But Mr. Speaker, I make no apologies when I speak about South Windward as being the shining star23in all constituencies in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and you notice, Mr. Speaker, that nobody on this side would clap for that because they all jealous of South Windward. Mr. Speaker, it is by no accident that out of the 14 sites the most beautiful one is Rawacou. It is by no accident, by no accident, Mr. Speaker, it is by no accident that my God brother has put his centre of excellence in South Windward, it is by no accident that the Hospitality and Marine Institute will be in South Windward, it is by no accident that the International Airport is being built in South Windward [applause] it is by no accident that the best police station is in South Windward, we call it the hotel, Mr. Speaker, it is by no accident that the best hard court in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is the Biabou hard court, it is by no accident that after Arnos Vale Playing Field the best playing field is Stubbs Playing Field. Mr. Speaker, we have done so much. I hope the people of Biabou and so on remember when they could not get water on Sundays and up in Simon we did the water project.Mr. Speaker, the playing field at Stubbs that I spoke about, we spoke about the Stubbs Health Clinic, I do not know when last you passed out there, Mr. Speaker, by the clinic to see how beautiful that looks and we cannot wait for the opening. Follow me, Mr. Speaker? And I thank Minister Slater for that, the repairs to the Stubbs Police Station, the Biabou Health Clinic, the expansion to Carapan Secondary School, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, I look at Diamond in South Windward and you know I do not know of anybody has ever stopped on top of Kings Hill and just look down over Diamond and you look at that land, Mr. Speaker, could you imagine the sort of housing project this Government could have put in Diamond if NDP just did not send anybody to just go and squat there? Could you imagine the type of housing project? But Mr. Speaker, it is because of this Government you know that Diamond has been regularized. In NDP’s day it was just any and anybody it did not matter, you put your road, a house anything, anywhere. We came into office, Mr. Speaker, we surveyed the property, there are still a few people who need electricity, but majority of them in Diamond now have electricity and water, we regularized it and I have to thank Senator Francis for that Mr. Speaker, because that was not an easy job.Mr. Speaker, we in South Windward have a lot to be thankful for, not only in South Windward, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines because we are a blessed people and as we continue to progress, Mr. Speaker, I know investments, we have just gotten something in tourism where somebody is putting up a hotel in Spring and that is to coincide with the opening of the Argyle International Airport. You know after I leave office, Mr. Speaker, I was thinking of putting up a guest house but I do not think I am suited for managing a property like that, for managing a property like that, Mr. Speaker. You know the Peruvian Vale School, Mr. Speaker, what a beautiful primary school and as a matter of fact the first primary school in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to have pre- school, the first one and with all these things I am saying to you, Mr. Speaker, you could understand what I came first and say it is the most progressive constituency in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the people of South Windward for letting me represent them over the past four years. I am more than grateful and honoured to have had that privilege. It is no secret, Mr. Speaker, that I would not be contesting elections next year. There are few people [interjection] next year [interjection] have no fear that whoever replaces me will be just as good or even better, Mr. Speaker, and will bring home that seat by more votes than I won it by or what Sir Vincent won it by. So I want to thank the people of South Windward, Mr. Speaker.24Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank my Ministry. It is a Ministry that is not easy to operate in, because of the importance, every Ministry is important, but because of the pressures of tourism and tourism always seems to be in the limelight for one reason or another, I have to thank my PS Mr. speaker, she has really been a tower of strength in that Ministry and I do not think we would have gotten as much done [applause] as we have if it was not for her. I want to thank other Members of staff in the Ministry, those who deal with everything from Duty Free Concessions and so on, very professional in the way they go about their work, I want to thank them, Mr. Speaker.I want to thank the Tourism Authority, they have had some hiccups in the first year of operation, but they have come through with flying colours. I think we are now on a track which is a sound one, we have a sound plan in place, and we have a sound person who is in-charge of the Tourism Authority in Miss Faylene Findlay-Scrub. She has a young team behind her [applause] that is second to none in the Caribbean, Mr. Speaker, I always say I will put up the Tourism Authority team against any other Tourism Authority in the Caribbean and they have really done some remarkable work and have been very creative in the things they have done, Mr. Speaker.National Parks I already spoke about them and obviously you know the high regard that I hold them in and enough said about them. I also want to thank the Board of the Tourism Authority, Mr. Speaker. Let me not leave them out because they have had some tribulations to deal with, some trials to deal with in the first year of operation also. A bit hardened at times, but I think they have come through with flying colours and I think they now understand some of the things that I had spoken about earlier on in the operation of the Tourism Authority. But overall, Mr. Speaker, I work with a great set of people.I want to thank my colleagues on this side of the House, at one point I was the youngest member on this side of the House and they brought in Minister Caesar and so I am a year older than him you know but I want to thank my colleagues on this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, for everything, for the guidance you know from the Prime Minister come right down. You know the great thing about this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, we laugh a lot, very good camaraderie, we do not agree on everything you know, Mr. Speaker and we should not agree on everything, because we are each individuals, but at the end of the day when we come to a decision whatever arguments have taken place it is all forgotten because we are adults, Mr. Speaker.I can tell you this you know, Mr. Speaker, my Prime Minister, the Leader of my party never stop talking to me for two months or anything like that you know, I mean we really have a good team over here. I mean you know we have not become so arrogant that we believe we are untouchable [interjection] well who the cap fit let them wear it nah, I just made a point, you all are going into something different, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, I want to tell the Opposition that no offence to the licks they got today, but it was well in coming because I think you know they have become a bit over confident and a bit arrogant after the Referendum and it would please me so much after elections next year when the ULP is sworn in again [applause] for a third consecutive term as the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, because Mr. Speaker, I hope the Opposition knows the propaganda that they let fly during the Referendum vote, this party will not tolerate it any longer. We try to be the big brother and go along with it and we will continue that way, Mr. Speaker, but you know we cannot tolerate mudslinging at all, at all, at all.25Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you also for everything. I think your judgments have been fair, I do not always agree with them, but I am not the Speaker of the House and I respect your decision and I will always respect your decision, Mr. Speaker. If you notice I do not give any back answers you know because I respect your decision. Your decision is final in this Honourable House. So I want to thank you for everything, Mr. Speaker, in your wisdom I think you know, I think eventually we would probably going to have to call you Sir Hendrick Alexander one of these days, but thank you for everything, Mr. Speaker and once again let me thank my Members on this team for everything that has taken place, Mr. Speaker and last but not least, Mr. Speaker, all of your staff here at the House of Assembly. I know it is not an easy job, especially for the Clerk you know. I admire you sitting up there every day and you cannot move I mean, I know it is not easy you know, so nuff respect due, nuff, nuff, nuff respect due Clerk and thank the Opposition for being the best, the very best worst Opposition in the history of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I want to thank them and it is all in good fun, you know I am joking around. I see Senator Cummings laughing and so on, I know it is in good fun, yes and I thank you for giving me water to my house Senator Cummings. Much obliged, Mr. Speaker and I wish this a safe passage, thank you.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Well I recognise the Honourable Julian Francis, Honourable Mike and then I will take you third as the case may be. These two were on their feet almost together; you were a little slow in coming.Honourable Senator Francis I must remind you that you have 45 minutes to make your presentation.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: Mr. Speaker, good morning to my colleagues here in Parliament, to those in the gallery and to those listening to us on radio and watching us on television. Mr. Speaker, if you may permit me, even though you have to include it in my time, Mr. Speaker, I consider it important enough to make a statement before I get into my Budget, if you allow me I will, I am...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Go ahead make you statement. HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: Thank you, if you think it is sufficient you can give me my full timeafter I am finished.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I will deal with it accordingly. Let me hear the statement.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday when the Leader of the Opposition was responding to the Budget, I made certain remarks in this Honourable House across the floor and again yesterday I did make those cross-talk that the “NO” campaign ran at the cost at about $7 million and that I was aware that the US dollar transactions were not only limited to us the “YES” campaign, but that I had inside information, I do not know if you recall the exchange, inside information from the NDP that I had such information. The Leader of the Opposition later in his presentation said, he had certain information and if anybody asked him about them, he will say, I think we all recall these.26Coincidentally this morning, Mr. Speaker, on my way to the Parliament my Secretary at the party office called and said that the party office has been broken into. I immediately changed direction and went straight to the party office and Mr. Speaker, they did quite a number on it. I immediately called the Commissioner of Police, I went straight to the head, told him what had happened and I proceeded to the office, the policemen are there now, I will invite the media after the police has left, because I think it is something that the media should have some interest in.Mr. Speaker, when I saw the hallmarks of an organised job, maybe somebody is paid to do a job like that there is no question in my mind about it and I said coincidentally this happened. There is graffiti on the walls, Mr. Speaker, NDP you go fall Julian, very nasty remarks about a picture that was on the with the Political Leader and every single..., well the two locked offices were ransacked inside out. There are two laptops that are gone. At cursory glance that is all I can pick up. I have an external hard drive to my laptop and my computers, that is gone and I have a camera that I used to take pictures and that is gone. Those are the things I can see at a cursory glance because I did not want to touch anything, because of the ransack. I took pictures myself, Mr. Speaker for my records and there may be some cash in the Secretary’s Office I cannot tell you the quantum that is also gone and maybe two bags of $1 coins that were there from the last event that we had up there, that is gone. Alcohol is there, my office always has alcohol because we have an event every Friday night, four, five, six bottles of black label strong rum, those are not touched, the Campari is still there, but that is a cheap liquor so they wouldn’t steal that they believe it is exotic because I drink it. The graffiti on the wall was done in a gold spray very discernable when you take pictures of them and I am sure it is going to come out.Mr. Speaker, I have reported the matter to the police, I have my suspicions as to what transpired there and I have relayed my suspicions to the police and they have assured me that they will be keeping a close on the port and the airport based on certain information that I give to the police. There are persons who have operated within this country within recent times and it is not a normal behaviour among political parties in this country, let me put it this way. Certain things have happened within recent times and certain persons who have been involved I know and I have been warned of the levels to which they would go. I therefore leave that to the Commissioner of Police, all my papers were thrown all over the office, I had some Cabinet papers there, I had party office papers, my personal Cabinet papers, everything is opened, there was an envelope there with some cheques for some people, the envelopes were opened and the cheques lying on the ground, so the purpose obviously is more than just robbery and cash in my humble opinion.So Mr. Speaker that is what I thought I should mention to the Parliament this morning. It is somewhat disconcerting and I want to use this opportunity at the same time to go into my presentation on the Budget, but if you would permit me right after I have finished my presentation to go back to the office because I would need to be there to give the police a statement.I happened to have left the office late, last night after Parliament I went there, I went to pick up a copy of the 2006 Estimates and the 2004 Estimates that I did not get sufficient information from at the office here and I left there may be about 10 o’clock last night. So I know the office was secured, it would appear that they chopped the lock off on the grill on the front and shock opened the sliding door and went in. The locks were broken out and everything else on the inside.27Mr. Speaker, when you asked me to speak you said to me that I have 45 minutes. Once before since the nine years I have been in this Parliament that I was afforded 45 minutes that was between April of 2005 and December of 2005 for the meetings of Parliament then as I was a Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister then, but I have neither Constituency nor Ministry, so 45 minutes Mr. Speaker, I think is more than ample for one to speak. I observe in the seating arrangement in Parliament that I now sit on the Government side in the same position that Senator Leacock sits on the Opposition side that is the furthest end from our Political Leaders, quailing the forces in between them and I as General Secretary not that he holds that position in the NDP, their General Secretary is now a next member of Parliament, Allan Cruickshank [Interjection] let me say it Prime Minister, please, I know what you are going to say and I am going to say it too [laughter] the difference is I am here to make sure that nobody unseat my political leader, but on the other side where Senator Leacock sits he will love and he has done it, he has said it and will continue to try to unseat his political leader, there is no question about that [laughter]. I do not, Prime Minister if that is what you were going to say, but I suspect that is what you were going to say. But I must say to the Senator that..., I was saying, Senator the seat does feel good to be at the end, you do not have to ask anybody to excuse me to come out.Mr. Speaker..., HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, you are inviting me to respond?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: No, well you are looking at me..., [laughter] I am saying that you seem to be saying to me that I need to...,HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am good, Mr. Speaker. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Okay. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am good.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: As two colleagues and pairs and contemporaries we both went to Grammar School and left Grammar School around the same time. I cannot recall, I think the Honourable Senator went on to six form, I did not but the most troublesome days in the Grammar School naturally would be between Form 1 and Form 5 which we spent together up to the time I got my licence and we had some very exciting days with a little moke, so a little heckle in between does not help, but politically we know where we stand.Mr. Speaker, [interjection] [laughter] I can assure you Mr. Honourable Prime Minister that those secrets are long past they are no longer valid. I have nothing to protect in the form of what the Honourable Senator has, so if there are any secrets being held I have them not him and if they are exposed I will not suffer he will. So I will say.Mr. Speaker, I must commend the Leader of the Opposition in naturally congratulating me for being promoted once again to run the affairs of the party. He termed it in that way that he thought it was a promotion, but I will28say Mr. Speaker, I am sure that on Monday they realised that such comments, because he made them during the Estimates, such comments were not wise as Monday showed that the party and the organisation to which I have been put to head came out and literally made the NDP stayed home from Tuesday until today. Had he seen that before I am sure the congratulations would not have been as genuine?Mr. Speaker, in my presentation I may, because I have neither Constituency nor Ministry, I may wind a little bit on the road and as I approached danger curves, Mr. Speaker, I would expect that you would see them, the dangerous curves before I get there and if so I expect that you will stop me, but [interjection] yes, I did yesterday until Honourable Minister of Education were saying something to me and my eyes were closed and she thought I was sleeping.Mr. Speaker, there is an old adage that says: when the going gets tough the tough gets going. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the converse is also true that when the going gets tough the weak runs away in despair. Mr. Speaker, the first part naturally did reference to my political leader. These are tough times and the tough got going in the form of my Prime Minister and we all know to whom I refer with the converse.Mr. Speaker, let me establish early that I consider the Budget to be a remarkable feat and there is no question of my support for it and I would try to establish the basis of this support. Mr. Speaker, in hard times and I want to commend the Honourable Minister of Health in his simple explanation as to how Budgets are prepared and the need and use of money. I thought he did a wonderful job on that in his presentation and therefore I need not go into that, but I will just reinforce it by saying, Mr. Speaker, the average man in St. Vincent the day that things cannot work out that is, income is not sufficient to cover his expenses one of the first things he does is to either ask a friend to lend him some money to go to the bank and borrow some money and it was the opening shot of the Prime Minister in his Budgetary address, he said basically look, these are hard times and I am crafting this Budget with this backdrop and we remember President Obama and the decisions that he had to take and the exercises that he had to put in place to make sure that there is not a total collapse of the US economy.Mr. Speaker, because of those and we all know them very well I need not spend too much time on them and this happen well over a year ago or just about a year ago and it is being described now as the spring of the recovery that they are seeing little green grasses coming out in the economy which will indicate that the stimulus packages that he had put in place are paying. Took a lot of risks, put his political credit on the line, he was just elected one of the most popular Presidents of the United States and decided that he will take the risks to make sure that the people of US and the world do not..., that the depression or recession gets a chance of recovery.Mr. Speaker, without those stimuli that was put in place by President Obama I believe that we would have gone back to the days of the great depression and one of the things he said basically is, let us spend money. Let us spend money and put people to work, let us build bridges, let us build roads, let us build highways, let us build sky scrapers, let us build round-a-bouts, let us build trains, let us build cars, work out the money, put it into the hands of the people and let us stem this tide.Mr. Speaker, if the income or revenue as we call it is not coming to us as was explained in the Prime Minister’s Budget, we have to be creative in getting what is necessary to keep us at the levels to which this ULP29administration has taken the people of this country. There is no question in my mind, Mr. Speaker, and in the minds of the majority of Vincentians that our state of development and our standard of living have been substantially improved since the ULP took the reins of office in 2001 [applause] there is no question in my mind.Mr. Speaker, as just a first shot from the Prime Minister’s address, if we go to page 92 of the PM’s address, just this alone, Mr. Speaker, reinforces what I am saying. In 2001 the GDP, that is the Gross Domestic Product at market prices were in 2001 the GDP per head for St. Vincent and the Grenadines was $8,655 which placed it at the bottom of the comparative table, but by 2009 the figure had risen to $15,593 almost double in eight years. This speaks for itself, Mr. Speaker, that we have elevated economic activity in this country and it is going into the pockets of the average man and woman in the country.Mr. Speaker, if we look around us, we can see the state of physical development in this country. The physical landscape stands out at us each day, Mr. Speaker and very early in my presentation, let me establish and ask you to follow me as I take you for a ride into the city of Kingstown, I want to do it because it is important we establish, you do not need a convertible to see it, you could have tinted windows and you still cannot miss it. Mr. Speaker, apart from the fantastic rebuilt Windward Highway, I am starting from Arnos Vale, my uncle Joseph house where he live for many years with George Francis and Lennox Francis and so on that has been converted to a pharmacy.Just round the corner from that Howie Prince has put up a three storey building right there by Kenton, across the road from there, there is Digicel’s tower and right after that Adams electrical is now putting up a fantastic big building there for his operation. You go up the highway, Big John garage, on the right hand side Rent and Drive and Pastor Kennedy Church, Trotman Depot, I am talking about things that have flourished, Mr. Speaker or have been significantly enhanced since we have been into office in 2001 the physical landscape of this country, I am taking you on a ride.There is a new air-condition place, I cannot remember the name of it in St. Clair Robinson building, what is the name of it? Skyline recent, Deckie’s Auto Zone, Dolly Thomas Blue Building, you cannot miss it, the rebuilt round-a-bout, Ace Hardware, Abbott Show Room, Denzel Bacchus had it there as a piece of shack for a while, a good businessman has leased it and is cleaning it up and it looks fantastic. The new Aunt Jobe’s KFC development, Pizza was there before.Mr. Speaker, the Arnos Vale Stadium you can see as soon as you go across the road we have enhanced that. There is a new tyre centre as you pass the bus stop. Pastor Wilson Church has been significantly improved, enhanced, there is a business right in the corner, is it Ava Maria? [interjection] not Samuel, Samuel tools was there before [interjection] Fine Things, Public Works Fence, significant..., I am talking about how the landscape looks and what people see who have not been this country and who do not drive about. Nature Best Bakery, we spiced up ET Joshua, spruced up ET Joshua Airport, you remember how it used to look before we did the paint job on it, Sion Hill Intersection, they may say is them build it, but Mr. Speaker, when we took it, it was a dustbin. I physically with Leroy Llewellyn and others cleaned it up and the grass and fence that you see there is since we have been in office, before that it was dirt, ugly. Alban Gonsalves Building Cabano, he sells30all sorts of things, Jules Williams has put up an electronic bill board, the Marion House, the building I just spoke about that they broke into last night, the ULP Headquarters, somebody is now renovating the Tennis Court on the left hand side which was..., it belongs to Silky Garage, to Silky and Casper, the Lottery Lawn Tennis Court and Play Ground and the Gem, the Modern State of the Art National Library, Thomas Saunders Secondary School, UWI Centre refurbished, Documentation Centre, Peace Memorial Hall Building, the Curriculum Unit, the YES Building we could include in that, look how it looks, pretty and nice, Curtis Lewis Building that used to be the old part of Wheel a Deal and across the road from there, the Allan’s Building that has been an eye sore there for years. They are now fixing it up, I understand there is a subway restaurant going downstairs and there is a fantastic Lounge operating upstairs, air-conditioned lounge and I stopped at KFC.I do not want to take you through the city, Mr. Speaker, if you give me another hour I can take you through the city and give you a tour of the suburban and rural areas, but I will save us that. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the people out there are following me what I am saying. I am speaking here of the physical and economic development of this country since the Unity Labour Party has been in office and we hear the Leader of the Opposition coming here and telling us all sorts of things and I would deal with that shortly.Mr. Speaker, if I go to the Windward side I will take whole day describing the 20 tourism projects that the Minister of Tourism has put in place. The Argyle International Airport and the Bypass, those are three that I will mention outside of the city, but Mr. Speaker, I also have to mention from the Leeward side, because I cannot describe the approach to the city on one side and not the other side starting in Layou. Mr. Speaker, have you seen Minister of Foreign Affairs the residential extension of Layou, what is over there called again? Rutland Vale Development, Mr. Speaker, the Layou Water Front, Mr. Speaker, Martie Gas Station and Supermarket, the massive Buccama Bay $500 million project, the cleaned up Bernard Punnett Garage, the cleaned up [interjection] yes, the phantom project that is now employing over 1000 people.Mr. Speaker, I want to paint this picture so that people will follow me along the highway and see what this party has done since it has been in Government in this country. So when others come and tell you but things ain’t happening and people suffering and you could get a half cake of soap and a half pound of back and neck, Mr. Speaker, I will show you other things just now to show you that obviously the gentlemen as one member on this side said are all from the city and travel very little outside of the city [applause] that is all I can conclude. Mark Punnett Housing, I understand that the Greaves Family now recently started their Mall, if you go there, there is an excavator excavating the foundation for the start of a Mall just up from Martie’s Supermarket, the renovated Pembroke Church, looks beautiful with a parking lot and everything now [interjection] I ain’t reach town yet, oh yes, I forget Linton’s Lewis Building in truth, must be the colour [laughter] confidence in the economy and confidence otherwise.Mr. Speaker, I intend to take the people on a ride today that the picture I am going to paint they wouldn’t forget it, Mr. Speaker. The beautiful homes at Pembroke where Dr. Providence and all the other people who got..., some people got dislocated from Gibson Corner, some other public servants, bankers have built their houses going up there. The new..., I said mark Punnett already, there is new tyre centre in Chauncey, Mr. Speaker, recently opened, there is a butcher stall established on the Chauncey Highway on the stretch, I believe that the Minister of Health has a lot to do with it with his friends there in an advisory capacity.31Mr. Speaker, we do not know that there is a counter top processing operations in Chauncey, Christ builds counter tops there. He has a hardware that he has rented where the man used to have his disco, [Sic] [interjection] yes, there is a vehicle spare parts developed there now in the corner, the feller who runs the taxi, maxi taxi, Dexter Bar and Night Club Desire, Questelles Police Station and Learning Resource Centres right there on the highway, go around the corner you meet Kelly’s Tyre Shop, Mr. Speaker, Hairoun has extended, PVC Factory has extended, built new factories you know, Mr. Speaker, Bottlers, Allan’s Bakery, Kendra’s Aluminium, Labour Party Gas the LPG Plant down there, Lowmans VINLEC, Lowman’s Famo, Famo has a nice operation round in the back of Lowmans there you know, Lowmans Fuel Storage, Nici Shop, it get lick down by vehicles two three times but she put up some barriers in front there, nobody could knock it down again because she paint it up nice and I love the colours that she put on it. The million dollar wall, I cannot leave that out, you know the back wall we have built in West Kingstown there for the Learning Resource Centre with the lands slipped. You have midway butchers, Mr. Speaker, some of the choices cuts that you can get in meats now is right up on top Lowmans on the highway, West Kingstown Learning Resource Centre has commenced, cleaned up Botanic Gardens, the big Moussa Building on..., I mean this is public and private showing that the public is prepared..., the public sector providing and facilitating and the private sector having confidence in the economy see what is happening and investing their money [applause].Mr. Speaker, I do not know how the Opposition..., I do not see how the Opposition can say that there is nothing happening in this country. CWSA, Russell’s Cinema, they just reopen you know, NEMO Building, Aunt Jobe’s again Mr. Speaker, Victoria Pharmacy, cleaned up Victoria Park, lighted, O T Mayers Parking Lot I stopped there on Back Street again, I am just painting both sides of the approach to the city, Mr. Speaker, how can anyone say otherwise than what I have said that this administration has invested the hardworking dollars of the taxpayers of this country, borrowed significantly yes, but the value of the borrowings is there on the ground [applause]. Not because we owe $1.2 billion, look at the value that is on the ground for it. Education Revolution alone spells that sort of money and we are borrowing so much money, but we are only 60% of our GDP. There are islands in this Caribbean, Mr. Speaker, that are 120% of their GDP you know, 120% they have been beating us back in the Growth Rate and so on and what not, the Prime Minister dealt with a lot of that, 160, I not as up-to-date on this matter, but I hear the clippings from time to time when I hear the news and I follow some of it and I read some of it. Mr. Speaker, where am I with time?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You have 20 minutes.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: Okay, so I have 20 minutes all right. Mr. Speaker, the physical landscape tells the story. Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, the Leader of the Opposition says that he has a deep sense of shame for what is in the Budget. There are needs and there are wants. The Budget is a fraud, the Budget is a pack of cards, but the worse statement [he] has made, Mr. Speaker, is this he said the people of SVG do not deserve what they are now getting. You believe that, Mr. Speaker? They do not deserve the Argyle Airport, they do not deserve the West St. George Secondary School, they do not deserve Sandy Bay and Troumaca Schools renovated, six laboratories is in the schools, modern library in Kingstown, people do not deserve that. The people deserve to stay inside of a storeroom inside Middle Street as a library that is what the Leader of the Opposition is telling the people, the people of SVG do not deserve what they are now getting. In other words, give me a chance to come back; I will give you what you want. Bankruptcy $129.5 million inside32of this Budget for the Education Revolution, $129 million between current and capital, early childhood education 18 pre-schools, Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition is saying to the mothers that you do not deserve to get the pre-schools that the ULP is giving you 18 of them. The 171 jobs that are being created in this Budget for public servants alone, I ain’t talking the private sector, thousands are being laid off overseas, but in St. Vincent we are employing, we got to be doing something right, got to be doing some things right, 65 graduate teachers, he is saying to those teachers (primary school) look, you do not deserve to become a graduate teacher in a primary school that is what he says, he has a deep sense of shame, those are the statements the gentleman made, the Honourable Leader of the Opposition made, special needs for children a million dollars if you look on pages 37 and 38 of the Prime Minister address for students support services, you do not need that, you do not deserve that. Free primary health care under 15 and over 65 old people and young people you all do not deserve to get that sort of free health care that is what the Leader of the Opposition is saying. A health centre in Evesham you mean to tell me the people in Evesham do not deserve to get a health centre, Mr. Speaker. I am not saying that you know, is the Leader of Opposition saying it. Modern Medical Complex in Georgetown, the policeman paternity leave, policemen, he say no, you cannot get the paternity leave you do not deserve it and this thing about mandatory requirement if you ain’t reach the rank of Sergeant, Prime Minister addressed that or Corporal? Corporal, in other words policemen, the Leader of the Opposition is saying to you, you do not deserve to stay in the police force if you ain’t reached Corporal at age 50. Mr. Speaker, this is what the Leader of the Opposition is saying. Georgetown Police Station, three Coast Guard Vessels Mr. Speaker, if we do not deserve the three Coast Guard Vessels [interjection] Well I do not mention that already, therefore anything and everything can happen in the port, anything and everything. US dollars coming in, drugs coming in, everything coming in and Mr. Speaker, a whole set of things have been said here about US dollars and I made my statement here this morning, I still have the information, I have the information on the US dollars. That Leader of the Opposition said this in his address, he say he has the information and anybody who ask him he is going to tell them, so I asked him, I say I am asking you, he ain’t tell me, he ain’t go want tell me, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, village roads and back walls that we have put in on page 64 of the Prime Minister address, this year is the year for people to get what they used to call “agouti track”. This year we are going to build village roads and build back walls and help you with materials for house and all them kind of things. The Leader of the Opposition is saying, you do not deserve that, we in this party and in this Government believe that you deserve it, but he say you do not deserve it [applause].Mr. Speaker, if you look at pages 53 and 54 of the Prime Minister’s Budgetary Address and pages 58 and 59 you would see numerous projects listed there. I asked Members, please go back so that those of you who have to come afterwards I do not have the time, I only got 45 minutes, deal with some of these projects that the Leader of the Opposition is saying the people do not deserve. But Mr. Speaker, I want to say this that the Leader of the Opposition continues to say that there is nothing happening in this country, there is no economic activity that we are bankrupt and things like these. Mr. Speaker, let me highlight the businesses in Kingstown that is doing well. It will tell you a story too. I am painting pictures today, Mr. Speaker, I turn Sulle today, I painting pictures, cell phones, I am calling out those that are doing well you know. Let us understand if they are needs are wants, businesses that are doing well in this country, vehicle and spare parts, almost over the last three, four months about two or three new vehicles spare parts operations have opened in this country and33existing ones have expanded in the non-city centre. They realise the city centre is getting congested, so they say boy, let me go out Arnos Vale, let me go here and so on and what not, you know, hardware stores they are realizing again city centre getting crowded, let us get out of the city, let us start to sell our things, look around you would see them. I did not mention Spunky hardware this morning you know above Yvette Pork City, I forget that when I was painting the picture coming up there. Well I said vehicle things and spare parts. I could go through those, but fast foods Mr. Speaker, these are businesses that are doing well you know and you tell me people ain’t get money in their pockets, eh, fast foods. There was one fast food that came here Mr. Speaker, within two years it done branch off into another one. It get two KFC outlets, you are getting a subway now, it get Ricks Pizza out the road, Pizza Hut, Mr. Speaker, everybody expanding in the fast food business that is when people have money that they can spend.On the construction side I remember the Leader of the Opposition saying, construction is in a decline in this country. Mr. Speaker, I have never seen more ready mixed concrete operators than what we have in this country here now. Almost every contractor now wants to get his ready mixed concrete truck. Specks get about 10 or 12, he used to have 1 or 2, 3 he used to build balusters, he do not bother with that now. Let the smaller men build balusters. He is a big ready mixed concrete. You have Gibson’s, you have the Arthur Brothers.Tradesmen in this country, Mr. Speaker, I am showing you now where the construction industry is taking care of economic activity in this country. Tradesmen are benefiting Mr. Speaker, quarry operations and Mr. Speaker, believe or not, vendors are doing well. There is constant expansion of the vendors. Vendors now have 3 and 4 outlets you know. Long ago they used to set up one tray, now is one down on Bay Street, one by the Market, one up by Abbotts, one over by KFC and they have a minivan on evenings picking up the stuff. Their own, they are not rent anymore; they are not hiring taxi anymore, Mr. Speaker. Some of them have $60,000 and $70,000 vehicles that they are selling their produce from, because business is expanding, people have money to spend and everybody want a little piece of the action. Mr. Speaker, my time?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I have 33 minutes.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: So I have 12 minutes left. Mr. Speaker, I need to make a couple points on..., I have many other matters, but did you take my statement away from my time, [laughter] no you did not. Okay I was just wondering, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member for the Northern Grenadines spent half of his time yesterday on the $1 dollar charge, but the most shocking thing that I heard from him yesterday, Mr. Speaker, was this, when I said across the floor there is the ISPS Code, he said to me, you ain’t know what the “I” stand for? International, now that is the shallowest statement I have heard in a long time from a supposedly educated man, Mr. Speaker, because all persons any country will say that “I” is international. St. Vincent is international, if you are in the states, St. Vincent is international, so it is an international code. So you cannot say it is local, the international only refer to the US and America and England and so on, is the international code. So you could come and tell me about if I do not know the “I” is for international, so I do not understand what that means.Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition spent a lot of time yesterday in his response trying to [interjection] yes, in his response on Tuesday trying to whip the Political Leader apart, the Prime Minister apart when he34speaks of..., and he spent a lot of time on other capital receipts. But Mr. Speaker, I had all this, Mr. Speaker, do not forget you know the laptop that was stolen from me last night is the second laptop they stole from me. Last year Good Friday Night, they broke my office and they stole my laptop that night or that weekend, they also thief the Leader of the Opposition laptop or desktop, they say the NDP Headquarters was broken into and a computer was missing there.Mr. Speaker, I just got a nice piece of information that I was asking the public servants for, so it comes in handy. Mr. Speaker, I just did a couple things, I want to say this that the Budget of $913,475 million is two and a half times, almost two and a half times the 1998 Budget of the NDP. We do not realise it you know. The Budget in 1998 was $385,683 million, today no wonder now I can relate all these things and paint this sort of picture that I have been painting to you, because of the amount of monies that we have been pumping into the economy and as the PM say, if you can get concessionary loans and grants, take them regardless of who they come from. We will maintain our existing friends, you do not want to give us anything, we will go and look for new friends who will give us something and I thank God for Cuba and Venezuela, I thank God for Taiwan [applause] I see some placards outside...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Excuse me, I will ask the strangers in the gallery to refrain from participating in the debate you are not supposed to be participating, please.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: Please do not clap eh, I do not want you to leave, please do not clap. Mr. Speaker, I saw a placard outside thank God for Ralph Gonsalves and I say thank God for Ralph Gonsalves, because Ralph Gonsalves has an understanding of many subject areas. One thing I admire about him eh, when I talk about him people does say is me first cousin. But let me say this, I know him long before, ever since me and he born we are first cousin, you realise that ever since we born we are first cousin, but I got involved with him politically when he came back from Barbados in 1979 and at that time certain persons went to Milton Cato and complained how Ralph Gonsalves driving my Volkswagen and Milton called me up and said Julian imagine what they come and tell nah that Ralph come back and he driving your Volkswagen but I know all yo is first cousin and second cousin, I know the whole family strain, so it is not now, but I respect the man, he has trained himself, he educates himself, he has prepared himself to run this country and he has run this country the best [applause] of all the Prime Ministers in this country.I will stick with him through thick and thin. So I am telling you that the NDP which is really the last year that the NDP function eh Mr. Speaker, 1998 after 1998 results of the election you know when we got the 55% of the votes and they 44% they could not function you know, Government done that is why they had to fall within the term. They could not function they were mesmerized, they wondered what happened, who hit them about their ears, they were spinning, they were seeing stars [laughter]. You know when you get a lash in your ears Mr. Speaker, you see stars, they saw stars until today they will continue to see stars for a long time to come.So Mr. Speaker, let me just give you what I have come up with, he will say it is unscientific, he is the trained economist, I am not, but I am an accountant and I like figures and I play around with them, I am a trained accountant, so when I see figures and they jump out at me I use them, so he was bellowing about this other. Mr. Speaker, the average percentage over the period of the NDP and the ULP for Other under the Capital Received,35in other words, I took the percentage of Other of the total Budget, Other Receipts and did an average over the NDP and did an average over the ULP. Between 1996 and 2001 it was 6.39% and ours between 2002 and 2010 7.7% what is the difference between a 1% so both sides have done this over the years. In fact, the NDP’s accounting system included the payment of your debt in their current account, but yet if you look at the figures and I invite Members of this Parliament and members of the public who have the figures to look and see how exact those figures were during the years of the NDP. If they have $230 million in Current Expenditure they automatically get $230 million in the Revenue section, if they have $197,000 under Capital Expenditure they automatically get $197,000 in the Capital Receipts. Check it and you will see, but we changed it and while the Leader of the Opposition agreed that it is an internationally accepted standard, he fails to accept the accounting procedure where we account for Amortization outside of the current account. So this is why we can say in hard times we are running in this Budget, Mr. Speaker, a 20% deficit, ten more minutes, Mr. Speaker, just two more main points I have.We are $20 million deficit. Mr. Speaker, the highest, the figure other of total Budget I will give you this one because you will ask me why I did not say that one, is 7.7% the highest of other, 7.7% for the NDP in 1997 that was a Budget of $395 million and the highest of the ULP is 12.24% in 2010 a Budget of $913 million. The 2010 Budget is 2.31 times the 1997 Budget so we should have been about if you did the extrapolation about 17.7% because that is the norm. Both parties practiced it, just that we account for our debt servicing differently to them.Mr. Speaker, with regards to the repayment, I want to ask Members and all those members of the public, I heard the Leader of the Opposition, well he referred to it as rubbish, the Budget, Mr. Speaker, I want to use back the same word, he spoke a lot of rubbish about, well, Mr. Speaker, as I say if I am approaching a dangerous curve you tell me.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes.HONOURABLE JULIAN FRANCIS: All right, so I back off. Mr. Speaker, if we go page 81 Resource Requirements, Mr. Speaker, you will see how this Budget..., in other words what the PM has done here basically is to say, look I am getting so much money, I am not really allocating these to any specific projects, in fact, I am not even allocating them to Current or Capital Revenue, I am putting them where I think best over this very tight financial period I can play around with this money that I am getting. That is what he has said in this Budget Mr. Speaker, and it is plain, but the Leader of the Opposition refuses to accept the truth and the fact, because he does not have the creative imagination to do what Ralph Gonsalves, the Prime Minister is doing [applause].Mr. Speaker, one final thing, comparative performance of capital programme. I did not prepare this one, it came to me in an envelope, you see me open it, I was trying to get it since last night I got it now while I am speaking. 1995 revised Budget expenditure $89 million actual expenditure $26 million, 29.4% utilization rate. 1996 $1.9 million, they spend $35 million, 32% rate. 1997 they had $171 million; they spend $63 million, 37% implementation rate. 1998 they had $163 million, actual expenditure $102 million, that is when they build the cruise ship berth and so on, 62% the highest the NDP has ever gotten to Mr. Speaker. 1999, 44% hear this one36$2000 that is the last year they been in office you know, Mr. Speaker, they had capital expenditure in their Budget of $144 million they only spend $35 million.Mr. Speaker, in fact, an interesting figure that I have here in these things is the same year 2000 with regards to Capital Receipts, Mr. Speaker, you will be shocked to know that the Capital Receipts for the year 2000, Mr. Speaker, was $12 million for the NDP that is the most they could have pulled out of (let me just find it here 2000, the year 2000 capital I will get it for you in one minute, Mr. Speaker, the year 2000) capital $134,563 million was their capital revenue for the year, they only get $12 million out of that in 2000. If the Government ceases to function, no wonder the people changed them and put this Unity Labour Party in office [applause] a look at our performance since then. We have done since 2001, we have spent 31% in 2001 remember we did not prepare that Budget eh and our year did not start until June when we had supplementary estimates in this Parliament. The next year we did 52%, 46.8%, 52%, 36%, 59.8%, 61.3%, 54.3% and 2009 44% these are preliminary figures and there is an asterisk here which says, preliminary figures.Mr. Speaker, if you can see the graph, one peak under the NDP until 2000 and you have many peaks and troughs here, but this is the performance of this administration, Mr. Speaker, when the Leader of the Opposition gets up he must stop talking what he talking and talk facts for the people to understand. People do not elect people who tell lies, Mr. Speaker, or speak untruths or spread things too thin. I am very graphic when I speak but I try to back it up with painting a picture, telling you what we are doing, showing you figures, extracting figures from the same Estimates that he had prepared for years as Minister of Finance and advisor to the then Prime Minister.Mr. Speaker, I think I have done what I wanted to do. I want to thank you for allowing me to make the statement I made, I trust that this matter will be resolved and Mr. Speaker, I want to say thanks to you, the Honourable Prime Minister, to the Members of the Unity Labour Party of which I am a servant, never been afraid to say it. My parents always tell me there is dignity in hard work. It ain’t how much money, it ain’t the job you have, it is what you do and how well you do it. I want to thank my colleagues; I want to particularly congratulate Minister of Housing, Informal Human Settlements, Physical Planning, Lands and Surveys, Local Government. I think that the Ministry has been handed over into very capable hands [applause]. I listened to his presentation yesterday and I said to myself, Julian you could not have done it any better. He did a good job in his first presentation as a full Minister.Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the members at the office of the Unity Labour Party where I now sojourn, all the ladies and men up there, the work crew that I have that was responsible for what we had outside on Monday and remember again we are there tomorrow morning for the wrap session, we will be there. Police has authorised it, I have a letter of authority from the police saying where we could stand and we will be there from 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the members of staff of the Parliament for the assistance you have given me. I wanted to say something on airport financing because I think Mr. Speaker that I have been..., both Senator Leacock and the Parliamentary Representative for Northern Grenadines said I said in this House that we will have no loans when we finish the airport, I will deal with that another time. Just to say that I said, there is37Arnos Vale with 65 acres of land and if we run into any problems and we have any deficit at the end of it we could sell it at $400 a square foot and I did the calculations but they left that out.Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you very much. It is Government land, it ain’t nobody else land. National Properties is Government and Government is Government. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you very much and I wish the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines a prosperous, continued prosperous 2010, thank you [applause].HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: No I, oh you obviously was not inside Honourable Senator Leacock, because I have the Honourable Mike Browne and the Honourable Terrance Ollivierre who have all indicated already [interjection] hello [interjection] yes you will come after, well you are securing that position [laughter]. Honourable Minister, you have..., you know your time, you have..., okay, when you are ready Honourable Member.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Thank you. St. Vincent and the Grenadines is too small for a crisis centre at this time. There are questions of security, Human and Social Resources. Words Mr. Speaker, of the New Democratic Party said in this very House on Thursday February 4th 1999 almost 11 years ago and these words were uttered in response to our question when we were on the other side in the Opposition. The question being, what plans are there to provide a crisis centre for families or persons affected by domestic violence? And the more fulsome answer is St. Vincent and the Grenadines is too small for a crisis centre at this time. There are questions of Security, Human and Social Resources, the focus is to help victims to integrate into the family circle.Well Mr. Speaker, St. Vincent and the Grenadines 11 years later is still the same size, but in this year Budget we are creating history and we are indeed fulfilling our promise in two electronic manifestos to establish the crisis centre and to make it fully operational. This, Mr. Speaker, after we had bought the property at Kingstown Park and we had repaired it, it is currently being repaired and in this Budget we have made provision for the operation and the staffing; I begin Mr. Speaker, this way in order to highlight the important difference philosophically and programmatically between the ULP administrations here on this side and the NDP Opposition on the other side.In this House Mr. Speaker, over the years, I hope you excuse the voice, and I hope this sound man could give me a little bit more bass and a little bit more volume. Over the years I have taken a strong role in highlighting the differences between the two political parties. Mr. Speaker, not all motor cars are the same, not all mangoes are the same, not all politicians are the same, not all political parties are the same, yes, we fall into the category of political party because of an outlook and organisation and so on, but there are salient differences between political parties as is the case in our St. Vincent and the Grenadines.The New Democratic Party like the ULP party is an all class party. We represent all class interests in St. Vincent and the Grenadines; the difference is that because the ULP is a social democratic party of a progressive leaning our emphasis in representing all interest in the society, all classes, and our emphasis is on the most disadvantaged sectors of our society. They on the other hand while full of platitudes in relation to the working38people, the most disadvantaged sectors, they are particularly concerned with the more well to do, the business sector and their policies and programme reflect that.Last year I held up a glass of water half full to emphasize and dramatize the difference that while we will see the glass is half full they will see it as half empty because in this Budget we have kept on our track philosophically and programmatically by providing for the disadvantaged sectors of our society and as Julian Francis who now left has pointed out, they do not consider the nation and the working people deserving of the inclusion of those benefits that we have put into this particular Budget. So to them, this Budget is a curse, but the working people will understand that this Budget is their Budget. It is a Budget extraordinaire because it retains our commitment to the disadvantaged while at the same crafting a chart in the turbulent waters of today and that is a difficult thing. That makes the Budget a Budget extraordinaire, because the circumstances are extraordinaire, they are extraordinary, they are not ordinary, yet our Minister of Finance, our political leader with his skills has been able to say we will retain our loyalty to our philosophy and our outlook, but we are going to make sure we are creative in the particular extraordinary circumstances to come up with a Budget that could carry us further in 2010.So there is a profound difference between us over here and the other side and it is reflected in their perspective on the Budget as well as our perspective and this Budget did not see the light of day when the Prime Minister presented the estimates last week Tuesday. This Budget has a long track record in its creation, it is a bottom’s up Budget where our Ministries individually submitted proposals for the Budget which proposals emanate from the bowels of the Ministry and as in the case of my own Ministry certainly reflecting the downtrodden in the society and those had to be negotiated with the Ministry of Finance officials, come to Cabinet, refashioned in Cabinet and of course the Prime Minister with his numerous consultations. All of those were inputted into the Budget to arrive at this point. So this is not an ambush, this Budget is not an ambush. This Budget is the product of careful consideration and consultation to arrive at this point and taken in its totality and the total circumstances in which it finds itself. I repeat, we have a Budget extraordinaire.The Unity Labour Party is a social democratic party of a progressive kind and our constitution which is the life blood of our party confirms that. It says, and a number of these have been extracted from the preamble of the constitution that we have and that constitution captures the national philosophy of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It says the building of a society in accordance with the principles of participatory democracy basic human rights as enshrined in the constitution of SVG, free institutions, social justice, equality before the law and human dignity. Indeed the word dignity appears twice in the preamble of our current constitution.Our party constitution says that we are committed to the fostering of the pursuit of just economic rewards for labour and that is a precise lift from the constitution of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The development of people’s talents and skills to the fullest extent possible through training and education, the sustained improvement of the material, social and cultural levels of living of our people as a whole and this is the one that I love the most, the especial protection of those sections of the society which are disadvantaged, weak and defenceless. These are the things that defined the party, defined this side in Government, and defined the Budget that we have.39Mr. Speaker, the other side would not see it like that. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition led the charge in attempting to rubbish the constitution and I repeat, in doing that he was reflecting his own class position in the society, a member of the business class. I wrote an article during the Referendum discussion where I pointed out the three leaders of the new Democratic Party, the current leader of the Opposition, the founding father James Mitchell and the Chairman are all millionaire capitalists, they reflect that outlook, those are the lens through which you see the world, through which they see St. Vincent and the Grenadines, through which they see this Budget, their own class outlook.The Leader of the Opposition says that the Budget is a practical joke, it is a worthless document that we should be ashamed, that he is ashamed of that document and crossing the line of his training in economics to psychiatry he says that the Prime Minister cannot distinguish between appearance and reality, that he has a handicap, that he cannot tell the difference between the appearance and reality. So the reality is that this is a drug, but the Prime Minister will see it as a cheer, because he cannot understand that that is reality and the psychiatrist have a term for this condition “schizophrenia” well I have been working with this Prime Minister 19... well before that since in Grammar School in the 1960’s so over 50 years and I am now discovering last Tuesday that my Prime Minister is a schizophrenic, because schizophrenia is when you do not have the ability to distinguish between reality and unreality and these are the kinds of depths to which the other side sinks in these discussions.The Leader of the Opposition to use his own words said, “there is a correlation between crime and economic growth” and he produces some statistics to try to give credence to that thesis. Well there some truth in it except the correlation is never linear, is never a straight line, it is much more complicated, but hear this, between the period 1966 and that is a critical year in my presentation, I will return to it, 12 years after the NDP was in office, report 1966, [interjection] oh I am sorry 1996, 12 years after the NDP came into office, the crimes reported by the police were 10,184 it reached the highest point under them the year 1997; 10,217. Since we took office there has been a progressive decline: in 2001, it was 10 thousand and something; 2002, 8 thousand and something; 2003, 8 thousand and something; 2004, 8 thousand and something; 2005, 7 thousand and something; 2006, 7 thousand and something; 2007, 6 thousand and something; 2008, 6 thousand and something; 2009, it started to back up and I think we understand some of the effects, not so much of the economy but of certain developments in relation to our war in drugs in the hills and Vincy Pac.If you accept the thesis of the Leader of the Opposition then basically you will have to concede that since crime was at such a high rate that they were doing extremely badly in terms of the economy in 1996. So I make the point that we could produce as the statistician say figures do not lie, but you can lie with figures depends on how you manipulate them and you could produce figures to demonstrate that we are doing too badly in terms of the economy, but Mr. Speaker, the crisis centre entry into the presentation in order to highlight the differences. What has been the record of the New Democratic Party in relation, and I will take the words from our constitution, in relation to the disadvantaged, weak and defenceless.In 1994 10 years after the NDP came to office they commissioned a study on poverty done by Kairi Consultants of Trinidad and Tobago, the same consultants that they did want a couple years ago and I will come to that. The research was done in 1995 and the report was tabled December of 1996, so we come back to the year 1996. That report came on the heels of a bad situation in the country. In 1992 bananas nearly 60,000 tons were40produced, 1993 had a drought and that went down to about 1⁄2 for the same time 1994 you had the new banana regime coming in which accentuated competition between our area and Central American Bananas, so we had a very difficult time in the country. I say this because the follow up report which is done under our regime by the same people 2007 – 2008 that it came in those kinds of circumstances, difficult circumstances. The 1996 report said, and remember the research was done in 1995 that 25.7% of our population 1 in 41⁄4 and this is the head count, not households, the head, the total population. One quarter of the population was living in indigence and the literature give all kinds of other formulation for indigence, extreme poverty, critical poverty, food poverty, dirt poverty, you heard the Prime Minister talk about dirt poverty in his address, but the bottom line is this, when they talk about indigence, they are talking about the level below which members of a household or an individual are threatened with ill health and even death. It is the minimum food requirement necessary for existence. In other words, they worked it out in a family $364 per month is needed, if you go below that you are entering into the realm of ill health leading on to possibly death. In other words, you are talking about the starvation line that is what the NDP has bequeathed to us, 12 years in office that is what they have done to our people. Disadvantaged, weak and defenceless, quarter of them starving and we want to go back to that.The poverty as distinct from the indigence or the starvation line is where you add that indigence line and you put on some other what you call non-food thing so that have a cost. The poverty line was 37.5%, in other words, nearly 4 out of every 10 citizens were living in poverty. They went on to make some other points as we all know the distinction between rural and urban poverty. Rural poverty was a bit higher 39% as compared to 35% in town on so on, not significant, but notable and this is why our Prime Minister in fashioning the Cabinet had said, we have to pay attention to rural development and the criticisms we get for establishing what some people call one of the Mickey Mouse ministries has this consideration in mind, when we set up our rural ministry. Bad and terrible as these figures are or were that is not the whole story, the report says, I am quoting some exact words of the report, although the economy does not reflect the same dependence on bananas as it did in its 1970’s. Now remember the writing in 1976 they writing up the report after the research 1996.The diversification that has been achieved has not been adequate to protect it from the vagaries of the international economy and from the difficulty in the industry itself that is bananas. But this is the critical part, the trends, because the consultants come from the different disciplines, the economics and so on and so forth, so they could spot trends. The trends that they saw in the economy at the time under the NDP, the trends impact negatively not only on the existing poor they also increased the ranks with new poor. It goes on, on page 55 of the report to talk about the spread of poverty. It goes on further on page 121 the Government lacks the resources to increase expenditure under social services generally and on the social safety net, that is what does protect the poor, the social safety net specially, thus, and hear this, thus as poverty increased the Government had found itself with less capacity for poverty alleviation. So at the same time it is increasing the same time their capacity was declining to deal with poverty in short. By the time the Unity Labour Party got to office in 2001, 6 years after the research, it is likely that indigence extreme poverty and starvation had entered into the 40% of the population, oh sorry, in the 30% indigence, because it was going up it was not static. It is likely that poverty, general poverty had reached into the forties, forty something percent of the population.The report in other words indicated extremely high levels of starvation and poverty and that they were both increasing, both starvation and poverty. Now are we going back to that with those kinds of policies that we hear41reflected on the other side as distinct from the progressive social democratic content of this Budget? They go on further, the poverty gap was 12.6% and let me explain this, I will take a little time, Mr. Speaker, because you notice in the Prime Minister’s Budget I believe the biggest section of his Budget speech, may be about 10 to 12 pages was dealing with poverty, alleviation poverty, reduction poverty, elimination which is one of our portfolios.The poverty gap means that when they say it is 12.6% what it means, is that you have to transfer that percentage, let us say you are talking about $100 it means you have to transfer $12.60 to the poor extra in order for them to move out of poverty, I put it in a simple way but it is a little more complicated than that. There are so many things in that report. It goes on to point out what we all know that among the poorest section of the society, the unemployment rate was four times higher than in the upper echelons, the top 20%, the lowest 20% of the population the poorest the unemployment rate was four times the unemployment rate in the top section, the better off section in our society. So we see the close interconnection of course between poverty and unemployment.Now what is interesting and which is of so much relevance to us here is that the consultants in 1996 says to the NDP administration at the time, it says, look you all need to find the resources to embark on a counter cyclical programme in the economy, are those words familiar, counter cyclical? In other words, the crisis is the economy, the cycle in which it was going, they say, no, no, no, no if you go like that you will continue to get more and more poverty which is what was happening. But you need to generate and find resources to put the cycle in the other direction, to go the opposition direction, counter to how the cycle is going.Now our Prime Minister has made that crystal clear since 2001 that we need in those times rather than take a position of conservatism in the economy, at the same time the people are suffering more and more. You have to inject resources to reverse the cycle that was heavily criticised by the Leader of the Opposition and in..., they had that option you know, the consultants give them that option. Mr. Speaker, one of the other recommendations and I lift it as an exact quote for poverty reduction was the elimination of abuse of violence against women and girls and the need for a crisis centre. But three years later in this Parliament they say, no, St. Vincent and the Grenadines too small for a crisis centre, their words, not Mike Browne words, not the ULP words, their words when we asked them the question, but we have it in the Budget for 2010. We are going to take care as the Prime Minister say, we are going to take care of our women and men, because some of them men get licks too and they will need the crisis centre. But Mr. Speaker, I gone.One of the people who worked closely with that poverty report and research was a man from the constituency of West St. George he has a radio programme, from Dauphnie, his name is Junior Bacchus. In 1996 the same year in October he wrote a letter to the newspapers, I do not know if the camera could pick it up, but the title as published in the newspaper is “John must go” [interjection] I am coming to that and down below it signed Junior Bacchus, Dauphnie, “John must go” I could see it on the TV Junior Bacchus, Dauphnie. He worked on this poverty report you know and I read the letter.The year 1996, if you do not know who is Junior Bacchus, he has that programme, he been on the NDP demonstration day, what day it was? The one of the biggest placards the other day you know, this week Monday, one of the biggest placards outside. The year 1996 began with crisis in education, so when they say42John must go you know what they mean, John Horne the Minister of Education, John must go, when the parents of Troumaca refused to send their children to the shift system with the Troumaca Ontario Secondary School, you remember when they used to build shift system left right and centre, have you ever heard of shift system under this administration? And this is when times were still reasonably good. This action became necessary because of..., hear the language you know, Junior Bacchus who stand on the NDP line you know, hear the language, this action became necessary because of the blatant neglect, not neglect you know, blatant neglect by the Government in the maintenance of the building that housed the Troumaca Primary School. It is now October and crisis after crisis continues, same Junior Bacchus, this is under NDP you know, lack of furniture in Questelles, asbestos in several schools, the need for school building in Greggs, shortage of teachers in North Union Secondary, Barrouallie Secondary, Infant School, a shortage of furniture in Barrouallie Secondary, gross ill discipline at the St. Vincent Grammar School, lack of furniture at several schools in the Grenadines, pest attack at Richmond Hill School and the list continues. Is not this enough for the Prime Minister meaning Mitchell? Is not this enough for the Prime Minister to take corrective measures? No, it seems the only time this Ministry of Education, hear the language, under the incompetent, hostile and infective leadership of John E. the only time they take action is when teachers and parents protest. I am happy that Vincentians are now becoming aware of the importance of their children’s education to the extent of taking serious action. I did call on Vincentians to protest if they need change. With the ever growing national debt, their language you know, and the need of Government to service its many loans, we will see the Ministry of Finance cutting back more and more from the social sectors like education, health and community services. Remember not a cent for them; you remember that, not a cent for them?But hear this part here now, it try in with this poverty thing you know and this is his figure, 1996 so it is at variance with the 37.5% that I talked about, our 41.9% poverty rate, I do not know how we reconciled those figures, Junior Bacchus would know, because basically he is saying it is 42% poverty in the same year, the report was saying 37.5%. Our 41.9% poverty rate will soon get up to 60%, well his climb is more precipitous than mine, I was not going so rapid, but he reading it and he been involved in research. Our 41.9% poverty rate will soon get up to 60% if we continue along this path and serious [inaudible] is made to improve the productive sector. It is unfortunate that the Teachers Union would not look deeper into the cause of the problems of the education system. Technically speaking, the unions should not have called for the resignation of the CEO in spite of the short comings of the Chief. He is not the one who is to take the blame for the lack of funds for the appointment of new teachers and the compensation of graduates; he is just the mouth piece of the Ministry.The Minister is the one who is responsible for the present policy or lack of policy in the Ministry. The Chief is just a servant. If the Public Service Commission bows to the call of the union by dismissing the Chief, any future appointee will easily compromise to meet the wishes of the union for fear of public embarrassment and he concludes, I think the union should examine the issue deeper and issue a serious call for the resignation of John Horne.When Cabinet fails to consider funds to employ teachers, who to blame, John; when teachers ain’t appointed, who to blame, John; when McCauley Peters and Cools Vanloo mash up the education system, who to blame, John; when schools cannot get basic supplies, who to blame, John; get the message? John must go. 1996 how quick people forget. But ain’t forgetting and Junior Bacchus is on the other side. On the 26th August 1997 he43had been making soundings that he wants to replace me as a candidate in West St. George at the time, the night before we had our candidate selection on the 27th August 1997, the day before on August 26th, he rush and took in his application to the Unity Labour Party, it was received on the same day, because he was hoping to replace me as a candidate. You see the kind of opportunism that emerges when people have their own agendas. I have the application form here, a copy of it. It is dated the 26th August, 2997 because the selection was the next day, the 27th. When opportunism guides people rather than fundamental principles, he end up in all kind of waters and you find some kind of justification and rationale for doing it.Mr. Speaker, we fast forward the 2009 last year, that was when the same Kairi Consultants delivered a report to the Ministry of Finance and Planning, they were the..., they had carriage of the research even though we have carriage in our Ministry of addressing the problems of poverty. The Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines say they asked the question couple meetings ago about the report and the Prime Minister answered to indicate that they were doing some final corrections and so to a final report and it would be made available, but we had access to, should we say, the draft or the first copy. So we fast forward to 2009 report reflecting the research done on poverty in 2007 and 2008.The report indicated that general poverty had declined from the previous report of 37.5% but my projected figure of around 40% because it was going up at the time, had declined to 30.2% in other words, the pre must drop let us say from 40% under the NDP to 30% in 2007 that is to say a 10% in the six and half years we have been in office and if you follow that projection from where we are now I would suggest that general poverty might be in the vicinity of about 25% based on their figures. But the more dramatic reduction has been in the area of indigence or extreme poverty, dirt poor poverty, food poverty, starvation and that declined from their figure 25.7% and I had projected it upwards to about 30% when we came to office, had declined from say 30% to 2.9% [applause] so that is 3% and if you project it further to where we are now from 2007, clearly, extreme poverty would be minimal and I have already alerted my staff at the Ministry that we must go on a focussed and concentrated thrust to identify the extreme poor in our society including the vagrants, because what is happening in the macro economy has led to a provision of jobs and there have been particularly focussed interventions. Certainly by my Ministry and as the Prime Minister say, all Ministries and all policies connect with this issue of poverty reduction elimination because it is our number two priority after education which is our number one priority and there is a nexus between education and poverty reduction [interjection] they are the Siamese twins and I am going to make a point on that just now, another point.So it is easier to reduce extreme poverty or indigence because the household that is in extreme poverty or indigence really needs a smaller insertion of resources to move them from starvation level to into the poverty zone. It is always harder to move from the poverty zone into the none poverty zone, but limited resources injected into a family could bring them out of the starvation syndrome and our macro economy has taken care of that with the provision of numerous jobs, I think the figure was given, Prime Minister you could correct me, some 8000 jobs have been created, [interjection] 10,000 jobs have been created that makes a difference. If you put somebody in a family situation on a yes programme which is really still a study-training programme it is not a salary and you get the basic of $450.00 it could shift them out of extreme poverty but still they may remain in the poverty zone. So from that standpoint, yes, it is easier to reduce extreme poverty than poverty in general.44But certainly, this Government has to take kudos for the drastic transformation in the society is a quiet social revolution which is taking place. Just stand up by the High School gap on afternoons and to see the odd mixture of people from all class, backgrounds in the same uniforms integrating and mixing. There is a quiet social transformation revolution taking place in the society that is not being adequately recognised. They are changing the whole composition and fabric of the society and that is because of the outlook of this administration, reflected in our programmes policies and most definitely in the Budget.There is a figure that the Prime Minister referred to in this report; it is a technical thing that poverty researchers deal with. They have a whole set of measures and some of them complicated in the calculation, but there is one they call the gene coefficient that the Prime Minister refer to and basically there is a range from zero to one, the closer the figure is to one the more extreme is the inequality in the society, the closer the figure move to zero is the less extreme in the inequality in other words, you are getting closer to equality in the society and that figure under the NDP went down from .56% to .40% it seemed a small drop but it is significant in terms of what it means, the ramifications per poverty.The report said that the Government, meaning the ULP Government through its agencies has mounted a vigorous programme of poverty reduction, they summarise it in that sense. It goes on to say that poverty and indigence levels have fallen, comparative social indicators that is health, education, la, la, la and a number of other things, those are what you call comparative social indicators, show improvement in living conditions.The nexus between education and poverty, in 1995 when the research was actually done, and I am going to round the figures out only 3 out of every 100 heads of households, whether it is male or female heading the household, only 3 of them out of every 100 had acquired education higher than, well I will say post-secondary and university education, past secondary education, only 3. In 2007 the number had jumped to nearly 9%.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to seek the assistance from the Honourable Minister for elucidation on a matter, I do not know if he would be grateful to assist me. I think that is so for most of us on this side have not have the benefit of seeing these reports which indeed is a very important document and I think steps ought to be made to make sure that we all have that report, because it bothers me as a person who is interested in representing people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Let us make it non-political, but I think I understood and the Honourable Minister, this is why I am asking for your assistance that you identify the statistics as 3% being indigent I do not know if that is what you are saying.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: 2.9%.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: 2.9% well I round it off to 3% of the population indigent. Just to do easy Maths I am rounding the population of the country at 100,000 just for the ease of calculations and you are saying that 3% of that 100,000 are indigent.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: 3% of?45HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: 3% of the 100,000 are indigent so we have 3000 people in St. Vincent roughly speaking on a constituency basis it is about 200 people in every constituency can be considered to be very poor that is what this statistic is saying. Just doing linear Mathematics, 200 persons per 15 constituencies 3000 are very poor, very poor, very, very poor that is correct? Mr. Minister, I am asking for your help.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Now, I will explain, let me explain, I was saying [interjection]. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Allow me with the Honourable Minister please. [Interjection] Iwill get to that I am just asking for the assistance of Honourable Minister please.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Senator was not following the totality of my presentation. I made the point that we dropped from the percentage on paper of 25.7% in the 1996 report which you all commissioned, but I was projecting the figure upwards based on the trends and I felt that by 2001 when we came into office is that the figure for indigence or starvation was about 30%. I went on to say [interjection] hello [interjection] no, no, no follow me carefully, the research was done in 1995 of the first report under the NDP administration. The report came out in December 1996, the report says that 25.7% of the population was indigent, I am saying to you, based on the report where it indicating that the trend was upwards with poverty, I am projecting that six years later between 1995 and 2001, six years when this administration came into office, in the remaining six years the figure may have climbed another 4.3% to about 30% roughly.I went on to say that the 30% according to the latest report has been reduced dramatically to 2.9% when they did research in 2007/2008 because it really went over an extended period of time. But I am saying further Senator Leacock is that based on the downward trend that if you take it at 2007/2008 at 2.9% from 30% in 2001, the downward trend will suggest that where we are now in January 2010 we may be down to about 1% or under 1% because of the downward trend that is what I am saying. But we are taking it [interjection] okay, well the Prime Minister has calculated under your time how much it would have been under the 25.7%.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: So Honourable Minister I am so grateful to you because as I understand it and I want to be accurate, because this is work for us to do, we just have about 1000 very, very poor persons on starvation near dead that kind of situation.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Precisely. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: 1000 in the country. HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Yes. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: On a constituency basis less than 100. HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Yes.46HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Thank you. HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: And I believe it is manageable. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am grateful to you Honourable Member.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: As a Government, but the point is if you take 1/3 roughly of the population or one quarter of the population Senator Leacock in your time it meant that you had in the area of indigence starvation, you would have been approaching twenty something thousand people in that bracket compared with maybe 1000 now. But whatever it is and you are right in this sense that we all collectively have to address that because we have an obligation as leaders and people of some influence in the society to certainly take care of the poorest of the poor in our society and I am saying to you that is what this administration is doing and I am saying to you further that is what this Budget is doing.Mr. Speaker, our Ministry has responsibility for this work and our various department, I should point out you know Mr. Speaker..., Mr. Speaker, how much time I have, help me out here.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You have 1 hour 10 minutes already.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Roughly half an hour, okay I got to move on quickly. Mr. Speaker, our Ministry has thirteen portfolios assigned to it. I consider it a super Ministry. Some Ministries are lucky with just stand alone one portfolio, but we have to address thirteen in nine departments and we have in our Ministries. Poverty eradication pervades all of the departments and every programme has to connect with it. Some more pointedly than others, so in our community social development thing, we have of course the famous CAP programme, Children Against Poverty, an extremely successful programme. We have the issue of provision of water for homes that do not have. We have general building community structures to carry out work in their communities, the cooperative and I just saw the Registrar walking, has as it lead the work in poverty eradication and the establishment of cooperatives whether in schools or generally in the society, they have a responsibility to address this question of harnessing and corralling resourcing financially in order that children can have certain kinds of resources and use them in a productive way.Mr. Speaker, our family affairs is one of the lead Ministry’s in this regard, or Departments and whether it is dealing with the elderly and we have the home help provision for the elderly poor, this is the administration that dealt with that you know. This administration had set that up, the elderly poor, they lead on that. They deal with issues of child abuse because we have quite a bit of that happening in families in general certainly among the poor families in part because of the stress they have to undergo.We have the street children programme. We are the ones who did the research on it and have implemented a pastoral programme to address that. The street children, Mr. Speaker, are not street children in the traditional sense that you see in Latin America where they live and sleep on the street, but they spend an inordinate percentage of time on the street and they are truant they do not go to school all the time because of all the47difficult circumstances. We have a responsibility as a Government and certainly we have as a Ministry that responsibility to assist in that regard.Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with the students at risk. We are dealing with persons with disabilities the challenged people. Mr. Speaker, on December 10th of last year a report entitled “Persons with disabilities in St. Vincent and the Grenadines” was registered based on a survey conducted by Projects Promotion Limited, commissioned by the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Social Investment Fund and on behalf of the National Society of Persons with Disabilities. They produce their report and in that report, they have information on 2,540 persons with disabilities stored in the computer for follow up work and they have all kind of tables in relation to social and demographic characteristics, number, nature, living arrangements, conditions and so on.Mr. Speaker, this administration has taken a lead on addressing the disabled and this year, we are going to see a mega project, which involves research on the disabled. I go back, Mr. Speaker, to what our party has said about the disadvantaged, weak and defenceless. We have an obligation to defend the defenceless, to provide advantages to the disadvantaged, because the way the world is set up advantages accrue to the advantaged that is why we have a particular outlook on this side, because we know that and disadvantages accrue to the disadvantaged. Well we have to have an affirmative intervention programme to turn that around and this administration under the leadership of the Prime Minister himself has been spearheading a programme, an ALBA programme which programme has been done in Cuba, Ecuador, help me now, Nicaragua, Venezuela, a number of Latin American countries to identify each and every quote unquote “disabled”, you call them challenged persons, to identify their needs to do all kind of things. Genetic research to see if there is something in the genes from one generation to the next and so on, a complex scientific study in order to inform a more comprehensive intervention in the society and I think the Cuban team as I understand, it would be back here working with local doctors and so on in March.Our Gender Affairs Department, Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with poverty eradication as our one. We are working with our teen mothers to get them back into school, because again we understand the connection between education and poverty elimination. Working with parents, rural women in income generation, the Liberty Lodge Boys basically that is a poor boy school for poor people children to give them a chance in life because the home situation is difficult and we have that programme going, we are working with them, they are doing some excellent work in Agriculture because they have a few acres of land and we are seeking where possible to reintegrate them into their families, but that is after a whole set of work with parents and so on.Mr. Speaker, Physical Education and Sports, again those are the areas of recreation with our hard courts and our playing fields where poor people get a chance to exercise and participate in recreational activities. The wellness programme, we are encouraging our nation as a whole to be involved in activities of this nature. I cannot go into all the programmes, Mr. Speaker, because of the limitation of time. The youth programme recently the Youth Empowerment Service programme earned a hemispheric award for this part of the world, North, South America or North America, South America, the Caribbean, our youth officer went to Mexico to receive this. They had a selection from I do not know how many hundred, six hundred or so and projects dealing with youth and employment have emerged, Mr. Speaker, as one of the top ones and we have been awarded.48This afternoon, Mr. Speaker, I leave to represent my Prime Minister at a CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting on Youth in Suriname and these are matters that will be dealt with. Only last week, Mr. Speaker, I opened a conference dealing with Caribbean Youths in Agriculture and we are looking at how we could get the young people reconnect with the land so they could understand the importance of their own food production for their own wellbeing and certainly in the context of poverty alleviation. Mr. Speaker, there is so much I could say. I wanted to talk a lot more on some of the programmes and I hope my staff will understand the pressures of time.Mr. Speaker, I turn to the constituency of West St. George. We start from the legacy of the New Democratic Party. In that constituency, Mr. Speaker, in 2001 when we took office, I was faced with the hand from the previous administration 17 years, because they bin dey since 1984 of some 200 roads that had to be fixed, either repaired or to be constructed from dirt to concrete. I have done I think about 120, but we still have ways to go and the people complaining and that is understandable. But you would have heard from the Budget address from the Prime Minister and other Ministers that there is going to be a concerted effort in doing this and Mr. Speaker, there are times I will take money out of my pocket, we have a horrendous road up in Gomea by the Gomea Methodist Church, absolutely horrendous. The last time that it was fixed in 2007 I took money out of my pocket to get a team to patch out the holes, and we try to get it fix. The next year yes, we had the money, we had a contractor, and they did not have asphalt. Then when they have asphalt there was a problem with cash flow. Last year it was to have been done and then they say BRAGSA will do it and BRAGSA has it as its number one priority in West St. George because it is just simply horrendous and we are going to expect in this year a lot of work to be done in the constituencies addressing the feeder roads and what has been referred to as the gouti tracks but you know what I mean the lanes where it cannot be roads. It has to be done and while we accept the fact that we do not have the Budget to do all there are some critical ones that need to be done and in this regard, Mr. Speaker, we are going to work as a team in this administration and I know Cabinet is going to be exceedingly vigilant on this in 2010.Mr. Speaker, education was in a shambles, general in the country. You heard Junior Bacchus letter and certainly in West St. George we inherited all the schools in West St. George, everyone was in a rundown state. We have done major work on the Sion Hill School, because that is a hurricane shelter we had to do a lot, a lot, a lot of major work there, the roof and everything. We have done major work on the Gomea Methodist School which is going to..., there is going to be some ceremony soon. We have done repairs to Dorsetshire Hill, Belmont, and the other Belair School; we put on a top floor because we had to vacate the top section, a different section an annex which we converted into the West St. George Secondary School. We have done work on the Technical College, Teacher’s College and so on.Mr. Speaker, education is important and permit me, Mr. Speaker, just to return to a point that I was making earlier about the nexus between..., just about the time when Senator Leacock got up, so I lost track of that point, but I am going to return to it, because I am on education. I had made the point that in 1996 post secondary and university education only 3% of households had compared with 2007/2008 9% and the figure is climbing and that is wonderful. We are not taking about the children in the house you know, we are talking about the head of the household.49Mr. Speaker, I mean the facts are there, the facts are there, the facts are there. Mr. Speaker, last week there was a meeting at the Girls’ High School, our Form Four Students study Spanish, History and they have a trip was going to Cuba. Last night I wrote a cheque for my daughter, she is in that group, my Permanent Secretary is here, she had twin daughters, identical twins, they are well known because they are outstanding in dances and we were both at the meeting and I realise a $1000 in January hard and I tell you, it was not easy to bend my wrist last night to write that cheque for $1000 for my daughter to carry to school today. But what is interesting, when you go into the meeting, I think about 40 of the students have been selected and they are not selected because it is Mike Browne daughter or Rosita Alexander daughter, they had to do a whole set of work before and on the basis of who do work they were selected. I told the Principal I love that approach, I love that approach. If you want to go, let everybody work, well who did not work, they ain’t show the interest, then you select on the basis of that. But what was beautiful about the meeting, Mr. Speaker, is when you sit down there and somebody like me from an established middle class back ground and you watch grass root parents in that meeting and they articulate and they could stand up and make the points for themselves, they ain’t need a Mike Browne to talk for them, it was beautiful, beautiful, this is what the revolution is about, this is what it is about [applause].And when I see those kinds of things you know, Mr. Speaker, I could go home, I could retire because I know we have made an impact, I know we have made an impact and I could go home and pass the baton to other people, but it is a challenge, they had to raise about two hundred and something thousand dollars and I told PS, I say, PS we have to try we best to help lobby because I want these children go and experience the Cuban Revolution. The programme they have, many places are visiting, my own self and we have to make an effort and I hope those who are outside there hearing could come forward and ring the Girls’ High School this afternoon and talk to Mrs. Bowman and say, well I could give you $5000 because some of the grass root children I know it is going to be difficult for them to go and we really have to make an effort for them to. Let them get the exposure. Yes, it is easy for me and Rosita to buy a plane ticket and carry our children to Cuba on one of the trips or something, but here is an opportunity for grass root children, working class children to go on these trips, but because of the pressure of the money, especially in this time of the year January, it ain’t easy, we have to see how we could support them to the max.Mr. Speaker, the West St. George constituency like the North Windward constituency never had a secondary school under the New Democratic Party.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 10 minutes.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: That is corrected, that is corrected, we are going to have a glorious new school you know, $18 million but our Cabinet said to me, you are the representative, World Bank taking a little time you do not have to wait on World Bank, let us put something together. So we had to be creative, I had to be creative as a representative supported by our Prime Minister who we consider the lead Minister of Education. Never mind my colleague here, I accepted that in my time and the colleagues and they say, yes go let us see how creatively we could be, we cannot wait, because we do not know when they will come, it would take them a long time, because World Bank ain’t easy with their procedures you know, it is not like CDB, Caribbean Development Bank you get through a little earlier, but the point I am making is that we started the50school. We built a wing on the Primary School, we shifted the other students down and we had the compound which we just keep adding on bit by bit, they have a lab now, they have a tuck shop, we keep putting on things [interjection] and we went there together.I remember one day when you had visited, you were making your rounds of the schools, you was down Barrouallie then you come, I think [interjection] man, hands on, this is not no theoretical esoteric kind of thing over here you know, these are hands on people. Mr. Speaker, I does put on my water boots and weed eater and go and trim by the Spa, trim a tree in West St. George. Every child that went into that went into that school, they never used to call it Mike Browne School..., I mean they never used to call it West St. George, they say, Minister this is your school, that is Mike Browne School. Every child, 103 of them admitted, every single one of them had failed Common Entrance, everyone. They say Minister, where to put them? I say, send them by my school, this is my school send them. Give me the poor people children. So they came, the teachers worked, Mr. Speaker, I go really cannot sing the praises more of them teachers, they work for them children. Some of them had real serious remedial problems and they take them in like their own children and they work with them. Five years later, last year Mr. Speaker, the children them deliver a 60% pass rate in CXC [applause] children who would have gone in the mountains.DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: How many are there now? HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: I am not sure how many now, I do not..., DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Inaudible.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Three hundred and something. You know I mean..., some gone on to College, Technical College, “A Level College,” the Community College, they gone on. I mean I could go home; I could go home now...,DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Inaudible.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Thank you, thank you Prime Minister, 330 students in West St. George. I have a full school, so we did not sit back and wait on World Bank; we use our creativity, our ingenuity to solve these problems at the constituency level. What a Government? [Applause] Mr. Speaker, oh there is so much, there is so much, I really need more time. This might be my last Budget, Mr. Speaker; could I get an extra half an hour?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You have 5 minutes remaining. DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Inaudible.HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Oh yes, yes, that is your call Prime Minister, that is your call, that is your call51DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: You have another one. HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Oh, I have another one? Okay, good. DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Under the constitution..., [laughter].HONOURABLE MICHAEL BROWNE: Mr. Speaker, but seriously the Budget, and I really have to..., I will go on another programme, Mr. Speaker, on the air and elaborate a number of these things, but very quickly, we do have a lot in the Budget in capital expenditure for rehabilitation of roads. The Vigie road is going to continue. It is amazing you know, holes in the Vigie road bad, you spend nearly $2 million for the piece, every morning you hear on the radio, oh Mike Browne where he dey, he not doing nothing, the Government, watch so much holes, the road done, not a person call in and say, uh, thank you for the road, nobody, no, no. We are going to do Fenton road and Feeder roads in the constituency that is in the Budget. In the Budget we have a lot for poverty eradication and community development in West St. George, in general in the country. We are going to do some more work on the Arnos Vale Playing Field, we are going to have three, one days coming up. I could not even touch Arnos Vale Stadium and all that today, next time I will have to do that. The YES programme we are going to continue to take on a number of the YES youths as participants, they have work to be done on the airport. River defences, I have challenged the new representative or plural, depends on what happens there, how it is configured or reconfigured, I have challenged them that when they come in, one of the main headaches they are going to have is river defences. That Rara-rara river where everybody property is right next to it, it is going to take a lot of money and a lot of challenges for the new representative.Mr. Speaker, the no income programme has started and I want to thank my young energetic Minister who spoke so eloquently on it last night, Senator Caesar for the work he is doing nationally. In this case, Mr. Speaker, we have one, two, no income houses under construction right now and those are for people who had land, and one of the people I glad..., and I am sure the Minister of Culture will be happy to hear this, there is a little feller Adams who plays with the banjo team in town, banjo man we call him, he is getting one, because his house is about to literally fall down and there are old people who indigent, talk about indigent, people except their relatives bring food they do not have a shelter, those are some of the people we are taking care of. One person in the twenty’s, one person in the thirty’s, one person in the forty’s, we are also dealing with young people with that.Mr. Speaker, we have built, we cannot even go over the record of what we have done last year, and you do not have time for that. We have built two houses for two people; one guy who was sleeping under the plastic you would have seen him. He has a nice little cabana now. We have in the Budget to purchase land; we have to definitely get the land for the Dorsetshire Hill Playing Field and a number of other things that we have to deal with.Mr. Speaker, I will have to do a special programme on West St. George and also on the Ministry because I really..., it is so much that have to be done in this short presentation. But I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, and your staff for the work here. Certainly I want to thank the Prime Minister for this creative Budget. I mean I never envy his job. When he put me to act when he and the Deputy are out I pray they come back quick,52because that is a work I do not want permanently. I salute him not so much as Prime Minister here, but as Minister of Finance to create this Budget which remains loyal to our outlook and our commitment to the disadvantaged, the weak and defenceless as we say in our constitution. I want to thank my colleagues on this side. We have worked as a team, we know we speak very frankly but respectfully with each other and when we see things go wrong, we point them out to each other, because the whole objective is not to go on the defensive but to correct any errors that are being made.I certainly want to thank my Ministry. We have a special meeting on Monday, I go straight from the airport here when I left to that meeting where we have already circulated sections of the Throne Speech and the Prime Minister’s address, they are studying them now over the weekend and they are going to craft different programmes which we are going to follow through based on the directives contained in the Budget address. They know we have a serious, serious year ahead and all of us have to bend our backs a little bit more.I thank the people of this country, I thank the Government, I thank my Ministry, Cabinet, Prime Minister, my party and I really was distraught with the news about the breaking and the vandalizing of the office, I mean this is really, really sad. My own family, they were hoping to be here, but I was scheduled to speak later, so I want to thank my wife for having promised to come. The Speaker and his staff and of course the wonderful constituents of West St. George, let it be clear, as I close, Mr. Speaker, let it be crystal clear that West St. George is now a ULP fort. It will not be cracked, it will remain a ULP fort and anybody who wants to launch an assault on West St. George understand that we have flanks that you have cross and I in the front of that flanks before it even reach the candidate. You have to cross me first and flanks because I have some wires in West St. George there they do not bite nice and you have to cross them. So do not ever think about counting West St. George in yours, because you have to come on my turf and we have some wires that they really do not bite nice in West St. George Mr. Speaker. So let them understand that, not because Mike Browne going out, I ain’t going out of politics you know, I just going out of the electoral thing, I have other things to deal with.I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues for this opportunity to have made this presentation. Thank you [applause].HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I suppose we will take the luncheon suspension now and then we will have the Member for the Southern Grenadines who had indicated that he wants to speak after.DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Mr. Speaker, in as much as today is going to be a shortened day, perhaps we can take a shortened lunch in about half an hour, so we return at 3 o’clock rather than, it would have been 3:30.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Oh, okay shortened by half an hour. DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Shortened lunch period. Accordingly Mr. Speaker, Ibeg to move that this Honourable House do stand suspended for the luncheon interval until 3:00 p.m.53Question put and agreed to. House suspended at 1:20 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. (Luncheon) House resumed at 3:00 p.m.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable gentlemen when we break for the lunch session we recognised then the Honourable Member for the Southern Grenadines and in a few moments I will invite him to start making his presentation. I just want to make sure I get his time correctly. Honourable Member you may begin.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members, throughout this debate, I have heard the talk of the global economic situation and all its many problems that seem to be attributed to this global economic meltdown, but what is essential, Mr. Speaker, is that we provide the leadership to steadily steer the ship into safe waters, because the crew and passengers must feel safe knowing that as they sail rough waters that we have a good captain.Mr. Speaker, because we all know when the wind is heavy and the sea is rough that you need to put the head of the ship into the wind and hold her steady, because if you do not and you keep on swaying all over the ocean and we end up on broadside, we know what could happen, Mr. Speaker and I am saying all of this to say that the quality of life we live is dependent on how we utilise our resources in rough times in order to bring about sustainability.So Mr. Speaker, it is simply not true to say that the Opposition all the time, all we are doing is opposing and not proposing. We are a responsible Opposition and throughout our tenure in this House, we have said that when proposals are within the interest of the people of this country that we will support and we have supported [applause]. And we have also said, if we think that it is not within the interest of the people, then it is within our rights to oppose [applause] and Mr. Speaker, other Members and myself, we have made an input into proposals when it comes to this House because I remember even speaking on education have made certain proposals some of which have been implemented by this Government, so it is simply not true to say that the Opposition has been opposing all the time, we have been making our positive contribution in this House, Mr. Speaker. I do not know if anybody has the monopoly on knowledge, but what I do know is that we are representatives of the people and when we come here, we have to address the issues that they face every day and that are what we bring before this House, Mr. Speaker. So Mr. Speaker, through it all, we have to make certain decisions. We look at the problems, see which are most critical and those which have impacted on the wellbeing of the people and based on that we make a decision on the problems that we have to tackle first.And Mr. Speaker, this takes me into education. Learning for all, that is what it should be. Whatever it takes, no matter the locality, whether it is urban or rural, country or town and for this, Mr. Speaker, the Grenadines should be of no exception, because I believe we must have equity within the education system and sometimes that means giving more, or spending more in areas where you do not have the type of services and facilities in order to bring them up to par with those that have such facilities, because we have to try our best to make sure that every student regardless of the locality find themselves on the same footing and that is what we on this side54of the House have always proposed, Mr. Speaker. Because I have seen the difference that education can make in young people’s hopes, dreams and aspirations.Mr. Speaker, I went to school with certain people in Canouan and I know if their parents had the financial means in order to send them to a secondary school that they would have made overwhelming strides, Mr. Speaker. How else, but education? Can children of parents of modest means, or who come from a poorer background hope to overcome the cycle of poverty? How else, Mr. Speaker, other than through education can these people expect to develop their full potential, Mr. Speaker? How else can they develop or go through, choose certain career which would not only change their lives, Mr. Speaker, but also have an impact on their country, their community? Mr. Speaker, I say this to say, an average of three students per year drop out of secondary school from Canouan alone, because of the various problems which they face and over the years I have been addressing this issue in this Honourable House and for something to be done to help these children. Because, Mr. Speaker, the residents of Canouan have called for a secondary school on the island, preferably from Form 1 to 3 and this they think will help and go a long way so that when they are of that age they will be able to handle the situation better being away from home. Because, Mr. Speaker, we have to realise it is just Tuesday I got a call from a parent and sometimes we knock the fathers, but this was a father and he got a call that he had to come and find different accommodation for his daughter who is attending one of the colleges in St. Vincent.Over the years I went to visit a parent and when I got there I knock the door, I thought no one was home, but Mr. Speaker, she took a while before she came and I realise why, because when she reached she was in tears and what caused her tears, her daughter in Form 5, she got a call the morning that she had to come move her immediately with immediate effect and that child would have moved for as much as 5 to 6 times from different homes already, Mr. Speaker, and this is not only the problem of Canouan, Union, but it is also Mayreau. These children sometimes, some people move no less than 10 times into different homes, Mr. Speaker and it is very hard and they need help in order to make it. I have spoken to students who told me that they had to do their homework under street lights, study under street lights because where they live they have to turn off the lights at a certain hour and Mr. Speaker, it is not easy for students, children of that age having to face all these difficulties in order to get an education. Those who made it, they are real strong; I commend them for the effort they are making just to try to get a secondary education. We have had several town hall meetings with people from all the islands, Mr. Speaker, and two main problems they always identify, one is proper accommodation and the other is some sort of financial assistance could be given to these students.Mr. Speaker, in this House the issue was raised when I asked the Honourable Minister of Education and with your permission I would quote the question, “students from the island of Canouan have been faced with various problems in accessing secondary education on the mainland, Bequia and Union, the residents have thus expressed the need for the introduction of secondary education on the island to aid accessibility”, and Mr. Speaker, this question was answered on the 24th February 2009, as recent as that and in reply the Minister said, “I must start by reminding the Honourable Member that there is a new school being built on Union Island.” We are fully aware that the school itself is nearing completion and very importantly, student’s accommodation is under construction, but Mr. Speaker, the point is they are using the school, staff quarters were built, but there is no student accommodation that is the point, Mr. Speaker.55At the beginning after the 2009 Common Entrance Results, all the students from Canouan was sent to Union Island, the parents were having great difficulty in finding accommodation, because sometimes we think because it is the Grenadines, people from Canouan will have people in Union Island, but Mr. Speaker, sometimes you move. Long ago you move for employment reasons and you would have had family on the mainland instead of on Union Island, so Mr. Speaker, I had to contact the Ministry of Education and also the Minister and I must say to her that she took up the matter and I had to work feverishly in order to replace those students on the mainland Mr. Speaker. But it still brings me to the point, Mr. Speaker, will the dorm be built? Will it be built and when or is there an alternative for accessing secondary education especially to people who come from Canouan and Mayreau, Mr. Speaker and also, the people of Canouan would also like to know if they are getting the secondary school or you know is it still priority in order to put a school there in Canouan because, Mr. Speaker, it is really needed and this is why I say, whenever we make the point, no child will be left behind. We must give meaning to it, because if we do the calculation an average of three per year and even one is bad, but do the calculations, Mr. Speaker and you will see, because I am sure there are Members of this Honourable House who would have gone to school with students from the Grenadines and sometimes you would have known of some of their problems that they face up here on a daily basis. So Mr. Speaker, I am really asking, I am passionate about this one that something must be done.I know, we could say all things, Mr. Speaker, but what is needed too, I will admit there must be a push to have top secondary schools in rural areas so we can get away from the concept of elite schools. We have..., we really have to do in every..., as much as possible, every locality. You could break it down to certain geographical area where you have a top secondary school. So you find that students from Canouan and Mayreau and Union Island, because you have students from Union Island who also come to secondary school on the mainland trying to get to these top secondary schools. But if we get away from the elite school concept and you have top schools in these areas, then that is one way of helping to solve the problems of accessing secondary education, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, we also have the point where you have even the students from Bequia, Mr. Speaker, they need help. I see sometimes you to go Bequia, you meet them, it is not easy every day you are on the boat coming up in the morning, go down in the evening, I know also, know the transportation cost would also be high. The transportation from the home, boat transportation, then transportation again when they reach on the mainland and Mr. Speaker, they need assistance, and they need some kind of help. So if we could sit down, just all sit down together and come up with a plan of how we are going to manage education especially secondary and tertiary education in the Grenadines, if we could come up with a plan, Mr. Speaker, one that is workable for the benefit of all, then the students from the Grenadines will know that they are on the same footing with those on the mainland and Mr. Speaker, that is very important.I also need to ask the question in terms of the Mary Hutchinson Primary School. We have structural problems, you had to move them. They are now in the building that used to house the former secondary school, but I am not hearing anything about that. What is the plan for the Mary Hutchinson Primary School in Union Island and I also have to bring up the issue of also of accommodation dealing with the Head teacher from that school who is from the mainland, because just two days ago, a member of the PTA called me and they were highlighting the56problem also that the Head teacher of the school faces in accommodation on Union Island there that member said to me the whole body PTA, they are not satisfied with the accommodation that has been given to the Principal of that school. So that is another thing we also have to look at Mr. Speaker in order to try to bring quality education to our people, because both students and teachers must be in a conducive environment, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, in his Budget presentation, the Prime Minister made mention of additional massive investment in Canouan, but the question I have to ask, what has been set in place to ensure that the young people of the Southern Grenadines would be able to compete for better paying jobs, because I am there, you know, on a regular basis and I see what happens. It has people from practically all over the world and they have the better job, sometimes even maintenance and all these kinds of things, but there is need for training for these young people, there is need for training and this is why I have called for, Mr. Speaker, repeatedly some of the resource centres that we have, we know where the country is going and especially in terms of tourism and some of these courses can be made and certification provided in order to give these young people the opportunity, because if Canouan is taking off, then our young people must also have the opportunity to take off also.HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Mr. Speaker, point of clarification, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister stated in his speech, I stated it this morning that a hospitality and marine institute is being built. We have gone out to tender, or will be going next week, Mr. Speaker, and we should be having a ground breaking ceremony by July of this year of which there will be living quarters for people for the Grenadines or for people from the other islands to come and do the courses here. We have spoken about this for months now, Mr. Speaker. Community College has courses, Technical College has courses.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the Minister ain’t getting the idea of what I am saying. Mr. Speaker, the point is that proposal was made by this side of the House years ago. We made that proposal. I remember speaking about that, Mr. Speaker. The other thing is, while we wait for the hospitality institution...,HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: Point of clarification, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, point of clarification, with all due respect to the Honourable Member, we must be truthful in this Honourable House. The hospitality institution did not come from that side of the House, Mr. Speaker. Since when Minister Baptiste was in charge of Tourism and I was the Marketing Manager, we have been speaking about this and then we even carried it further when we spoke to the EU, Mr. Speaker, and it is now a hospitality or marine institute because of the strength of the marine sector here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It came from over here; we have been speaking about it for years.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, on a point of clarification, let me state; I remember years ago I spoke about a hotel school that is needed in order to train our people to take advantage of the situation. I did talk about it in this Honourable House, Mr. Speaker, I did talk about it you understand. Mr. Speaker, well in the meanwhile, what I am saying, sometimes it is even..., what we do not get and we still not understanding, I know they said that accommodation will be there, this and all this kind of thing, but Mr. Speaker, what I am also saying in the meantime, what can we do?57Mr. Speaker, you know it is amazing, I sat here and I have been hearing of all good things that have been done by the Unity Labour Party and it seems as if NDP did little or nothing. It seems as if when you listen to the other Members from the other side of the House, it seems so. Mr. Speaker, from 1975 to 1984 life in the Grenadines is real, real hard and people do not like to hear us talk about that and it is because of the New Democratic Party why you had a turnaround in the Grenadines which was once known as a hard area, where you used to send civil servants for punishment anytime, they are down there you had to give them hard area allowance that does not happen anymore, that does not happen anymore, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, I remember even being a student at the Teachers’ College, Mr. Speaker, the first thing when you reach there, they used to..., we used to get...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Let us allow the Member to make his presentation. Obviously, if a member believes that the Member is not speaking the truth as the case may be, use the correct order, thank you.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, you know I have been since in this House very obedient. Mr. Speaker, one of the things, even at Teacher’s College, first thing they used to tell you about, water, you do not have proper water. When we come down there and we drink the water it is all sorts of belly problems and all these sorts of thing. Mr. Speaker, I remember talking to a past Head teacher who worked down within that period from the North Leeward area and he too was recounting how hard it was then in the Grenadines and the transformation that took place and he was amazed at that, because he was there as a Head teacher and he would have known, Mr. Speaker.But Mr. Speaker, in terms of life in the Grenadines, Mr. Speaker, there are numerous things that was done. You had significant road improvement, you had air transport and let me deal with that one time, because, Mr. Speaker, you know I will need to ask a question, if you build a three bedroom..., if you inherited a three bedroom house and you put on one bedroom and toilet and bath, would you say that you built it? No, you just added on. Mr. Speaker, when you got into office you met a runway there, three thousand six..., in Canouan, three thousand six hundred feet, you added on three hundred and wants to say to this country as if you build it, like there was nothing there before. It is amazing, Mr. Speaker, you understand and all that you know. From between 1975 and 1984 it remained a dirt strip, it remained a dirt strip under Labour for years, but now as Sir James with the New Democratic Party, you have seen his vision and the wisdom of putting the airport there and now you want to claim wholeheartedly the idea of airport development in Canouan [applause]. But that cannot be true, that cannot be true, you met it there.Mr. Speaker, give Jack his jacket. The NDP has done much in the Grenadines. Mr. Speaker, Jetty, Wharf, I remember in coming to town, you had this little row boat and you did not have engine, it is two hours you had to go in. You had to take it from the sand, the ladies they had to lift them up and put them in the boat and you row out, if rain comes down whatever happened, you got wet, you understand. It is because of the New Democratic Party we now have Jetties there. People could walk off, put on their high heel shoes and walk off in style that was not before, that was not there before. You could dress up now and come to town and that was not there before you understand, Mr. Speaker. You have health clinics that were built, improvements in basic health care and do not talk about the massive tourism development. If it was not the biggest project in St.58Vincent and the Grenadines to date, if it was not for the New Democratic party that would not be there and let me interject right here, it was the ULP that was in opposition to that project, now you see the wisdom of it [interjection] how you mean, you were in opposition to the development in Canouan, big time, big time you were in opposition to that.HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: Mr. Speaker, if..., just for a clarification, the Honourable Member from the Southern Grenadines when the jetport was opened that Mr. Saladino has said that the project in Canouan was not sustainable without the jetport, in other words, they would have had to close up the business there because it could not run on the type of airstrip that they have there. Secondly, the Honourable Member said earlier that the days when policemen used to get hard area pay going down to the Grenadines are no longer. I had to go outside and check with the policeman and it is not so, because of the distance away from home, policemen still get a separate allowance that is called, “hard area”, so let us speak the truth and the truth as they often say would set us free. Let us be fair that if it was not for what this Government has done in putting a jetport there, the Canouan project would have been closed, it would not be viable as Mr. Saladino said.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Continue, do I have to rule [laughter].HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, electricity, banking system, all these things, Mr. Speaker, they went there, is the NDP who put them there, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I remember I went to go and buy kerosene to put in the lamps to study, Mr. Speaker. Employment, Mr. Speaker, at least in Canouan it is good. Long ago, most of us grow up with our grandparents, why? The other people they had to leave to go overseas England, Canada, America, Trinidad, and Barbados in order to seek employment. The reverse is happening right now, people from all over the world, we were unknown, Canouan is now known worldwide. You understand, Mr. Speaker. You had infrastructural development and in terms of the Tobago Cays, Mr. Speaker, I heard argument of that this morning, but it was the New Democratic Party with Sir James that bought the Tobago Cays from foreign hands and established the Tobago Cays Marine Park and all these things we are boasting about, Mr. Speaker, and we are not giving the New Democratic Party credit for these kind of things, Mr. Speaker, but we are going about talking as if the NDP for 17 years did absolutely nothing, Mr. Speaker, you understand, when we had to fight tooth and nail even to save the Tobago Cays from going into private hands, Mr. Speaker. Come on, we must remember all these things, Mr. Speaker. So admittedly, Mr. Speaker, admittedly, Mr. Speaker, we must admit that it is because of the New Democratic Party and the development that went on there in the Grenadines during that time that we..., you had the platform on which to take off and to make improvement and we must make that be known, Mr. Speaker [applause] because that is a fact and it is the truth.Mr. Speaker, but you know despite all of that what did you do? You went about and imposed a user fee on the Grenadines as a destination. You went about and did that and Mr. Speaker, that is why the people in the Grenadines, they have not forgotten about it, because you know why, they felt hurt, they felt humiliated and it was degrading to us that is why they protested against it, Mr. Speaker [applause]. That is the point we are trying to make. It is not that anywhere else you had to pay a fee to go anywhere, but once you are going to the Grenadines you had to pay, once you are up here and you are going home you had to pay that, Mr. Speaker. People from the mainland who are going to the Grenadines to work, even before they reach there and make a59dollar, you took one, the people who are selling their vegetables, I know, I heard a member say, so, it means nothing to you. Even the people who are going to sell vegetables and all these things, there was a charge on top of them, Mr. Speaker, and they spoke against that...,HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: [Inaudible.]HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: yes, I am glad the people of the Grenadines hear you saying that, not even a vagrant vex, but they vex. So what you are saying, they worse than vagrants, that is what you are trying to say, that is what you want to say? Imagine that, that is what you are saying, eh?HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: Speaker on a point of clarification, the point I am making, a dollar is not of much value now, when I go out there even the vagrants of the street on Kingstown beg me for five or twenty. Nobody begs for a dollar now, I am not saying the people in the Grenadines are vagrants, I never said that.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: You said even a vagrant would not vex.HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: Would vex? No, I did not vex, I say would beg for a dollar, I never said anything about vex. I said not even a vagrant would beg for a dollar these days. So do not misinterpret what I say, he who had ears to hear let him hear what the Minister says.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: But Mr. Speaker, the vagrants would get vex if you took away his dollar that is the point [laughter] that is the point, Mr. speaker. Mr. Speaker, further to that, you know what is happening, anytime you go to the Grenadines dock, Mr. Speaker, you are going with your groceries, and you have to present your bill to say that the grocery is yours or you buy it from arm. Why you have to prove that you buy your groceries? Whether somebody give it to you or not, why do you have to pull out your bill to show that..., why we keep on harassing the people in the Grenadines.You know one day I left Parliament and was going home, somebody down there give me something to buy for them, I bought it for them, I will tell you it is a big ice box, I could not carry it. It could not go into a transport, I put it on a cart, I also put my bag on top that cart and going to the wharf. Mr. Speaker, when I reach there the cart man was pulled aside, so I said to the person who was working there, I said, these are mine. You have to open the box, I have to check and see what is in it. I said, go ahead. I opened the..., I say, the box there, she say, take off the tape because it was in a big card board box, one of those big giant ice box. They open the box, look inside, pass their hands all around the rim and all of that.Mr. Speaker, apart from that hear what took place, I stood up there talking to some one of my constituents and low and behold my bag that I had the clothes from Parliament and other things was being opened, without even asking a question, can you open the bag. She just proceeded to open the bag. What is this, what is going on, why are we subjected to such harassment and treatment up on the port? Is this right? I am not going to another state. If I was going to another state I do not mind, so even though you are doing me that, much less to the people to who go there on a daily basis, searching bread, searching grocery, searching all these things. These things must stop, Mr. Speaker, because it is not correct, it is not correct [applause] it must stop, it must stop, Mr.60Speaker, come on, come on, and you have to cut out things like this, Mr. Speaker. It is just not right. You cannot be treating people like this; you cannot be treating them like that. We are not from another country. This is St. Vincent and the Grenadines and this is why Grenadines’ people feel this way, we feel this way and we will never forget, whether you call it a fee, a tax or whatever you impose on us, we will never forget and we will always remember what you do to us by the imposition of that fee. We would always remember that. The people spoke out loudly against that. I even remember when you had to protest, but I could not believe it, I heard the commotion, I was round at the building when I go the police officer just had Dr. Friday like that tossing him like a rag doll. He just put his hand behind his back [laughter] put his hand behind his back and kneel to the ground, Mr. Speaker and all he said, do what you want. Tears streaming from his eyes come on, Mr. Speaker, that is what they did to an Honourable Member of this House and I do not think any Member on that side would have liked to be subjected to that type of treatment, Mr. Speaker, I do not think so, I really do not think that, I do not think so. Our attitudes towards people in the Grenadines, the whole thing must change, it must change, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister in his Budgetary presentation also made mention of urgent consideration would be given to tougher laws and a more practical criminal procedure in tackling crime and vessels including yachts. Mr. Speaker, in Mayreau there is a problem from time to time. Not only Mayreau, should I say, in the whole country and I believe in the Southern Grenadines, the residents of Mayreau, the concerned citizens and business owners wrote a letter to the Honourable Prime Minister, it was copied to myself and the Honourable Minister of Tourism and I will read that letter, Mr. Speaker, with your permission.“We the undersigned petitioners wish to draw to your attention the continuing problem of inadequate yacht security in Mayreau, we depend on the visitors from the yachts to sustain our restaurant business which affects not only our families, but all the people of Mayreau. In the past we were able to raise money in Mayreau to hire a boat and personnel to patrol the harbour and protect the yachts, these encouraged yacht visitors to come ashore in the evening and enjoy the restaurants and other services in Mayreau.However, due to the downturn in the economy and the decline of business, we have more recently been unable to pay for our own offshore security service. Since then yacht breaking has increased in Mayreau. We are therefore petitioning you to provide funds to continue the offshore security patrols in Mayreau.This is vital to the continued growth and development of yacht service in Mayreau and by extension in our country as a whole.”Mr. Speaker, a boat was sent. It was not in top condition, so the residents of Mayreau, the guys they took the boat, they have it in Mayreau, they are working on it with assistance from the Tobago Cays Management, and they have certain equipment, because they have to rig it for themselves, put in the gear box, all those things apart from fixing it. But Mr. Speaker, they need help and we need to get this boat operational as soon as possible, because Mr. Speaker, on the 30th December I left Canouan heading to Mayreau, to Union Island sorry, via the ferry boat, it left Canouan late so you know we were in the nice weather, calm seas everything looking61good, Mr. Speaker, the moon was out and you hear they talked about breath-taking beauty, Mr. Speaker, you should have been there just to experience it. I was in the company of a visitor from..., sure she is a resident living in New York, she was going to visit her sister in Mayreau and Mr. Speaker, if you hear them talk like everybody..., people did not study to sit down inside, everybody was just outside. When we past Salt Whistle Bay, yachts over thirty something, Saline Bay same thing, the point is later in the evening one yacht was broken into, that news spread like wild fire, while the people of Mayreau prepare they say, well look at that, it is in the height of the season, yachts for so in the place, we are going to make something tonight, because of that one break in, no person from any yacht went ashore. The next day most of them pulled their anchors and they went away. So this is why we need to get this boat operational.You have a team of guys there working, all they are just asking for additional help in order to get it off the ground and they would do the job, they would do the job. They want to help and they would do the job, Mr. Speaker, and we need as soon as possible Mr. Speaker, to get this boat operational.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 10 minutes Honourable Member. HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: 10 minutes? HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: While on Mayreau, Mr. Speaker, I must also mention the fact, because I brought this question to the House, in when the landowners of Mayreau, when they were dividing the lands and I asked a question in this Honourable House of the Government entering into negotiations with the land owners in order to get more land for the people of Mayreau. But Mr. Speaker that was not done, why did not the Government bargain with the Eustace family to get some more lands for the people? After roads and electricity and all these things went in, this benefitted the landowners. We should have..., and if it was negotiation, Mr. Speaker, if we had a good negotiator we would have gotten such lands, Mr. Speaker, but now the young people are in Mayreau, the young people there and they do not know what they are going to do, because there is no land. What you want them to do, migrate from Mayreau? People who born there and know Mayreau all their lives, what do they have to do? Because the people there are very resourceful from the lands that they got before they built restaurants and other things and they are making a living for themselves. We should have gone the extra mile, negotiate, a good negotiator would have negotiated with the family after those services were put in there to get more lands for the people and that is a fact and we should have done that, Mr. Speaker and it was not done, it was not done at all.Mr. Speaker, in Canouan [interjection] ah glad you say Canouan because in Canouan we have roads, Mr. Speaker, Union Island throughout the Southern Grenadines, one gentleman approached me and he was talking about a hole, Mr. Speaker, there is a Culvert there and there is a hole and he was so concerned about the children going to and from school, vehicles in the night and everything, a carpenter went and nail piece of plywood over the hole and the guy was saying to me, if you get somebody to fix it, I will buy the materials and let you give it to them and let them fix it. We must do better than that, Mr. Speaker, because even something like that, potholes all over the place. You have roads in Canouan, I have asked in this House about it, the62Honourable Minister of Works, the road from the Sandy’s family over to the Seventh Days Church, the roads through Bar brews, every..., [interjection] Seventh Day Adventist sorry my apology, Seventh Day Adventist Church, thank you.The road through Bar brews Mr. Speaker, every time I go to Canouan the residents there who live in the Bar brews area want to know what happen to our roads? Anytime it rains it get worse, Mr. Speaker. We need to look at all these things. The main road from Ashton to Clifton, when you are driving going Ashton you have to be dodging here, dodging there, Mr. Speaker, we need to do better than that. We were talking about getting the small things right you know and these are some small things and these things should have been put right, Mr. Speaker.Playing Field in Union Island, Mr. Speaker, we have a nice cricket programme going on there. You have teams that come from England, they play cricket there, but the facility is not good enough, but Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that you could do everything one time, but at least you can do something, Mr. Speaker and the report came back. They went to Carriacou, they went to Trinidad, they played cricket, these are several English teams that normally come to..., when they visit Carriacou they visit Trinidad, they come to Union Island to play cricket. But when you look at the playing facility, it is just not good enough, but despite that they come, they play their cricket, but you should hear the talk, they talk about the beauty..., they did not talk about beauty in Carriacou and Trinidad and thing, it is only when they reached to Union Island and such places, you hear they were talking about that. So Mr. Speaker, there is something that must be done and also in the area of sports, I was embarrassed that the Grenadines netball tournament which is being conducted by the Ministry of Sports had to be cancelled because of lack of funds and you have national players playing within that competition. Also most of the players from the Grenada under 21 team that placed second to St. Kitts in the OECS tournament who were there playing. There are teams of who have heard about this competition and want to come to play and we are talking about investments in youths, but yet here you have young people playing for the national team in a tournament in the Grenadines and it had to be cut short. The second leg was in Carriacou and that was totally abandoned, you could imagine the shame that that [interjection] of course, it was funded by the National Lottery, efforts were made to the Prime Minister, calls were made to the Prime Minister and I must admit, he did what he can to help, they got some money, but it just was not enough. If we are talking about development and sports and all these kinds of things and young people and giving them the opportunity, Mr. Speaker, you should hear one of these cricketers from the..., who play in this league and he is talking about..., they are so enthusiastic of what is happening and they are not asking for stadium and all these kinds of things you know, all they want is a proper facility in order to practice and develop their skill.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Members, allow the Honourable Member please to continue his debate, which he has two minutes.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Mr. Speaker, water, I know I asked the Minister of Health about the problem last week concerning the situation. I could have called him a couple days ago and the call said, Mr. Ollivierre there are people from Mayreau in Union Island looking to buy water, so you understand the situation. I mean the Grenadines, the business of [interjection] yes, well I know it is a historical problem, but we have to do something, we have to do something to solve the problem. I saw the Prime Minister has in his63Budgetary presentation improvement in water distribution, I know they build a system in Clifton, this administration build a system in Clifton, but the people cannot use the water to drink, because I do not know if it a problem of fencing or whatever it is, but animals on top it every day, so they cannot use the water to drink. So you either get it fenced properly or do something so that people would be able to use the water.Mr. Speaker, we have some basic problems in these islands and all I am asking as the representative of the Southern Grenadines is that some of these problems be addressed. I am not saying that you could address and solve all of these them one time, but at least, at least if you start and by talking to the people and by doing something, they would realise that something is being done. But Mr. Speaker..., and then you want to talk in comparison as if you did everything in the Grenadines and the New Democratic Party did nothing. That is not true, that is not right, you understand and talking about Sir James did not represent and all these things. Look I have a list here, Mr. Speaker, I could list out two pages of infrastructural development that was done in the Grenadines and I have already listed quite a lot, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, land ownership, quite a large number of lands, people own their homes, were able to build homes and all these things, because it was the new Democratic Party who give out lands to the people, it was then, now you cannot even get a piece, they cannot even get a piece, they cannot even get a piece whether it is Mayreau, Canouan or Union Island eh. Bequia also, so Mr. Speaker, so what you are talking about.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Members, please, please. Honourable Member would please wind up. Please wind up.HONOURABLE TERRANCE OLLIVIERRE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the people of the Grenadines, I wish I had another 30 minutes because I have other problems, other issues which I should take up. Mr. Speaker, but I will like to say to the people of the Grenadines as long as I am your representative, I will address your problems in this House despite whatever challenge I face. That is my pledge to you. I will do that.Mr. Speaker, they supported me over the past nine years and I am grateful for that. I am indeed humble that they have elected me to be their representative and I have continued to serve them, Mr. Speaker. It is not easy to be travelling from island to island to island on a regular basis. I do not have the..., you know you cannot use motor car and other things to get there, Mr. Speaker, sometimes it is speedboat and sometimes when they call and the sea is rough and this little boat you have to go, Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you could swim [interjection] one day.So Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity that they have given me. I wish I had more time to really elucidate the problems they face. Mr. Speaker, I will continue Mr. Speaker, to represent them to the best of my ability. Thank you.Any further debate Honourable Senator, I just called you but before you do that I heard..., you know there is a recurring point that is being made by almost every person here in relation to their time for debate. I would want to, as the President for the local branch of the CPA, I would like to state that or put Members on notice that64sometime soon, or sometime we want to call a meeting of the local branch of the CPA to address a number of matters that seemed to be affecting us here and I know in the past we have called meetings and we did not get the kind of support that were looking for, but we continue to hear these cries about, I wish I had more time and I wish my time was X, Y, Z maybe we need to look at some these rules and the times allotted, but we have to do it in a particular way and maybe I can put Members on notice that we need to have a meeting of this branch so that we could look at some of these very same issues that we seem to think is affecting us here. Senator Leacock you have 45 minutes to make your presentation, I will tell you when to start. All right Senator Leacock you can begin and according to my watch you are starting at 4 o’clock.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I rise to make my contribution to the Appropriation Bill 2010. Before I proceed, Mr. Speaker, let me recognise in the strangers gallery the presence of my wife Mrs. Leacock and I believe she would be joined by my daughter and my mother, if they do I will certainly make reference to that, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, this session of Parliament has been a unique one in many ways. Unique Mr. Speaker, because over the time period that I have been here or have the privilege to be in this House is the greatest number of Members on the Government I have ever heard issuing statements of departure, resignations, intention to leave uncertainty about their political future. That is not for me to second guess, Mr. Speaker, but it is certainly a matter of moment. Whether or not it represents indictment, fulfillment, satisfaction, or renewal, time would tell.Mr. Speaker, I want to...HONOURABLE GLEN BEACHE: ...of the House has said they are resigning? You know, nobody on this side of the House have said they are resigning. I cannot remember that anybody on this side of the House say they are resigning. [Interjection] That is not resigning.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I did not give way, he did not seek my permission, he is on his feet, [interjection] but there is no such provision for a point of...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right. Honourable Member, let me make the point. I have sat here for the entire session and I cannot recall anybody making mention of any resignation. I know persons said that they may not contest or obviously everybody term comes to an end at a particular time and they say we may not continue, but that is not in any way a resignation. So if the resignation issue has been challenged, let us accept it and move one. What I am saying now as Speaker that no one made any point in any statement in relation to resignation. Go on.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, some of us are here in this house at the people’s pleasure and others at our leader’s leisure, I am in that category, Mr. Speaker and so I have no determination of my departure of this House. I wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, that we have certainly heard farewell speeches of one kind or the other, but I say that to make the point, Mr. Speaker, that whatever are the contributions made in this House why Members going and or staying at leisure and or pleasure, we have an overriding responsibility to serve the people’s interest and to provide leadership to all privileged here in this Honourable House.65It therefore bothers me, Mr. Speaker, of the extent to which some Honourable Members on the other side of this House, either do not understand our financial dilemma or choose to ignore the seriousness of this budgetary debate and ignore its consequences. I say that, Mr. Speaker, because when I hear statements such as it is being a well constructed Budget, it is a Budget of great design, carefully planned and constructed, and then I ask to what extent they have really taken on board seriously the propositions that are before us in a quantitative and a qualitative sense. The statistical data in the Budget itself and those contained in the action plans by the various Ministries.Mr. Speaker, I have to return to the analysis and proposition by the Honourable Leader of the Opposition when he give us a lesson in Economics 101, when he walked us through and we should be grateful for it, Mr. Speaker. The Current Accounts of this Budget and then the Capital Accounts and proceeded also to go to our Public Debt situation and he did that, Mr. Speaker, to establish two fundamental points that on the Current Account side which no one disputes in this Honourable House and which I also stated last week in support of the Estimates that we simply do not have enough to meet our current responsibilities.Mr. Speaker, in business terms that translate to mean that we are insolvent, we cannot pay all of our debts when they become due. If we use precise and strong accounting language, it would say we have a deficit in our current ratio, our cash and receivables cannot pay for our current liabilities, that is what it say and in essence it indicates we will have to get funds to take care of our short term situation. Now Government like the private sector has always had that provision and I think I see indication here that they are going to embellish that in the sense that we have overdraft facilities to tie this over the short term. That has always been so historical with our Governments, but to the extent that we believe we are asking for increased overdraft, there is a recognition or anticipation that tough times are going to be ahead and we are going to have to be going for assistance to deal with our Current Accounts situation. So that immediately says that whether we like it or not we are functioning against serious financial constraints.But that is not the end of the story, Mr. Speaker, because we have to make the connection, the nexus the linkage between the current, the capital and our programmes of action. And on the Current Account side an important expenditure is that of interest. I want to repeat that, is that of interest. I am not addressing the question that our salaries and wages are fifty plus percent of our current responsibilities. I want to deal with the interest situation, because what that signals, Mr. Speaker, is that it is very easy from our expenditure and our proposals to finance our current expense; we can end up in a circular situation where we are digging a hole to full a hole. As we borrow and borrow we are increasing the interest expense so we are putting more and more pressure on our Current Accounts to take care of our responsibilities. So we have to find that balance, a fair challenge, but we must be mindful of it, we must be mindful of it.Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member went on to show that to compound our dilemma we were proposing to spend an increased amount on the capital side. Three hundred and three million dollars in the life of this Government, they have not to date reach two hundred million dollars on the capital side. We have not got to one hundred and fifty million dollars. I think last year in a creditable performance, they got to one hundred and fifteen million dollars, 61% I think performance rate, something to be acknowledged and we concede that the NDP has had difficulty reaching those figures, but they got to 115. So that immediately says to us, Mr.66Speaker, that to propose the three hundred and three million dollars expenditure, it is wishful thinking, it is literally speaking, sending the fool a little further and the Honourable Member for East Kingstown went on to say that what we put on this record has implication for private sector Budgeting and planning, because if we put data before the business community, they would in turn organise their own business plans around that.Mr. Speaker, very quickly, I remind the Honourable House of what the Auditor General had to say about this and I repeat one more time, I am not going to read the whole statement, simply to say the Government should consider reviewing the total estimates for Capital Expenditure since these large shortfalls in Capital Revenue have implications for the credibility of a capital Budget. He has warned us, he has warned us. Mr. Speaker, what is worse about this, and we ought not to take any umbrage or shelter under the fact that has happened in the past administration. The Honourable Member for East Kingstown came clean. He said as a former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance he understood what happened and he was speaking with respect to these other receipts and which Senator Francis noted this morning in the statistics when it was 6% or 7% that of the figures listed in the past we have never get even close to 10% of the other receipts, but we list here $111 million to be achieve by other receipts and we know for a fact we will not even collect $11 million of the $111 million. It is a sin, it was misleading to work, to what does that mean as I would come on to show you later, Mr. Speaker, is that we are basically playing Russian Roulette with the lives of the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. A large number of the capital programmes in the Budget of various Ministries are not just going to happen and it begs the question, which of them are not going to happen?I do not want to rub salt in the wound, it was not a capital situation, but certainly the experience we are having now for example of drugs at the labs, or this project or that project not happening is a reflection that consistently we are hanging our hats where our hand cannot reach.HONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: State your Point of Order.HONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: I believe that the Honourable Senator is misleading the House with respect to what he is saying about the capital receipts and other receipts. Mr. Speaker, I think it was clear in the Prime Minister’s address that there were at least three projects totalling $54 million, one $40 million for the re-capitalisation of British American that the Leader of the Opposition had supported as well as another $50 million which is finance for..., there is vessels from Malaysia that came up to $110 million and that those three projects basically the financing on page 83 of the Prime Minister’s address, it was clearly outlined where the revenue was going to come from in relation to these other receipts. And so I think it is misleading to the House that irrespective of whether in the past that there may not have been receipts that in this 2010 Budget in terms of where the revenue was coming from to finance the capital Budget that those things were clearly outlined and I think the Honourable Senator should review page 83 to get that particular listing.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right. Honourable Senator.67HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, it takes me back to where I started in my presentation.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You say I do not have calling to rule on everything.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Oh thank you, I should ignore the interjection.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Go ahead with your...,HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, I so do, I so ignore.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: I did not tell you anything about ignore, but I tell you it is not necessary...,HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am sorry for the misinterpretation. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Listen to me, listen to me, I am very serious with this, do not try to..., HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am very sorry for the misinterpretation. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Do not try to imply things that I did not. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I apologise for the misinterpretation Mr. Speaker. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Go on, let us proceed.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, I proceed. Mr. Speaker, let me look for support from the Auditor General’s Report with respect to this vexing question of Capital Revenue, Capital Expenditure and I am going to go to the Public Accounts Report of the Auditor General for 2006. He says in that report, Mr. Speaker, that total Actuary Revenue was $84 million in that year an amount of $133 million below the estimates that is what he says, $133 million below what we said we should get that is what he is speaking about.Mr. Speaker, the..., let me just take my time Mr. Speaker, because we need to get it. On page 38 of that report, of the 2006 Auditor General’s Report, Mr. Speaker, he goes on further to say, the capital Budget outturn does not compare well with what was Budgeted. Remember he spoke about this the year before you know, he is continuing this year. He says, large differences between what was Budgeted and the actual outturn have persisted for several years, but this is what the indictment is Mr. Speaker. This situation contributes to lower Budget credibility and has the potential to call into question the capacity of the relevant Government officials to properly prepare this element of the Budget. This is what the Auditor General is saying that over and over again, we are having these large shortfalls. There is a credibility gap and that leaves me, Mr. Speaker, to enquire and to suggest that what we are saying this week is the twin side of my argument last week that we have68a serious financial integrity question with respect to our Budget. It lacks financial integrity and it was supported by the Auditor General’s Report and the analysis we wish to bring here today, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, this Government, and I am not saying that there are not areas in which there..., but it is building or attempting to build an economy or a country from the roof down. There is indeed a structural problem since foundational issues are improperly attended and in this regard, Mr. Speaker, I exclude what is taking place with education from this, but I certainly do not graduate national security to that level. Mr. Speaker, in a real sense and from a macroeconomic point of view all sectorial work is integrated, all, but I contend, Mr. Speaker, that even so, there is some orders.We would recall, Mr. Speaker, the adage “health before wealth” and in this regard, Mr. Speaker, I want to identify or distinguish between what I call the productive and support services sector. Mr. Speaker, let us look at some of the Ministries allocation. The Ministry of Agriculture has a $24.5 million allocation and I am speaking between capital and current. The Ministry of Tourism $27.4 million; the Ministry of Trade $10.6 million; the Ministry of Industry $17.6 million; the Ministry of Labour $5.2 million; a total of $85.3 million between 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 what I call productive Ministries, others may disagree. But let me add to that, Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of National Mobilisation $29.6 million; the Ministry of Rural Transformation $17.6; that takes us up, Mr. Speaker, to $132.5 million for the productive Ministries of the country, the engines as I call it.Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members, that $132.5 million for production in the country is less than the Ministry of National Security etc. and let me hasten to say, the Ministry of National Security is a broad complex Ministry including a number of other Ministries, seaports, airports, NEMO etc. so I am not confining it to the police, but I am saying all of those productive Ministries that I have listed, $132.5 million is less than your $153 million to National Security. That is why I am saying that we are from the top down and Mr. Speaker, I did a random survey in this country of Vincentians and to a man they preferred jobs/work, food, shelter, and education before matters of security, all of them, their priority was jobs, jobs, jobs, food, clothes, shelter. National Security certainly did not come at the top of the list for any of them. That is not to down play Mr. Speaker, by any stretch of the imagination, the importance of security. I have been there, I have walked the path, but I am saying, there is an order and that is where the cap should be reflected in the national Budget.Mr. Speaker, in short this Budget seems to have as far as I am concerned, place the cart before the horse. The answer, Mr. Speaker, to resolving our problems is therefore not bigger Government. This administration certainly can be accused of one in favour of bigger Government. They are the three Ministries, three Ministries when they came into office in 2005/2006 and Mr. Speaker, to the extent may be adding Parastatal, public companies, private companies, other agencies and suggesting it is contributing to the fact that we are increasingly unable to feed ourselves while under utilising our national resources. But Mr. Speaker, let us move away from those statistics because we may consider them to be dry. Let us look at what we have been doing, let us look Mr. Speaker, at our national export strategy, a matter that I have raised in this House before. I brought a question before the Honourable Member for Central Leeward and he referred me to, is Invest St. Vincent now, that is the new name, formerly..., you give me an answer, but I came and I ask for it because I understand how important our export strategy is for feeding and taking care of ourselves.69Mr. Speaker, I quote from E Standards form, Financial Standard Foundation on the situation of trade and this is what is says for St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The Trade deficit in 2006 was US$233 million which was equal to a staggering 46.5% of our GDP. Mr. Speaker, that figure has now approached 50%, 10:1. In short, Mr. Speaker, in short, Mr. Speaker, we are finding ourselves where the import bill is increasing, increasing, increasing and the gap between what we are importing and exporting is widening.Mr. Speaker, let me go on to look at the national picture.HONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: I am sorry I have to disrupt, but I want to make a point of clarification as misleading the House as regards the Ministry of National Security. Mr. Speaker, I think the Honourable Senator is correct when he cites the amount of money that is slated under the Ministry of National Security, but what he omitted was that $54 million is listed under the Ministry of National Security because Ministry of National Security covers seaports and airports.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: He mentioned thatHONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: What is that?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: He mentioned that, yes he mentioned that.HONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: Well he mentioned that, but $54 million is for the productive sector.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: He mentioned that too.HONOURABLE DR. JERROL THOMPSON: He mentioned the total amount but of the total amount he mentioned that he said all these Ministries were less than $54 million. In other words, almost 31⁄4 of what is under the Ministry of National Security is for the Argyle International Airport in terms of a 2% loan, a very, very, soft loan that is there for that, but I believe he is misleading the House to give the impression that the Ministry of National Security, the amount there was far greater than all these other Ministries put together, in other words for poor people and all these other things that should have gone to poor people when we know and was not there also for the productive sector, when we know that the Argyle International Airport is one of the most important element that is going to boost our productive sector both for tourism and for agricultural export [applause] and I do not understand why he is not really making that particular point.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, if I understand you quite clearly what you do not say at times is more important than what you say and I thank you again, Mr. Speaker, for this silence and I move on. Mr. Speaker, I am in your corner, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker...,HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You are playing with me, you are playing with me, and you are playing with me.70HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I playing with your head.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You are playing with me.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: That is all right, Mr. Speaker, you know..., Mr. Speaker, I want to quote from the national export strategy of St. Vincent and the Grenadines two or three salient points, Mr. Speaker. I want to read first on this macroeconomic framework. It says the impact of the climbing growth rates; widening trade balance, combined with the response of expansionary fiscal policies has yielded unfavourable, macroeconomic outcomes in the current period compared with a decade ago. The downturn of the local economy was partly due to a declining productive sector, rise in import bill and a trade deficit ratio of 8:1 a response to what I have just said there before.It goes on, Mr. Speaker, it says, the IMF macro assessment study of 2008 suggests that to achieve long-term, self-sustaining growth, policy makers must focus on creating local value added by progressively moving away from the long-term comparative advantage to competitiveness at both the country and sectorial levels. Improving overall competitiveness and productivity should be the engine of the growth or debt overhangs and job creation that is the relationship to my point of the productive sector. In other words, we are not building or constructing this economy properly.Mr. Speaker, you see the truth of the matter is that our economy is in big trouble. There is a veritable crisis on our hands and if we are not careful we may well be the first set of clients into the crisis centre being constructed somewhere there in Kingstown Park. This is the context, Mr. Speaker, and it is not as if the new Democratic Party or those of us on this side of the House are objecting to programmes proposed by the Government for objection sake or that we are just blindly arguing to cut this and to cut that. It will be more correct to say we have to learn how to cut and contrive how we prioritize in a challenging and tough economic climate.Mr. Speaker, the better question that must therefore be posed, is what you must fixed with the Budget and how do we live in a house while doing repairs? And Vincentians are pretty good at that, build the downstairs, build two rooms, shift here, shift there, add on a piece that is what we got to be doing and add, he said.Mr. Speaker, page 98 of the Prime Minister’s address which speaks about the need and the recommendation of the OECS-ECCU, it speaks about the stabilising package and it says, the objective is to identify the financing gap of the central Governments and put in place a set of policy measures to close the gap and address other structural issues. Mr. Speaker, every year I come to this Parliament, I make this point. We need to address the structural issues through our Budgetary measures so that we can get the right mix for carrying our economy forward. Mr. Speaker, they state very often that we are descriptive on this side of the House and I was glad to see the contribution my Honourable colleague for the Southern Grenadines and we do not make suggestions and recommendations and we are doing that all the time. But I said before, Mr. Speaker, that we were being advised by the IMF to move away from the comparative advantage approaches to the competitiveness issues which give importance to the Ministry of Telecom and ICT and its applications and how to spread across the various Ministries to make them more competitive, Mr. Speaker and that is why I consistently speak about the level of71our export readiness. That is why I speak to issues of our WTO compatibility for the new global world and challenges, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, another Honourable Member spoke, the Honourable Member I think is from West Kingstown, I do not know or I cannot remember which Member spoke, about the banana issue..., making more use of bananas or it was the Honourable Member for Marriaqua and I was touched about that. You know sometimes I get so disappointed about our Caribbean it ain’t funny. I mean, in 1975 as a university graduate that was a thesis that we did, Ken Browne and my colleagues and ourselves on bananas and I cannot understand the Caribbean Society with a global image cannot bring the collective wisdom up to now and have a meaningful manufacturing plant to utilise our banana produce and have value added of the over 26 range of products that we..., I mean the time is well-nigh, we must do it. Stop talking and concentrating at exporting the primary produce, because where we may not be competitive at that level at the value added level, we may well be able to achieve that.Mr. Speaker, let us take some simple solutions that we can deal with. Starlift Pan Yard, Potential Pan Yard, Mr. Speaker, and it is in relation to tourism and its cruise ships, why cannot we take the initiatives and persistent for example, not just fixing the roads, getting pan yards so that we can have pan concerts that they could be part of the tourism package when the ships come here so that they could go to the pan yard, listen to the pan concert, buy CD’s, buy art and craft from the pan men, why cannot they go to the Peace Memorial Hall, listen to a pan concert..., why cannot they go to Heritage Square or someplace down town and see a mini carnival parade and so forth, why we cannot do those imaginative things, Mr. Speaker?Mr. Speaker, why cannot we having passed legislation to have Bureaucratic Indication Act exploit low our seabed and collect patents and other things to see all the rich marine life that is there, why do not we do that, Mr. Speaker? Why do we simply have to reinvent the wheel? I read, Mr. Speaker, of the proposals of the Ministry of Telecommunications for Smaller Manufacturing Enterprises, but Mr. Speaker, these things are available since 1996 by the ILO, recommendations concerning giant conditions to stimulate job creation small and medium size enterprises and all these things are listed of how we can go about them and we have done our own work and they are there in the New Democratic Party’s Manifesto and in our economic plans for how we can go forward. Stop talking and put more emphasis on doing so that we can create the job opportunities for people, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member raised a while ago the question of the $54 million for the Argyle Airport, so let me go back to the National Security issue, Mr. Speaker. I believe and I am being careful and guarded Minister Slater, I am being careful and guarded that we can have $60 to $70 million and redirect those monies to more productive efforts in the Budget. I almost said Minister Sayers, but you now have no executive function so I have to say the Honourable Member for Central Kingstown. The Coast Guard provision for $19 million if it is going to happen at all perhaps can be cut to $10 million. If we were going to do three or four vessels perhaps..., when one place in the Budgetary says two and another place it says three, so there is a little bit of confusion, but I do not [interjection] it supposed to be three so perhaps we can do two. Perhaps I say we can do two now and perhaps we can do another one after. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but I am saying if it is going to happen at all you know, because the money allocated they say it is coming from Malaysian funds, the money72is under “other” in the capital Budget and whenever you see “other”, you need to duck. You need to duck, if you have a Ministry, anywhere you see “other”, duck, it means you ain’t getting that.HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: You must be Vedet.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Well if you are Vedet you can deal with that you are a Layou man. Mr. Speaker, I have addressed already the question of the airport at Argyle where we have borrowed $54 million and I still cannot be convinced that we should borrow it, because the Honourable Prime Minister in his previous address said, we have received grants of $388 million, pledges and grants of $388 and we have not seen it in any of the Budgetary provision since then. He has also said in this House, we have not collected a cent of the monies promised to us by Venezuela and I insist that at this time we ought to be seeing those monies coming ashore, Venezuela handing over to the cash they have promised us not, no in kind, we are speaking about cash for the $360,000 per month we have been paying for the last several months. I insist on that, I insist on that.The correctional facility, Mr. Speaker, the half a million dollars that is there I believe we could look at that. The airport at E.T. Joshua, well I tread carefully, but we are going to spend $4 million dollars to redo the runway perhaps this year or next year and in the next year we are going to turn it into a city, so I want to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that we tighten our planning so much that we have to decide whether or not this is going to happen or that is going to happen, because if we are going in fact to the next year building a city we have to decide whether we can really afford to spend $4 million just the year before, because the interest alone may be $6 million [interjection] I said I would be careful on the matter because it is a tight judgment call and you understand that, Mr. Speaker. [Interjection] I am saying that the provision for $1 million by the Energy Unit could be subsumed through VINLEC and its employment of a demand management approach for new energy efficiencies in the country.I am saying for certain the $200,000 placed here for Diaspora mobilisation compounds the wastage that took place last year for the homecoming exercise. I am saying the security quarters for $200,000 for the presidential guard in the Prime Minister’s offices can be deferred for better times. I am saying the $400,000 for purchasing and printing equipment for the Prime Minister’s Office for Quick and company to send letters to the news could be deferred.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member, you have 10 minutes to conclude your presentation.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am doing well on time, Mr. Speaker, and I am saying, the non- productive $2.5 million for Ju-c building we would be better off if we sold the building to the private sector and bought drugs at the hospital with those monies [applause]. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make a suggestion here with respect to our ability to think big, Mr. Speaker, to think big and to transform our economies, Mr. Speaker, because you know, every year I state, Mr. Speaker, here is a Deputy Prime Minister responsible for Trade in this country, for Trade, the life blood of any country and all of the provisions in that Ministry, and you will send me somewhere else again, because everything is for the Prime Minister, this $60,000 to buy equipment for some73foreign officer and I said since last week we do not even have enough money to buy a fridge, not even a diamint. I mean we got to be serious, Mr. Speaker...,HONOURABLE SIR LOUIS STRAKER: Mr. Speaker, my friend knows better than that we have a lot of money even for the Shan High Exposition that comes out of SVG Invest. We work with them in order to promote trade in the country. You said you got it in the answer that I give you previously in a fulsome way. So if the money is not in trade it is in SVG Invest, so do not look at one area, it is line upon line, precepts upon precepts, a little here and a little there.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: That is the response I wanted from you Honourable Minister. In essence you have outsourced half of the Ministry, the Trade portion to SVG Invest [interjection] well take the trade name off the Ministry because you do not do any trade thing. Take it off; you do nothing on the Ministry of Trade. Let us not go round in circles, Mr. Speaker and Trade is too important to be an attachment to some other portfolio or some other Ministry [applause] you are either responsible or you are not responsible that is the point I am making, because Mr. Speaker, I have raised these issues of trimming the capital programmes predominantly from the Ministry of National Security which I consider to be non-productive to be applied to other productive Ministries for the very important reason where we started the debate namely, we have to rebalance that finances somewhere.If we have investment projects going in the short to medium term, it is likely to contribute to more enterprises, firms and activities and increasing the tax collection on the current accounts and at the same breath Mr. Speaker, at the same breath, in the same breath, Mr. Speaker, if you cut some of the capital wastage that are necessary it will reduce the interest expend, so we butter our bread on both sides and we have to do that, that is necessary to get ourselves out of this quagmire increase income and reduce certain sets of expenditure, otherwise, Mr. Speaker, we end up in a vicious, vicious cycle.Mr. Speaker, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines competitiveness study has highlighted that in the long run a country’s stance of living depends on its productivity growth performance. Higher productivity growth rates are critical to allow wages to increase while maintaining competitiveness and it went on to say that an annual average productivity performance of 4.13% over 1981 to 2000 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I want to repeat that, it goes on to say that the 4.13% growth rate for the period 1981 to 2000 can be regarded as a strong performance. Seventeen of those years are NDP years and the competitiveness study from USAID Caribbean highlights that there was a high productivity factor in the New Democratic Party.It went on to say, Mr. Speaker and these are not our words, we are not making up these things, there are bench marking analysis in the case that productivity growth rates across the OECS region are falling in recent years including in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Five minutes. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Enough time, Mr. Speaker, you are the one on time, and time isenough, Mr. Speaker, because I speak now in the five minutes, Mr. Speaker, well I have it on authority of the74Honourable Conrad Sayers that I can say on behalf of the Honourable Member and myself that statement normally comes at other occasions but we have a pact, we do have a pact. We have an agreement and an understanding; I do not say negative things about him and he does not also..., not in nine years [interjection] he will share that with you.But there are some things, Mr. Speaker, I do not have a constituency, let me start by saying that Mr. Speaker, but I have aspirations for a constituency, I do have aspirations and if Mr. Speaker, I am to pay attention to the Referendum results which you sampled and which had nothing to do with individuals appeal, but you know one cannot be blind about it, good things may well be in store for the New Democratic Party [applause].Education, Mr. Speaker, I want to see..., and I have heard a lot said about education. I said to the Honourable Member of Marriaqua yesterday I thought, and people always say this I tend to [go] across the island and get punish, we never say good things about people, I thought the presentation was genuinely a good one save and except when she got into the reference to Mr. Bowman a decent person who she should not have attacked since he cannot defend himself, but I quickly want to say that, that while we are talking about education and this school here and that school there and these last schools, do not forget..., and there is nothing wrong in recognising in every country that they have schools and excellence..., I hope my member for Northern Grenadines does not take issue with me, but I still want to see the Grammar School and High School being attended to in a proper way and in many respects. Our young people today who have worked hard to get to our best schools are performing in the worse squalor in this country. There is a sense of urgency towards the repair, improvement modernisation and or rebuilding of the Grammar School and the High School. They are in terrible dilapidated conditions, terrible. I want to see, Mr. Speaker, still on education that we move at a pace and you will ask where the money will come from, but you are Government now, tiling of floors for schools, because the tiling of floors for many of the schools in the country, the conditions under which teachers and students work, oh my gosh it is atrocious, some of these schools. I mean you go into them the floors are black; I mean it has nothing to do with the mopping and cleaning, they really need to do something about these. These are programmes we have to go to whether it is World Bank or whoever it is and we have to look at these situations. We need to do something about replacing the chalkboards in the schools, Mr. Speaker, and the bathrooms in general for schools, Mr. Speaker. I want to see something being done to them. The Roman Catholic School is a good model.Mr. Speaker, I want to see something done in Central Kingstown and I know it is hard for support from the Member for Central Kingstown, for the access lands in Green Hill to bring out those ginger and eddoes and tannia and cabbage etc and the same for Trigger Ridge. Mr. Speaker, Minister Mike Browne spoke about river defences and I want to see a systematic approach for that as well. We really need to do something about the river defences so to speak. And I say brethren, but we are not really brethren, but these little crossings over these little ravines that people have to deal with, little 5000 and things. We need to do something about it in Largo Height. I am sure Members could understand that and there may be so in other cases.Mr. Speaker I want to see us doing things stepping up on the apprenticeship programmes in Central Kingstown as I have said before making use of the Coast Guard to teach our young men fishing, to deepen that industry at VINLEC so that they could become certified wiremen, electricians, at ECGC, Port Authority, Water Authority,75so that they become plumbers and artisans, let us do something about them. We have had much loss of life in Central Kingstown because of the inadequacy of the fire service and I want to see us in a sense Kingstown and in other parts of the country doing something about fire hydrants. We have been losing too many lives in that regard. And it is something that we have to take a serious issue about; we need to pay attention to that.I have spoken before about the need for first responders and now that we have had the Haiti thing, we need to again revisit what we can do between the Red Cross, the Special Branch of the Police Service, the Cadet Force, the Medical Services to have and identify first respondent unit perhaps being..., not perhaps, being coordinated by NEMO, we need to do something about that.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You could wrap up for me now.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker, yes, I will be less than a minute, Mr. Speaker. I have been asked by the Baptist Churches in the constituency, such as St. Bethel, St. Michael, and St. Peters in Bloc 2000, Sharps and Largo Height for some assistance with their churches. It has been done before and we can do more about it, Mr. Speaker. The drains in Old Montrose, Lodge Village road needs to be covered for those vans that have to commute this large body of people to the city, Mr. Speaker. The bridge above Stoney Ground need to be widened and need a better retaining wall and Mr. Speaker, I close finally disobeying my family. Did my mom make it to the House, she did not? I do not know. She did? Well I ask she..., mom stand up for me if you are in the House let me just see [laughter] where is my mother? Mr. Speaker, can I just ask for my mother in the stranger’s gallery to stand?HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right that is no problem.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: She is 87 years old, Mr. Speaker and she came here today to demonstrate that she considers her son very worthy and she has brought him up [applause] and she has brought him up in a way from which he has not departed. St. Vincent needs more Elsa Leacock’s, because even as I disobey..., and I am winding up this is my last 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker. I think in the audience is my daughter with a Master’s of Science Degree who cannot get a work in St. Vincent and you know my wife also was not able to keep that job that the World Bank had given to her, just now I have to suffer my own fate, but Mr. Speaker, I am reading from a book here, just a quotation as I end, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: 30 seconds.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker. And I am reading what they said about it. I am very proud of it, Mr. Speaker, it says, dad, this book is the Marine Officers Bible, it is call “war fighting” but everything in it applies. My son, Mr. Speaker, became an officer in the Marine Corps in December last year in the United Stated, a formidable achievement, he can become an Inspector in the Police Force here with, we need to modernise the Police Force and provide young fresh leadership so they can take control. The quotation I read, Mr. Speaker, simply says this, the essential thing..., I am speaking with respect to the Budget, the essential thing is action and it says, action has three stages, the decision born of thought, the order or preparation for execution and the execution itself, all three stages are governed by the will.76HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Thank you.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: The will, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, I have to finish the quotation, Mr. Speaker. The will is rooted in character and for the man of action; character is of more critical importance than intellect. Intellect without will is worthless and will without intellect is dangerous. Much obliged, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Senator Fife just hold a second please, let me..., you can sit. All right Senator Fife, when you are ready.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members, I rise to make my contribution to this Budgetary debate of 2010. Mr. Speaker, this Government in recognising the challenges that the global economic meltdown has thrust upon us has elected to maintain what is called “a countercyclical fiscal approach” fashioning the 2010 Budget to enhance and uplift our population, Mr. Speaker, through creative ideas and targeted spending. Targeted spending, Mr. Speaker, which touches and includes all of our noble citizens, Mr. Speaker, our noble citizens who span the entire spectrum of our socio economic landscape, our professionals, our causal workers, our construction workers, our farmers, our skilled artisans, Mr. Speaker, our fishermen and women, our young men and women, the elderly, our children, sporting and cultural communities, Mr. Speaker, entrepreneurs, businesspersons, self-employed, nurses, policemen and women, public servants and so Mr. Speaker, this Government is crafted to include all people, Mr. Speaker, because this Government is the Government of the people, for the people and Mr. Speaker, we are not a communist regime, we are interested in democracy in this country and so to that extent we are thankful to Cuba, Venezuela and Taiwan who recognized our good intention towards our people.And Mr. Speaker, I am not standing here pretending that we can address every single personal issue that arises in the day-to-day lives of fellow Vincentians and neither can we immediately solve every single social problem and ill as soon as it occurs. No, Mr. Speaker, we cannot do that, not with all of the external pressures that have threatened to overwhelm our economy in recent times. Indeed, comparing the economic crisis of today to great American challenges of the past like the civil war and bloody struggle for civil rights in the 1960’s, President Barack Obama bluntly declared on Wednesday night Mr. Speaker that quote, “the devastation remains amid the worst recession in decades, and he called on all Americans, Mr. Speaker, to dig deep and answer history’s call.” And so today I ask other Vincentians to dig deep and also answer history’s call and show support for this Budget [applause].Mr. Speaker, President Obama began his first state of the union address with a long list of economic challenges his country confronts, as he enters his second year in office. A 10% unemployment rate, Mr. Speaker, while we are creating jobs in St. Vincent and the Grenadines [applause] bankrupt businesses, Mr. Speaker, while businesses are expanding in St. Vincent and the Grenadines; He spoke of fall in home values and rise in education costs, Mr. Speaker, amongst other things and he went on to state that job creation was his priority even amidst all of the health care issues, Mr. Speaker and I say emphatically today, Mr. Speaker, that jobs are a priority for this Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines [applause] and that is why we are purporting to create 170 new jobs, Mr. Speaker, it is in the Budget. Additionally, the Honourable Prime Minister in his77Budgetary address described the financial meltdown as the worst and I quote Mr. Speaker, “the worst economic crash in 80 years affecting economies across the Caribbean” and he added, Mr. Speaker, “that recovery was yet to be made manifest,” and so in light of the prevailing, Mr. Speaker, the formulation of this Budget has been no easy task at all, but we would not give up, Mr. Speaker, because of political division, we will not give in to fear, we will not let go of the promise to move this nation forward, Mr. Speaker, we will not let go of that promise and we will certainly not resign, Mr. Speaker, before the electoral trumpet sounds [applause]. We are committed to this country and we are committed to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mr. Speaker [applause].HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: Debate Senator, debate, you going good, you sound good.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Mr. Speaker, this ULP administration has heard the cries of our people, Mr. Speaker. This administration has heard the cries of our people against the backdrop of global economic turbulence and we have sought to alleviate the pain financial hardship brings, Mr. Speaker, by devising a social economic strategy to propel this nation forward, to a higher plain of greatness which will in turn precipitate an expected end of peace, and health and wealth and prosperity and I can hear the voices of uncertainty asking, can this really be? Well, Mr. Speaker, not one solitary new tax has been introduced anywhere in this Budget [applause]. There has not been one single raise in any of the taxes that already exist. Even in these trying economic times, Mr. Speaker, even in these times no raises in tax at all and so yes, and this Budget is devised to alleviate the stress of financial hardship, Mr. Speaker.So, on this promise I remain standing, to wholeheartedly and unwaveringly endorse this Budget as presented. I endorse this Budget, Mr. Speaker, as a people centred document [applause] cleverly crafted to further advance our aspirations, to build this nation one brick at a time. Not by a panic attack, but by stabilising the economy and creating a balance through the marriage of sensible public polices and created detailed programmes even as we press towards that mark of recovery, Mr. Speaker.Yes Mr. Speaker, we have a vision of recovery and we have a hope and a vision to emerge ahead once this period of financial turmoil passes and we would not perish, Mr. Speaker, through lack of vision and so in wholeheartedly and unwaveringly endorsing the Budget, Mr. Speaker, I vigorously oppose any pronouncement that this Budget is a quote, “further monuments or proportion Mr. Speaker.” Is not this the same administration, Mr. Speaker, from which, came the Ottley Hall fraud and the Colonial Home issues in 1994? Allegations of fraud, Mr. Speaker, allegations of fraud, Mr. Speaker, issues of inconsistencies and accountability, Mr. Speaker, in the midst of those wounds that scarred and disfigured the epidermis of this country. Mr. Speaker, it is my opinion that the NDP administration has no ethical standing or factual basis to make such allegations [applause].HONOURABLE SABOTO CAESAR: No credibility.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Mr. Speaker, and in standing of the support of the Budget, I continue by fervidly rejecting the view that this Budget is reflective of great incompetence and gross mismanagement by this administration. Mr. Speaker, I fervidly resist the idea that this Budget would bring the country to the brink78of collapse. There is nothing iota of evidence to suggest that this Budget is a fragile pack of cards. That view I opine, Mr. Speaker, is without foundation on factual merit.Mr. Speaker, having only been a Member of this Honourable House for less than two weeks, I thought it prudent to take the time to inform myself of certain accounting terms to assist me in making at least a reasonable contribution to the debate, Mr. Speaker and I listened with keen interest to all of the debates so far, particularly to the Honourable Members of the Opposition. Mr. Speaker, I listened with keen interest hoping to drink from the metaphoric river of knowledge which flows with veracity from constructive, analytical critique, Mr. Speaker,HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: Yes, they get that. HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: But this was not meant to be, Mr. Speaker HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: You still thirsty.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: This was not meant to be, Mr. Speaker. Instead, Mr. Speaker, I struggled to catch a few drops from appear to be a spouting standpipe of incoherent attempts that rebottled, scattered between complaints and often times extensive irrelevancies which serve only as a diversion to the real expectation of what sensible alternatives, Mr. Speaker [applause].HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: Throat dry.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Mr. Speaker, as the newest Member of the House I am not persuaded by this approach. It strikes a loud discordant note in the air of this Honourable House, Mr. Speaker. Is this the best of the Honourable Members of the Opposition can do? In my view there has been no demonstration [laughter]. Mr. Speaker, in my view there has been no demonstrations in this Budgetary debate that they are prepared to sojourn the highway of governance in this country again. Not yet. Mr. Speaker, where are the sustainable arguments, the credible suggestions, the constructive criticisms, Mr. Speaker?HONOURABLE SABOTO CAESAR: Lynch have them, Lynch have them.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Where are the comparative analyses, Mr. Speaker, which are to lead us to that place of meaningful discussion? That place of meaningful discussion, Mr. Speaker, that place of compromise, that place of change and progression. Mr. Speaker, I have always maintained that our voices in this Honourable House should be the voices of peace and solution, especially in times of uncertainty and political divide. Where are the solutions that the Honourable Members of the Opposition have proffered, Mr. Speaker? Should they oppose for opposing sake without offering any sustainable alternatives, Mr. Speaker, how can this be? Instead, we hear criticism after criticism which is likened to a loud clanging symbol void of musical merit.79The Honourable Leader of the Opposition said, he was ashamed, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, are we to be ashamed, ashamed, Mr. Speaker, because we have elected not to destabilise the country? Mr. Speaker, the answer must be a resounding “no”. I like no in that context, Mr. Speaker [laughter]. Mr. Speaker, you see Mr. Speaker, the issue here is not debt alone you know, it is not debt by itself, Mr. Speaker, the issue here is connected to debt management, debt management Mr. Speaker, I repeat it for emphasis, debt management. You see the promise on which we borrow and the terms and conditions of repayment. There is an array of countries, Mr. Speaker, who run at a deficit and we are running at a deficit too, we acknowledge that but our borrowings are soft, Mr. Speaker, with concessionary loans at 2% interest, Mr. Speaker. We have to keep our economy stimulated.HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: Yes, yes [applause].HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: Mr. Speaker, we have considered it you know, we have considered that we cannot run at a deficit for any prolonged period of time, hence the fiscal reform measures on the revenue and expenditure side of the Budget and this is propounded by the Honourable Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, on page 83 of his address for clarity.Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to plum it into mindless repetition of the presentations of the colleagues that have gone before, but I do wish to turn now to consider why the capital Budget was increased by 50% and Mr. Speaker, it was increased by this margin due to three major projects. . a) Forty ($40) million to provide equity contributions to British American which the Honourable Leader of the Opposition agreed was good so to do. . b) Fifty ($50) million towards the Argyle International Airport, Mr. Speaker and . c) Nineteen point one ($19.1) million for the Coast Guard Project. No 400704 page 658 for ease of reference, Mr. Speaker. And so Mr. Speaker, in addition to the three major reasons why the capital Budget has been increased, there are new programme, Mr. Speaker, amounting to about approximately $5 million in the Ministry of Finance Internal Audit Unit, Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Education, the student support services, early childhood education, Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of National Mobilisation, Mr. Speaker, for a crisis centre. In the Ministry of Agriculture, banana services unit, Mr. Speaker. Ministry of Health, the Oxygen Production Plant, the Modern Medical Complex and these new programmes total about $5 million, Mr. Speaker and if we turn to page 89 of the Honourable Prime Minister’s Budgetary address we are able to see and identify new posts which cost about $2 million, $2,830,000 and some change, Mr. Speaker and so I was happy when the Honourable Member of the House spoke about jobs. Jobs are our priority, alleviation of poverty is our priority, Mr. Speaker and that is why this administration has purported over 170 new posts across mainly the vital areas of the public service such as, health, education, national security [interjection] page 89 of the Budgetary address, Mr. Speaker and so as I saying, in the areas of health, education, national security, public administration, among these new posts in health are 13 professional staff,80laboratory and nursing personnel at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital and 32 staff members for the Modern Medical Complex at Georgetown from October 2010, Mr. Speaker.In education there are 22 new posts, Mr. Speaker, mainly for teachers in Secondary Schools, Laboratory Assistants, Mr. Speaker and technicians for Information Technology Laboratories. In National Security there are 38 new posts in the Police force and 10 in the Coast Guard and other new posts, Mr. Speaker, are important in areas of public administration and Mr. Speaker, my presentation would not be complete at all if I was not to mention some increases in vital areas amounting to about $18 million or so and so we think of the contribution made to Social Welfare, we think of the contribution, Mr. Speaker, made to medicines and pharmaceuticals, retiring benefits, University of the West Indies in the amount of $1 million and so our young people can rest secure that their economic costs will be paid, Mr. Speaker [applause] again, a Government from the people, for the people, Mr. Speaker.And we think again of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College 65 graduate teachers, primary schools, a salary increase of 3% Mr. Speaker and all of these new programmes and posts, Mr. Speaker, were necessary. They were necessary, Mr. Speaker, in order to keep our economy stimulated and I posed the question again, are we to be ashamed, because we have elected not to destabilise St. Vincent and the Grenadines? Certainly not, Mr. Speaker, certainly not.And so Mr. Speaker, I turn now to consider page 96 of the Budgetary address of the Honourable Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker and because this Government is a people centred Government, Mr. Speaker, we have endeavoured to write some historic wrongs for central Government employees, Mr. Speaker: 1. The repeal of the legal provision which compels members of the Police Force who attained the age of 50 years to retire if they are still at the rank of Corporal. So we are not rejecting them just because they reach that age and that rank, Mr. Speaker and so yes, members of the Police Force who attain the age of 50 years to retire if they are still at the rank of Corporal unless they are granted Cabinet approval to continue beyond that age. This has been repealed, Mr. Speaker. 2. The extension of maternity leave for women in the Police Force and the public service from one month to three months, Mr. Speaker, [applause], again a Government from the people, for the people, Mr. Speaker. 3. The provision of paternity leave for Policemen and the men in the public service on the same terms, more or less as obtained in the teaching service. 4. The provision of retirement benefits for teachers employed in the Government Assisted Secondary Schools who had been appointed originally by the Public Service Commission would be pensionable, Mr. Speaker. 5. Special provisions for grants and scholarships for nurses and police officers who study at the tertiary level, Mr. Speaker and 816. The enhancement of the physical conditions for all categories of established central Government employees, Mr. SpeakerAnd so I stand here, Mr. Speaker, as the newest Member of the House and I am really of the view that the NDP policy is diametrically opposed to the ULP countercyclical fiscal approach. Mr. Speaker, from what I gathered from the various presentations, the prevailing NDP policy seems to be that when times are financially hard, we are to dramatically reduce expenditure and so make times even harder for the people. Mr. Speaker, how can this be? Moreover, the Honourable Leader of the Opposition Mr. Speaker, seemed Astounded that the estimates expenditure for the 2010 was more than 2009 and I recall that he wanted to know if the global meltdown did not affect St. Vincent and the Grenadines.I must admit, Mr. Speaker, that I was taken back when I heard this. I was taken back, but then I was only to learn that this view is a mere repetition of years past. I have learned that the Honourable Leader of the Opposition said the Budget was the worse Budget in 2001, and he said the same again in 2002 and again in 2003, Mr. Speaker, and again in 2004, Mr. Speaker and again in 2005, Mr. Speaker and so on and so on and so on, all the way up to 2010, Mr. Speaker. So that 2002 was 2001, Mr. Speaker and 2003 was worse than 2003, Mr. Speaker and 2004 was inevitably worse than 2005, Mr. Speaker and so I stand here and I say to myself, when huh, should not this country have already plummeted into the bowels of financial ruin? [Laughter] Mr. Speaker, should not we have already plummeted into the bowels of financial ruin, left holes in our noses at the stench of our own fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness? Of course not, Mr. Speaker, that has not happened and it will not happen under this administration, Mr. Speaker [applause] and I refuse to accept that this Government will allow this economy to fall into the hands of the IMF for a structural adjustment programme, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE ROCHELLE FORDE: Never.HONOURABLE MICHELLE FIFE: This Government will continue to create new initiatives in preparing for recovery with economic stimuli on farming subsidiaries on transfer to the elderly, poor and expectant and the like, Mr. Speaker.My people look at what you have seen over the last nine years or so. Look at the strides this Government has made and so appeal to you, do not oppose for opposing sake, cast your eyes on the landscape of our development and tell me what you see. Tell me what you see today. Mr. Speaker, this administration has been like a tree planted by streams of water yielding its fruit in season [applause] look at what we have accomplished, Mr. Speaker and look at what we continue to work on. Our administration and what we have achieved speaks for itself.There is a Latin term I recall from law, Res lpsa Loquitur, the thing speaks for itself, Mr. Speaker. The Education Revolution, Universal Secondary Education, Mr. Speaker, reform base on increasing access at all levels, labs in six secondary schools, the National Library, the rehabilitation of four secondary schools, Mr. Speaker, the training of teachers with over 300 teachers now trained at the graduate level, Mr. Speaker, no other administration has achieved this and we will acknowledge it and hold fast to it, because we are not ungrateful, Mr. Speaker [applause].82Mr. Speaker, we cannot forget nine new early childhood centres in addition to those already opened last year, Mr. Speaker, psychologists for those with behavioural challenges and problems, Mr. Speaker and increased university graduates. Mr. Speaker, look at the YES programme as well with the emphasis on training and so young people out there, we make up more than half of the population. If you are under the sound of my voice, seize the opportunities presented to you. Do not let your destiny slip away, not in this time when knowledge and information is so readily available. We must arise and move forward to better ourselves and push this country forward.Mr. Speaker, look at the strides in health, the wellness revolution, Mr. Speaker, the fitness programme for the elderly, the HIV AIDS initiatives, Mr. Speaker, the improvements made to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital and the new location for the same, Mr. Speaker, I am excited. The new facilities in Evesham, Georgetown, the Bread of Life Orphanage in Georgetown, Mr. Speaker, all a part of our plan, Mr. Speaker, again Government of the people for the people. Look at the low income and no income housing projects, Mr. Speaker, and the 100% mortgage programme, the home building by public servants, poverty reduction which is being remarkably reduced since 2001 and we continue to press towards the mark of better, Mr. Speaker. The poor relief and pensions for the retirees and so I say to those of you who are not here who are looking at me over the television or under the sound of my voice by radio, the ULP Government cares about you.For those who see the merit in our national projects, the Argyle International Airport, for those who travel and labour under the inconvenience of transitioning from one destination to another, before you can get to and from St. Vincent and the Grenadines for the teenage boy or girl who will benefit from the facility of the library. You might be too young to remember what things were like before, but I say to you as a young person that this ULP administration has your interest at heart and that is why provisions are already in place to pay your economic cost when you are ready to go to university and we thank you for your ability to recognise progress and for your moral support, but for the lady who is also listening under the sound of my voice who may never travel beyond the shores of this blessed land, for the young man or woman who may never use the national library, because you cannot read so well, for the discouraged or anyone who may be feeling downtrodden we recognise, you this ULP administration recognises you. You are not alone, you are certainly not forgotten. We are here with you and we are here for you and we will address your needs through the programmes we have and will continue to put in place and Mr. Speaker, I do not want to labour too long, because I said earlier I did not want to descend into the level of repetition saying what my colleagues have already said before me, but I want to say to my people do not be deceived today, be anxious for nothing. There is no [need] for a panic attack. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, Mr. Speaker, the evidence of things not yet seen and by faith, by hard work, by determination and prudence this administration would steer the economic ship of this country away from collapse into a destiny of prosperity [interjection] it is a Budget of hope indeed and so I pray that the people of our nation, Mr. Speaker, that their eyes would be enlightened to identify the virtues of this Budget which was prepared under the theme “economic and financial stability, social cohesion and fiscal consolidation at a time of global recession and uneven recovery.”Mr. Speaker, long live this administration, long live St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mr. Speaker and I wish to thank the Honourable Prime Minister and this Government for affording me the opportunity to make a contribution to this nation in a more meaningful way. I bid this Budget safe passage through this Honourable83House and there is much more that I could say, Mr. Speaker, but I feel that it has already been elaborated on and discussed at length. This Budget is a Budget for the people, from the Government of the people. I am obliged, Mr. Speaker [applause].HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Member for Central Kingstown. HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: Mr. Speaker..., HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You the Member for Central KingstownHONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: But I..., he would not mind, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker in a little light nature I just simply want to say to you because sometimes these things past, the Honourable Member just made her maiden contribution. We could have easily stood up and spoke about her reading, but I just want it to be acknowledged that we allowed her for flow until she gets her feet that is all I simply want to say, Mr. Speaker.DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Honourable Speaker, Honourable Members, Mr. Speaker, the comment by the Honourable Senator Leacock is insulting and wrong and churlish and indeed demeaning. A professional stood up, had notes and spoke towards her notes that was evident to me, but he could not resist if he wanted to raise a problem get up and challenge it, she has finished, in his head he sees a star is born and he then decides to be churlish and then he speaks about..., he must give people a chance. I mean it is...HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Well the only thing I will say to that, it seems to be the perception of the Honourable Senator that she might have been so doing, but you see that is an issue honestly I would not really..., I do not bother about, because if I were to call people reading a lot of person would not make their presentations. Senator be careful, careful Senator. All Honourable Prime Minister let me not delve into those issues right now. We want to invite the Honourable Member for Central Kingstown to make his presentation. Honourable Member I remind you that you have 45 minutes.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Members, please, please, please, please, please, please Honourable Senator Leacock [interjection] but has he done it. You see you are talking of a matter that you are saying it is a factual matter [interjection] yes I heard that, I heard that, I heard that but please we are coming to the end of the day of this debate, let us act civilly. Honourable Member for the Central Kingstown, I was saying that you have 45 minutes to make your presentation.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: I am obliged to stand, Mr. Speaker, because you asked and I have obeyed your rulings.84HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes.HONOURABLE ST. CLAIRE LEACOCK: The Honourable Prime Minister is issuing threats over there to me indicating that if I think I am a bad john he will deal with me. The Prime Minister has to stop these comments.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Yes Honourable Prime Minister..., DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Mr. Speaker, I did not say that. I said to him that hethinks that he is a bad john, but I am the wrong man for him to deal with, which is an entirely different matter. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right, let us stop this. DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: He hears what he wants to hear.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Incidentally my attention was on Central Kingstown, I was speaking to the Member of Central Kingstown at about the same time the talk was going on and so I cannot verify what was said or what was not said. Yes Honourable Member for Central Kingstown I am saying that you have 45 minutes to make your presentation.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I would like if you would just give me my reminder to about 15 minutes because I would like to address in particular issues in my constituency of Central Kingstown and the people of Central Kingstown.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: What you mean when you would have had 15 minutes..., HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Yes, yes, let me know I have that remaining. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Okay, oh, that remaining, all right sorry, okay. HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: When I finish 30 minutes, give me my time check. HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: All right, okay.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Now as to my Honourable friend Senator Leacock, I think that frankly speaking it must be in a state of denial with the performance of our friends, but I am not going to be too hard on him and with the question of dealing with him I think too many people are threatening to deal with him and I guess he must feel upset [laughter] about that, so never mind my brother, you stand, do not worry [laughter].Mr. Speaker, I stand here today in this Honourable House to give solid support to this Budget of $913 million presented by Honourable Prime Minister and I recall the words of the Honourable Leader of the Opposition. At85first I was looking for him to give the usual intro, but then he veered a little bit and he made some different remarks. But you know what is interesting, Mr. Speaker, my Honourable friend said, when he began to read the Budget proposal, he could not believe we were in a state of economic down turn. There was no global financial downturn that the world economy did not seem from looking at the Budget that it was in that sort of meltdown that it was recognised. Apparently the Budget seems so optimistic, so forward-looking, Mr. Speaker, so looking towards prosperity instead of austerity and because of this it brought a sense of disbelief to my Honourable friend.Mr. Speaker, it is well known by the entire world is in a state of financial and economic downturn. When I was in Dubai some years ago they were building the largest tower and they could not complete it since this economic downturn started, because they too felt it and no matter what part of the world you are Mr. Speaker, people are crying out for the pains of the economic squeeze. First it was 911 which signalled it, it did not cause it, but signalled it, because it was in the making and which propelled it and give it some sense of acceleration and then, Mr. Speaker, it was the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq which had an impact on the price of oil. Such impact causing the price of goods and services to sky rocket and business people therefore being unable to sustain their businesses as they did and as a result letting off workers, workers being unemployed were not able then to consume the goods and services which eventually led to a reduction in the growth in the economy.Mr. Speaker, the airlines went into a tail spin, many, many, many businesses. In the United States we heard about 4000 banks closed and many persons were put on the bread line when you had people losing their homes because they were not able to pay their mortgages. So those were terrible times and although people pointed to the Republican administration, Mr. Speaker, generally the American society gives a sort of high level of tolerance than we do in these parts. Although in many cases the blame could be brought at their doorstep, they seem to be a bit more tolerant of what is happening.Mr. Speaker, we have an attitude in these parts of blaming it on the Government and it seems to be the role of Opposition parties over the years creating this impression that they could turn straw into gold. I remember when Jamaica had this problem, Bruce Golding, the Prime Minister then had his share of criticism giving promises of controlling crime and bolstering economy and causing a boost in economic development and when it was his turn no serious reflection of his inability or inefficiency, but just the entire world economic situation got hold of his economy and he start to lay off people and start to downsize and raise taxes and all these kinds of things.Mr. Speaker, what is important here today is that there is no instance of taxes being raised to finance the expenditure that are proposed in this Budget and that is important, because Mr. Speaker, whenever you are living in stringent times people normally do a number of things. You raise taxes, you cut back on spending and you try to reduce production or the cost of operations by laying off your workers. In this case we have not seen such things done. There is an instance in the proposal where you have $11 million in reduction for goods and services and I interpreted that that the Government is cutting down on waste. The Leader of the Opposition was clamouring for it to be restored or was disappointed that you have $11 million reduction in goods and services and that did not refer to medical services, Mr. Speaker. It did not refer to goods like medication, but here it was interpreted in that way. Mr. Speaker, these are some of the realities that we find and I want to say again that86this Government once again has proved that they have the capability to marshal together the forces of all the Ministries under the leadership of the Ministry of Finance and the Honourable Prime Minister to bring a creative Budget, to bring a Budget, Mr. Speaker, that speaks to the times in which we are and I am proud of it to stand by this Budget and to give it my fullest support, Mr. Speaker [applause].Mr. Speaker, when we came into office as a Government in 2001 company taxes was 40%. In 2009 it was reduced to 32.5%, when we came to office personal income tax threshold was $12,000 in 2009 we carried it to $18,000, Mr. Speaker, this is indeed a Government that is for the people, understands the needs of the people and therefore engage in certain strategic intervention to ease the pressure and to alleviate poverty. Mr. Speaker, the Opposition has always had this way of blaming VAT for the price increases and the inflation in the cost of food. Mr. Speaker, if you look at it very carefully it is a serious coincidence that at the time when VAT was introduced that the oil price was at its highest and the food price was also at its highest and the price of services like electricity and so forth went up and I think that one with a careful analytical mind could have looked at the situation and say you know what, this Government is in office they are doing a certain thing that maybe we would have done it differently and Mr. Speaker, incidentally they do not say how differently they would have done it.They do not say, okay, here is the proposal that we would bring as a counter or as an alternative to the one that is before the House [interjection] yes, and Mr. Speaker, this is the problem we have with the Opposition, a failure to bring to the House and to the nation creditable, creative pragmatic alternative that would make a difference to the lives of the people. I do not know what kind of respect we are going to have for the nation if we are telling them that this is wrong. As we say only descriptive approach to the problem and no solution. What we want to hear is solutions. I know Honourable friend Senator Leacock made a few suggestions a while ago, these were not fleshed out, cannot forward them because he did not get the time to flesh them out but they were passing statements of what can be done, but I am sure Mr. Speaker that if you examine these closely you will see carefully where the weaknesses are in these suggestions.Mr. Speaker, reference is made to the whole question of user fee at the port and I want to mention it because I have noted the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines looking at this fee as something against the Grenadines people simply because the people in the Grenadines any particular individual will pay more than a particular individual from the mainland. But if the boat travels to the Grenadines with 200 people, obviously less than half of that on a daily basis would be less than people from the Grenadines except on certain peak times. Nevertheless, they paid more in that respect, but we must not look at it in the area of spite, Mr. Speaker, because I remember many days before that was done, before the facility that was there was placed there, people traveling to the Grenadines had to go and stand up half an hour sometimes in the sun and wait until they pack they boat or they have to go and sit on the boat and take in all that scent that carbon monoxide that is causing the stomach to churn, they want to use the bathroom there is no bathroom around, they have to stand under tree like goats for export, Mr. Speaker [interjection] they prefer to be like goats? [Interjection] oh, they prefer to wait on the boat. So they do not like the television and the washroom and the air condition, I do not think you are speaking for the people of the Grenadines. I am saying that any normal human being, and I believe the people of the Grenadines are normal human being would prefer a facility in which you can go and relax look at87CNN, look at the news, look at something, read a book, look at the internet, use the washroom [interjection] we are talking about the Grenadines people as the subject, they lock the gate?Mr. Speaker, I will not be side tracked by the Honourable Member, except to say that he is one of those who instigated..., if they had come out like Honourable Opposition and said, well you may not like it but in all fairness like someone said, this thing worth $5, but we cannot afford it, so let us settle for the $1 if they had come out in all fairness and say, you know, this is a service and nothing is really is free in the world, it cannot even pay to maintain the operations, so let us pay, because I am sure if they had put $1 more or $2 more on the fare of the boat they will just pay it without even quarrelling and every time they go they have to pay it. So then why are we making it look like such a mountain?Mr. Speaker, the comparisons made to say Tokyo when you are travelling to Tokyo or the bus stop at Sion Hill or some place you do not have to pay a $1 you cannot compare it like that, there is no facility at these, so we cannot make a comparison. So I want to move from that, Mr. Speaker and say there are many people who say to me, they would not have removed it, but thanks to the old lady who spoke to the Prime Minister, something that many others could not do and there is a man who listen to the elderly, so he listened to her and there is a $1 more in the pockets of those who travel, whoever they are. Let us do not ever think that this thing is just a Grenadines thing. We have this idea of being unsure in our thinking and figure oh, the lands in the Grenadines..., the lands in the Grenadines belong to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the people of the Grenadines have a right to come to St. Vincent on the mainland here and buy land and live here as we have a right to go down there and live. Let us do not just make this thing some sort of insular approach to the national development of this country. Everything we talk about, no let us erase that distinction, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, let us treat each other equally. Look at what is happening now you get school, modern school, I do not even have a school like what is in Port Elizabeth in my constituency and this Central Kingstown here as we would realise is the financial and economic heartbeat of this nation. We got to face it like that and what, there is a number of things we do not have and which I want to talk about because I have made some proposals for some of these things.Mr. Speaker, in spite of the fact that there is an economic meltdown the Government has taken it upon himself not to freeze wages, but to give a moderate increase of 3% [applause] yes, we need a clap for that because others would..., you know that sometimes when Barbados reduce wages and I think Antigua somebody was talking about reducing wages, because sometimes in a nation things could get so difficult that everybody have to come to the understanding with mature trade unionist to say, listen me, I am not a lackey for the Government or the boss, but the best thing to do for the survival for all of us, let us agree to either a wage freeze or wage reduction. Mr. Speaker that has not happened, what has happened is that Government, realizing that there are so many things to do with so little resources have proposed to the unions that one we have in mind to give you a 5% increase this year we could not do it, we like therefore to propose that you settle for a 3% increase and by the middle of this year if the economy turns around and we could afford the 5% increase, we would give you it in a retroactive pay package, if not you would get it next year. So in any case and in two years you would get 8% but you would not be at a disadvantage. This is reasonable, Mr. Speaker and I want to applaud the workers of the public service for understanding and for going along with this proposal because they are not going to lose.88Mr. Speaker, instead of reducing jobs the Government has proposed in this year to increase the job available by 170 additional persons [applause] this is remarkable, Mr. Speaker, 170 more jobs. Mr. Speaker, these jobs cover persons in the various areas in the constabulary and one of the areas that I want to talk about is the rural constable. Mr. Speaker, this Government and when I was working with the Ministry of Agriculture, we have been speaking about this thing for about 20 years you know that the farmers are losing too many of their crops and livestock and something must be done about it and year after year proposals were brought forth, discussions were held, consultations were held and nobody sought to do something about it, not something is being done about that problem of Praedial Larceny. Mr. Speaker, because of this problem you know you go to the market and you get a lot of inferior stuff, the fruits are young, immature because why, the farmers are racing against the thieves, and I am going to call them thieves, for their own produce. The oranges are green when they could stay and get a little more sugar content, the pears and all these are green and young and the farmers get a hard time for that or some of the poor farmers, not that they do not know when the fruit is full, but they just realise that if they leave this until next week it may not be there and so I wish that the farmers will now be able to leave their fruits on the trees and leave their produce in the earth until the right time of maturity and therefore anyone who attempts to steal the farmers produce should face prosecution. We have got to come to the farmers’ aid and I think we have done so, Mr. Speaker. There are worthless people who went stole farmer’s goats and sheep, cut off choice limbs go with it and leave the head and the skin and all these kinds of things behind and the bowels. Mr. Speaker, we have to move from that time. Our farmers work too hard to leave them to be in sort of situation.Mr. Speaker, we are living in an era, I want to come on to the education just now, Mr. Speaker, but let me just add something to this when we are talking about agriculture. Years ago the Ministry of Agriculture got excited with a proposal that there was going to be merger with the Eastern Caribbean Group of Companies to provide baby chicks for livestock farmers and to provide feed for these farmers and the farmers would raise these chickens and the ECGC would have a slaughtering facility, they would carry these chickens there, slaughter them, weigh them, get the difference between what the chicks cost, what the feed cost and other things and pay the farmers accordingly. This idea was banded about for a long time, Mr. Speaker, but it never came to fruition until now that we are hearing again that through the instrumentality of the Ministry of Agriculture collaborating with the ECGC that you are going to have this thing and hope, Mr. Speaker, that this would not be something that we speak about this year and next year we are still looking and saying, oh it should have happened, but I am hoping, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to see some real action, because people who have responsibility to do certain things must not pass the buck, Mr. Speaker. Map out exactly what is your plan of action, do what you have to do and get it done. I work with the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Speaker, for many years and I understand what it means to produce. I work in several departments and my record is there and I am proud of it.Mr. Speaker, one of the things I want to see us do to alleviate poverty and which I try to do when I was Chairman of the World Food Day Committee was to make fruit trees available to the public from 1991/1992 as Chairman. This is one of the things that the public loved and was cautioned how to care these trees. Mr. Speaker, I also took trees to the Grenadines at $1 fruit trees, you that, there are 3000 plants available now and you can get them a $1 they were $2 at Dumbarton Agricultural Station. Mr. Speaker, when I travelled to Union Island, Bequia and Canouan for World Food Day celebration I saw the need for additional fruit trees and I arranged with the Ministry of Agriculture Extension Officer to for several years send fruit trees for the people,89but they are talking about this let go season that affected the fruit trees coming up and also the lack rains and thank God, Mr. Speaker, that there is plan now for Bequia to have a desalination plant that would provide additional water for the people and I am sure they will be able to spare some to wet certain plants in times of critical need.Mr. Speaker, Education Revolution, the Member for the Southern Grenadines mentioned that education is that critical element that is needed to alleviate poverty Mr. Speaker, he is so true, the only problem I have with his presentation, Mr. Speaker, is that he spoke as though this is some new idea that we ought to have listened to and adopted realising that we also have this advance in action and therefore we as a Government, Mr. Speaker, have been always sensitive to the needs. The only constraint we have, Mr. Speaker, is not political will you know, the resources, and the finances. I heard the Honourable Member mention oh, how they need this, they need that, they need all kinds of facilities, yes we know and that is why in Canouan you have that new clinic, the new police station, you have that new school in Union Island, you have that new school in Bequia, these are things we are doing that is no discrimination, not trying to win votes, trying to look at the needs of the people and trying to meet those needs, because sometimes when the people of the Grenadines get certain things, there are certain constituencies on the mainland that do not get it and we have no problem with it.Central Kingstown does not have one single of those new schools that are built in the Grenadines and we do not have any problems with it. We have schools that are adequate and that is what we need. Yes we can do well with some sprucing up. Mr. Speaker, we realise that in 2001 we did a repairs on all the schools in ST. Vincent and the Grenadines because they were badly in need of repair. When one considers that in 2000 and 2001 that the then Government could not even as a political election gesture repair those schools, one understands the stringent situation they were facing because if you do not say so, we will say that they did not care at all that they had the resources. Mr. Speaker, we are living in challenging times and challenging times like these need a challenging approach, strategy and a leader with the experience, the ability, the boldness to carry us forward into the future. Dr. Ralph E. Gonsalves is that leader and as you notice he is getting a team of people who have what it takes to create and transform the economy to a place that will become modern, will become many-sided, will become a nation that people throughout the world can admire.Mr. Speaker, for years the young people of this nation were neglected. Talking about ideas, as simple as that YES programme is you know, Mr. Speaker, that YES programme has made a lot of difference to a lot of people. Persons get up to $4000 per annum as a young person while they learn a trade, compare this to having nothing to do, no money and no productive area in which to be engaged. Mr. Speaker, this idea came from the Unity Labour Party and the people of the Opposition, instead of taking note of it and says well, these people have an idea, criticise if you will, but bring something that can add to the quality of what is done. All we hear is that it is youth’s enslavement service or something like that and all kinds of disparaging remarks, Mr. Speaker, our young people need hope. The Education Revolution provide that hope, the YES programme provide that hope and the Skills Training that is provided, provide that hope and Mr. Speaker, we are looking at the young people from as small as toddlers. Those nine pre-schools that are to be open would make sure that the parents of these children can go to work and have a place to put their children without being at a costs, from 7:30 in the morning you can take your child to a pre-school and return 4:30, 5:30. This is not to say that you must burden the pre- school teachers and leave your child there until 5:00 while you are somewhere hanging out. It means if you are90in a jam the pre-school will be open until that time because the Government understands reality of people’s everyday lives, the transport service and so forth and you must make the fullest use of that. Perhaps you can get in a class during that 4:00 to 5:30 time, maybe you can get into some exercise regime, but you can do something productive with the time [inaudible] or your children will be able to help.Mr. Speaker, let us look at housing. What has the past Government done about housing? The old Labour Party Government as we like to call it, did it share of providing houses, a lot of different places, Paul’s Avenue, Sharpesdale, Campden Park, houses of different sizes and shapes. What happened under the NDP regime was the provision of what they call a mortgage finance window and this was hailed as a great idea. Mr. Speaker, this Government came into office and we provide greater facility for public servants 100% mortgage facility [applause] this is a great victory, Mr. Speaker. A great victory with 100%, no longer you have to find $20,000 or $15,000 to pay down 100% and this is for teachers, public servants, nurses, policemen, what do we except if these people see the Government in a good light? Because they see hope, they see a future, they see a Government as forward looking that is on their side and they will be on the Government, Mr. Speaker [applause].Mr. Speaker, when we came into office you know what happened? There was a shortage of nurse in this country, a dire shortage and is a good thing we had a good relationship with Cuba because that was the only place we could have turned to Mr. Speaker, the only place we could have turned to. One man say, oh they do not [speak] English, they do not this, he really did not understand. Mr. Speaker, we must be thankful to Cuba and to God for these nurses because they have pulled us through, the situation we are facing ourselves, they have done an excellent job for people and thank God we now have embarked on a rapid training of nurses, so much so that we have a surplus and we are now supplying nurses to Trinidad, to Barbados and I think Bahamas, wherever want nurses can get the nurses, because they are well trained, qualified and they have the right attitude towards work.Mr. Speaker, once in a time we used to supply to Barbados farm workers, cane cutters. So when you are a Vincentian and they think about you as a male they see idea potential or past cane worker, farmer, non- professional worker, labourer. Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, you notice mostly anytime there is a person gets into trouble here, once they are over the age of 25 and they gone to 35, 40 you would hear a labourer. Listen to them anytime, a 35 year old labourer, a 22 year old labourer once they past the era of the ULP intervention, once we met them before they came in having less school, they are labourers and that is the only labourer they had, labourer, labourer, labourer, I have to look at the electoral list and see how many of them put their profession or their calling as labourers.Mr. Speaker, now we have certification from technical workers, a total evolution and revolution of the work force [applause] this is something we must be proud of Mr. Speaker. Our technical people can be trained and certified and therefore be eligible to work in other countries. This is indeed an important move towards alleviating poverty and bringing economic development to the man on the street.Mr. Speaker, the Community College has seen a great advancement. Now it is known as the Integrated Community College with the Division of Nurse education, the Division of Teacher Education and the Division91of Technical Education, the A ‘Level College, this is an integrated process and they have reached to the stage now where this institution is opening its doors for workers in the afternoon to give them advanced tertiary education. This is a breakthrough, Mr. Speaker, giving young people hope, giving them a chance to move on in life. What are we looking for Mr. Speaker? I mean, this Government is not perfect, but show us an alternative Government that is more capable, more ready with the ideas and the track record, because we are not talking about a Government that was never there, we are talking about people who were there when times were better, when oil prices were in 28 or thirty something dollars a barrel, when the banana price was good and we were making a lot of money when times should have been better. What mark did they leave during those times? Did they do something to show well these times were good and here is what we did? That is when they should have thought of building the airport, Mr. Speaker, because times were better, but they could not do it because they did not have the creative idea of the coalition of the willing. This Government is who thought of that and when the Honourable Member for the Northern Grenadines talk about the airport and say oh, that airport we cannot afford it knowing fully well that since August 2005, the Honourable Prime Minister went to the Methodist Hall and say, listen me, we are going to build an airport and here is how we are going to do it. We have what you call the coalition of the willing, Cuba, Venezuela, Malaysia, Taiwan, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, these people are going to come together and work with us to build an airport and we are going to use grant funds more than anything else, but in the meantime when there is a shortage of funds we will put in our own money and have that replenished later, what is wrong with that, Mr. Speaker? It is an idea that many people thought as a brilliant idea.Mr. Speaker, it is amazing that people overseas are very much appreciative and admire the performance of this Government and our Prime Minister when our people slight it. I do not know if it is a case where the prophet has no honour in his own country.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: You have 15 minutes.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. But Mr. Speaker, you can really, really tell that this Government is for these times and like other countries where we see people are keeping the Government they have, because they are going through turbulent waters and they want to ensure that that Government take them through. The people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines I expect, Mr. Speaker, will take this Government through to the next election to assure that we go through safely with prosperity and development, I am expecting that.Mr. Speaker, the tourism sites in this country, talking about tourism development; we have had the development of 14 new tourism sites in this country taking it from North Windward from the Owia Salt Pond in Owia that has started years ago but it has been refurbished and a good work is done there you have water and facilities for bathing, changing and so forth, you have the Black Point Tunnel, Mr. Speaker, where that so called candidate to be made such a, something of himself, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have the Rawacou facility, we have the Belmont Lookout, we have the Botanic Gardens, we have the Layou Petroglyph and on and on Mr. Speaker, we go to Dark View Falls, the Falls of Baleine these tourism products are improved for the people. We have something to offer our people now. When people come to St. Vincent and they take pictures of where they are and carry these back, people are going to say, is this St. Vincent and the Grenadines? People are going to feel as92we as visitors would feel happy to carry..., as nationals would feel happy to carry visitors to these sites. I went to some of these sites and I felt so proud being a Vincentian, Mr. Speaker, but we are not hearing the Opposition saying anything about it. You would be respected by the populists if you could watch something that is positive and say that is a good move, because you know what, they figure if you can say so, you know what is good and it is likely that you are going to do something better, but no, you are going to watch something that is good and say it is not good and you try to find fault, you do not care how glaring your description is, you cannot do that. If you are serious about the nation and the nation’s development you got to come better than that, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, I want to take some time now because although I am confident that this may not be the last Budget debate, I want to still say some things that I have to say before I finish my tenure in this capacity. Mr. Speaker, I want to first of all thank the people of Central Kingstown for electing me as their representative. During the last election I won by only 16 votes, I will always remember that, Mr. Speaker, because it is very symbolic. The night of the election the number was 14 my Honourable friend could not believe that he could lose by 14 votes so the time of the count my Honourable friend, despite the fact, Mr. Speaker, that he has agents to check everything and report back to him and say in polling division A you beat Minister Sayers by this one, polling division B and so forth, he decided that he is going to count and to examine every ballot one by one by one Mr. Speaker, nothing wrong with that, he looked at the stubs, he looked at everything.Mr. Speaker, my Honourable friend went at the place of recount and to his amazement he discover two new votes that they did not get the night before carrying it to 16 and I sat down and I say, what is the meaning of this, you know what I remember? When two sevens clash 14 and the two tell you that are two sevens that clash and that is how you get 16 votes. I say you reinforce the pain; a win is a win even if it is by one vote, Mr. Speaker. I would have appreciated if my Honourable friend had taken his loss with more equanimity, but losing is a painful thing and I could assure him that in as much as I wish him well in his future endeavours, my well wishes will be that you would recover after his beating in his next election [applause].Mr. Speaker, I had to say to my Honourable friend not to be afraid because the Honourable Senator here, Senator Fife is not going to run in Central Kingstown, so do not get too anxious about that. Mr. Speaker, as I wrap up I want to still remind the people of Central Kingstown that under my watch or with my intervention or my involvement we have had several things being done in Central Kingstown. We can look at the mega projects that benefit this community, benefitted the people of Central Kingstown. We know before that the Post Office was a sweat house with asbestos in the roof; it is a very modern place now, thanks to the ULP Government. The Fisheries Centre in Kingstown had no special sanitary foot bath and air-conditioning and conference room for fishermen, now there is a tremendous improvement down there. There is now Leeward Bus Terminal, Mr. Speaker, that is there, Mr. Speaker, the Intermediate School was in East Kingstown when I came into office it is now in Central Kingstown at top Mc Kies Hill. Mr. Speaker, the School of Nursing was not at that advance improved state, now that school has been enlarged and modernised. Mr. Speaker, in Paul’s Avenue as we travel, first of all the Squash Complex and Squash Court there, I remember having a talk with Doctor Cyrus and at his home he said to me he is about to sell the Squash Court. I came to Prime Minister Doctor Gonsalves and I explained to him and he agreed to buy the facility. What has happened since that the National Lotteries had bought it, there is an advanced and improved squash court or Squash Facility parking lot, hard court for the people of Paul’s Avenue with a pavilion, Mr. Speaker and there is the removal of all these93small shops on the roadside causing much trepidation to the young people as they travel from and to school and so the road is clean and empty and there is a new facility built called the George Mc Intosh Community Market, Mr. Speaker. This is something I was to discuss with the Prime Minister, but I would like us to think of changing that name to George Mc Intosh Mini Mall, because sometimes people conjure up in their mind of a market a place where you get potatoes, dasheen and yams and so forth and young people do not go there often because of that. If they hear a mall they are going to come along and the things that the people have for sale they will like it and they are likely to do better business.Also there is certain improvements we can make but I am happy to say, Mr. Speaker, that the Avenue Dancers I personally made an intervention to get them a hall for performing and dancing in the back of the building [applause] so they have their own place. Before they used to go at the Peace Memorial Hall and they used to go to Girls Guides Headquarters, Mr. Speaker, that is no more. They are happy there and I am happy for them, Mr. Speaker. In Paul’s Avenue itself there was an old..., what you call a latrine for about 24 residents in the area that was dilapidated for years that has been removed and destroyed and there is a hard court in the area, a smaller hard court by the way. Mr. Speaker, the Girls Guides Headquarters had a larger wall and the road that goes through to Level Gardens was narrow, people have to go and reverse and have a lot of obstruction, I spoke to the Leaders of the Guides Movement and they agreed to allow me to get the wall removed push it in some more about 6 to 8 feet and widen the road. That has been a good thing for the people in that area, the motorists in the area, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, the Lodge Village School has been improved by far, basically a new facility aside the one that was there before that is a good thing, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have done work on the Sharpes Playing Field two times. When we came into office it was in a state of disrepair so as other playing fields in the country, we are now doing some work on it this year, there is to be some completion of that work so that we can build a proper pavilion and re-grass it. It is two times it has been re-grassed before with subsurface drainage that is to be completed, Mr. Speaker.Mr. Speaker, through the support of SWIFT or SESCO there is a refurbishing of the Community Centre in Redemption Sharpes. There is also a new road up in Trigger Ridge going right up in the hills, Mr. Speaker and a road down at Holly Wood all through the assistance of the financial SWIFT not forgetting that SWIFT is a stepchild of this Government.Mr. Speaker, in the future in this year I am hoping that we are going to get some things done such as building a bridge up in Green Hill going over the river so that we can have access to the lands on the other side close to those lands which the Senator spoke about for the farmers, but that is for housing because the farmers land is on the other side. I also went and did some expansion on the roads there, farmers were divided as to the bottom and the top road and I did the top road and that is so far as it took us. Mr. Speaker, there is so much more to be done. Let us always remember that no matter which Government comes into office for the next 20 years, no matter how much they do, there will always be something else to be done and people who want back walls, retaining walls, steps and drains and so forth we are going to try to see how we can help you. We have done a lot of those. I could name them, but one thing I have to say, Mr. Speaker, those that are not done between now and the next 20 years would be waiting every year. Some of them might stop voting and the children might say94oh, my mother or my father wanted these 20 years ago but that is the nature of the game. There will be some things that will not be done for a long time because there are so many things to be done.Mr. Speaker, I have tried to put concrete roads strips all the way from Lodge Village come up, first you meet Miguel Gap, just as you look on the road along the sides you will see the concrete strip going inside there. Mr. Speaker, up at Galba Range an expensive piece of work done there, drainage and new roadway inside there with retaining wall. Mr. Speaker, on the opposite side where the Brazil are new steps to help them to have access to go down to their places, going up to Lodge Village School right around the school there is access road, right around the school, Mr. Speaker. We were trying to build a bridge but that has been stalled, we are hoping to have it restarted or recommenced this year between Lodge Village Gap and Dascent Cottage Gap, Mr. Speaker. Going up to the area where the Post Office is all there, Mr. Speaker, the first road where the Brute family live, I took road right to the end to the riverside. Go right in further in front of Mother Clarke there is a road that link that road to the Weekes residence and go right to the back the entire roadway to the end of that road has been put in by me, Mr. Speaker and then back where the New Testament Church is, roads have been there before but I have advanced it and carried it further right around to officer Browne and by Ezekiel Trimmingham’s residence.Mr. Speaker, a lot of work has been done, but there is more to be done. All up in Green Hill, in Sharpes as you come over the bridge there, there is some work done just by Cumberbatch residence just past the bridge in Sharpes after Browne’s hardware going up the next gap on your left hand there is new concrete roads put there, Mr. Speaker and as you go up, you meet retaining walls by Ms. Joslyn and a round-a-bout road right around facing on the opposite to the bakery. Going up to the playing field, Mr. Speaker, where Curtis Browne is there is access road right there and to the back of the playing field I have made proposals for new roads and drains to be built there. Mr. Speaker, there was a lot that was done there is a lot to be done, I am proud to have represented the people of Central Kingstown and since this may not be my last Budget address, I have some other things I will like to talk about in the next address, but Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the Learning Resource Centre should be coming next to the Lodge Village Government School and I have had a proposal for a lighted hard court for basketball to be built next to Kevin Lyttle’s premises on two acres of land that is there. I have spoken to the Chief Surveyor already and he is working on that, Mr. Speaker and we should have some things going there because the Kingstown Park would have access to that and Bloc 2000 and Old Montrose would have access to that, Mr. Speaker, and there is one up at the hard court up at the Learning Resource Centre, which I hope also will have a hard court there which can be used for parking as well. But hard court for playing in the day and so forth, the people of Dascent Cottage can come over, people from Green Hill and other places or Sharpes really can use that one.HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Could you wrap up for me now please.HONOURABLE CONRAD SAYERS: Will do, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank again the people of Central Kingstown for reposing their confidence in me to elect me as their representative. As I leave I wish my successor good times, I am not sure who the successor is at this time, Mr. Speaker, but I wish the successor a successful tenure and may Central Kingstown continue to prosper and may the people come together as a95unified body of people and take it up upon themselves to play a more important role in the development of that constituency and in the entire country.Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues who have worked along with me well over the years, different Ministers and different Senators. All my friends on the Opposition, I have quite a few friends there, Mr. Speaker, and yourself, Mr. Speaker, I want to give appreciation for your cooperation and the Clerk of the House the staff in the House of Assembly and I want to congratulate Senator Fife in a very special way and to wish her especially well as she embarks on this road. I want urge the people to whom she offers herself as a candidate to behold a lady of special virtue and quality. One who would serve you well, one in whom you will be very much pleased and would be happy to stand and listen to her. Please work along with her and let her do what she has been called to do to bring development to your constituency and to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much and all the best [applause].HONOURABLE MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. Any further debate? All right Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs, I recognise you, but I will take you tomorrow.DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH GONSALVES: Mr. Speaker, in light of our earlier decision to go home a little earlier this evening, we are going home perhaps even earlier than we have even intended, but it means that Honourable Members can get home and shower and listen to Sir Dwight’s presentation and listen to the interactive discussion this evening.Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the inaugural address of Senator Fife [applause]. It is not easy for anyone, more so a young person to come to this Honourable House and take it by storm on their first outing and I am very pleased that her mom and dad were in the strangers gallery and her friends to hear it, I am most pleased, Mr. Speaker, [applause].Mr. Speaker, I beg to move that this Honourable House do stand suspended until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.Question put and agreed to. House suspended at 6:15 p.m. Until Friday 29th January 2010 at 9:00 a.m.96
© 2014 Camillo Gonsalves Contact Me
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New Martin Gore Track 'Howler' Out Now
Taken From The Third Chimpanzee EP Released 29 January 2021
posted: January 7th, 2021
Martin Gore releases the haunting 'Howler' today on Mute. It's taken from the forthcoming 5 track instrumental EP, The Third Chimpanzee, out 29 January 2021.
"Howler was the first track I recorded for The Third Chimpanzee EP," Martin says. "I resynthesized some vocals that almost sounded human, but not quite. That's why I decided to name the track after a monkey. I thought that would be a good theme to carry on with the rest of the tracks."
Like the entire EP, 'Howler' paints a cinematic musical landscape that sounds like a new dawn. Written and produced by Martin Gore, it was recorded at Electric Ladyboy in Santa Barbara, California.
The Third Chimpanzee EP is available for pre-order now on CD, limited edition 12" Azure Blue vinyl (which includes an art print), and digitally. Artwork is by Pockets Warhol.
The Third Chimpanzee EP tracklisting
1. Howler
2. Mandrill
3. Capuchin
4. Vervet
5. Howler's End
Martin Gore Unleashes New Track "Mandrill"
First Taste From Forthcoming EP, "The Third Chimpanzee"
posted: November 17th, 2020
'Mandrill' is the first release from Martin Gore's forthcoming 5-track instrumental EP, The Third Chimpanzee, which is to be released January 29, 2021 by Mute. The track is a ferocious slice of electro, and, like the four other tracks on the EP, has Martin's hugely atmospheric musical trademark stamped all over it. 'Mandrill' was produced and written by Martin and recorded this year at Electric Ladyboy in Santa Barbara, California.
"The first track I recorded had a sound that wasn't human," Martin explains. "It sounded primate-like. I decided to name it 'Howler', after a monkey. Then, when it came time to name the EP, I remembered reading the book 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee'. It all made sense to call it that, as the EP was made by one of the third chimpanzees."
The accompanying visual is a cosmic trip through the jungle. View below.
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Home » Division » Environment Divisions » Montreal Protocol & Ozone Cell » Introduction
Ozone Cell
The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer are the international treaties for the protection of the Ozone layer. India became Party to the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol on 18th March, 1991 and 19th June 1992 respectively.
The Montreal Protocol has been recognized as the most successful international environmental treaty in history. It has been universally ratified and all the 197 countries of the world are Parties to the Vienna Convention and its Montreal Protocol. In the 27 years of its operation with extraordinary international cooperation under the treaty has led to phase-out of production and consumption of several major Ozone Depleting Substances (ODSs) such as Chlorofluorocabons (CFCs), Carbontetrachloride (CTC) and halons globally from 1st January, 2010. The Montreal Protocol has not only contributed to protect the ozone layer but also has reduced Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by about 11 Giga tonnes CO2 equivalent per year through its ODS phase-out activities so far.
The Government of India has entrusted the work relating to the ozone layer protection and implementation of the Montreal Protocol on Substances the Ozone Layer to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). The Ministry has established an Empowered Steering Committee (ESC) Chaired by Secretary (EF&CC), which is supported by two standing committees viz. Technology and Finance Standing Committee (TFSC) and the Standing Committee on Monitoring. The ESC is overall responsible for implementation of the Montreal Protocol provisions, review of various policies including implementation options, project approvals and monitoring. The Ministry has set up an Ozone Cell as a National Ozone Unit (NOU) to render necessary services for effective and timely implementation of the Montreal Protocol and its ODS phase-out program in India.
India had prepared a detailed Country Program (CP) in 1993 for the phase-out of ODSs in accordance with its National Industrial Development Strategy by accessing funds from financial mechanism of the Montreal Protocol. The CP was updated in 2006. India has proactively phased out the production and consumption of CFCs except use in Metered Dose Inhalers (MDIs) used for treatment of Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) ailments from 1st August, 2008. Subsequently, the use of CFCs in MDIs has been phased out from December, 2012. India has also completely phased out production and consumption of CTC and halons as of 1st January, 2010.
Currently, the Ozone Cell is engaged in phase-out of production and consumption of next category of chemicals, Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) with an accelerated phase-out schedule as per the Montreal Protocol. The Ozone Cell, MoEF&CC in association with the implementing agencies and in close cooperation with the stakeholders in the country has been implementing following projects : –
Accelerated CFC Production Sector Phase-out Project
National CTC Phase-out Plan
National Strategy for Transition to Non-CFC MDIs and Plan for Phase-out of CFCs in the Manufacture of Pharmaceutical MDIs
HCFC Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP) – Stage-I
Foam Manufacturing Sector
Systems House
Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Servicing Sector
HCFC Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP) – Stage-II
To view More Details, Please visit http://www.ozonecell.com
Back to Previous Page | Last Updated date: 20th Nov 2019
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Rhinoceros: Learn about these giant animals.
The western black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes) or West African black rhinoceros was a subspecies of the black rhinoceros, declared extinct by the IUCN in 2011. The western black rhinoceros was believed to have been genetically different from other rhino subspecies. It was once widespread in the savanna of sub-Saharan Africa, but its numbers declined due to poaching.
Black rhinos have a prehensile lip that is used much like a finger to select and pick the leaves and twigs they prefer to eat. Their habitat is in the bushy plains, rugged hills, and scrublands in isolated areas of Central and South Africa.
The black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) is a species of rhinoceros, native to eastern and southern Africa including Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.Although the rhinoceros is referred to as black, its colours vary from brown to grey. The other African rhinoceros is the white rhinoceros.
Black Rhinoceros. Both black and white. The black rhino has a pointed upper lip, while its white relative has a squared lip.. Under the hot African sun, they take cover by lying in the shade.
No West African black rhinos are known to be held in captivity. The West African black rhino is a subspecies of the black rhino, but all rhinos are in trouble. Some things are looking up for.
Black rhinoceros, the third largest rhinoceros and one of two African species of rhinoceros. The black rhinoceros typically weighs between 700 and 1,300 kg (1,500 and 2,900 pounds); males are the same size as females. It stands 1.5 meters (5 feet) high at the shoulder and is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) long.
How the Western Black Rhino Went Extinct. Oh what a difference a century makes. At the beginning of the 20th century, an estimated one million black rhinoceroses from four different subspecies.
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Western black rhino has been declared extinct.
Image caption Black rhino: For some species on the edge, captivity is the only hope. No wild black rhinos remain in West Africa, according to the latest global assessment of threatened species.
You may benefit from reading a descriptive essay for college students or descriptive essay examples for high school. On 123HelpME, you can see many descriptive essay example pdfs. Once you are familiar with how a descriptive essay is written, you can start writing your own essay.
Physical Characteristics. Size: the black rhino is the smaller of the two African species Weight: adult males weigh up to 1,350 kg and females up to 900 kg. Weight at birth: 35-45 kg; Shoulder height: black rhinos stand at approximately 1.6 metres tall at the shoulder Skin colour: there is actually no colour difference between the white and black rhino.
The Black Rhino: The black, or hooked-lipped rhino, along with all other rhino species, is an odd-toed ungulate (three toes on each foot). It has a thick, hairless, grey hide. Both the black and white rhino have two horns, the longer of which sits at the front of the nose. Size. The rhinoceros stands about 60 inches at the shoulder. Weight.
Sumatran Rhinoceros - Like its name, this rhino comes from Sumatra. Since Sumatra is cold, the Sumatran Rhino has the most hair or fur of all the Rhinos. The Sumatran Rhino is also the smallest of the Rhinos and has short stubby legs. It is critically endangered with around 300 left in the world. Black Rhinoceros - This rhino comes from Africa.
Because rhinos are such large animals and are known for their power, they could easily be believed to be without threat from predators. While it is true that adult rhinos are not threatened by other animal predators, for the most part, they are particularly vulnerable to what has proven to be the cruellest predator of all, human beings.
Almost all black rhinos are found in four African counties — South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. WWF reports that black rhino numbers decreased by 98 percent between 1960 and 1995 to less.
Black Rhino - Helping Rhinos - Rhino Charity.
The African rhino is divided into two species, the black rhino and the white rhino. White rhinos mainly live in South Africa, but they have also been reintroduced to Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. Southern white rhinos have been introduced to Kenya, Zambia, and Cote d’Ivoire.Meanwhile, other rhino species remain on the brink of extinction. Last seen in 2006 in western Africa, the western black rhino is a subspecies of the African black rhino.Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.
Genes reveal West African heritage of white Brits.. identified a rare West African Y chromosome in a group of men. gene tests gave strong evidence that the black descendents of the.The black rhino is a symbol for conservation in Africa, just as the bald eagle is to us. Rhinoceros Worksheets This bundle contains 11 ready-to-use Rhinoceros Worksheets that are perfect for students who want to learn more about Rhinos who have lived on earth for over 50 million years and today, they can have a lifespan of 35 to 40 years.
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Tenth Grade Opportunity Days
High school sophomores are an inquisitive bunch, says Batavia High School counselor Cathy Hoitink, and are a perfect match for the annual Tenth Grade Opportunity Days at Genesee Community College.
"It's a nice way for sophomores, who are at the exploratory stage of their lives, to learn about careers in their areas of interest," said Hoitink, who is preparing to escort about 20 Batavia students to the two-day event scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 29 and 30th.
Nearly 200 students from 20 area high schools will come to Genesee's Batavia campus to learn more about career opportunities in health, business, information technology and the legal system. College Tech Prep, of Genesee Community College, is coordinating the event.
The Opportunity Days are scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. each day. Representatives from 10 high schools will come to Genesee on Tuesday and students and advisers from 10 other high schools will participate on Wednesday.
According to Debbie Dunlevy, College Tech Prep director, the program is designed to provide information and hands-on experience "to give the students an idea of what is involved in these careers."
"Students will visit high-tech classrooms and labs, join in on team building exercises and talk with faculty, financial aid and admission personnel and will get a chance to interact with students from other schools," she said.
The event format calls for students to be divided by their area of interest and spend "quite a bit of time visiting with college officials," Hoitink said. "After lunch, they have team building activities and the students get a chance to report on what they've learned and done."
Hoitink said she has been involved in the program for many years. She said it helps her to keep abreast of changes in the selected fields and heightens students' awareness of opportunities they may not have realized were out there.
"There's a lot more interest in the health careers field we've noticed," Hoitink said. "The students are hearing more about openings in the field - there's a shortage of nurses - and see a lot of shows on TV about medical careers, hospitals, forensics. With all of the CSI shows on television, science becomes more interesting."
She sees College Tech Prep, which is part of the Accelerated College Enrollment program at Genesee, as a valuable tool for high school students to pinpoint their post-secondary educational goals.
"The response from students has been positive," she said. "Everyone involved from the college have been extremely helpful."
Editor's Note: A photograph of students participating in last year's Tenth Grade Opportunity Day is available at the following Internet location: http://marketing.genesee.edu/images/Ten_Grade_Op_Day.jpg
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Softball 2009-2010 Wrap Up
The Genesee Women's softball team finished up their 2010 season with an overall record of 24-16. Although a tough loss in the Region B Finals stopped them in their paths, the Lady Cougars were still recognized as one of the top teams in the region.
The Genesee Women’s softball team finished up their 2010 season with an overall record of 24-16. Although a tough loss in the Region B Finals stopped them in their paths, the Lady Cougars were still recognized as one of the top teams in the region.
The team made some great accomplishments during the season including wins against Monroe Community College and Corning Community College, two teams that GCC hasn’t beat in several years.
Individually, both Brandi Froman and Taylor Maurer received All-Region and All Western New York Athletic Conference, second team honors for their strong play during the season, while teammates Gabby Spink, Lisa Vogt and Carly Shaw also joined them on the second team for WNYAC. Coach Kristen Schuth was also named coach of the year for the conference for the first time.
The team looks to return eight players next season, six of them being starters from this season. With the addition of some new talented freshman, the women’s softball program will look to enjoy another great season next year and continue their top play in Region 3.
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Telxius enhances its Security service with Radware
Tuesday, 14. May 2019 12:00
Telxius is one of the carriers with the highest mitigation capacity
Radware beefs up Telxius defenses to stay ahead of latest sophisticated cyber attacks
MAHWAH, N.J. and MADRID, Spain, May 14, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Telxius, Telefónica Group’s infrastructure company, announced today that it relies on Radware to ensure the protection of its international network from increasingly complex cyberattacks and provide DDoS mitigation services to its customers, helping them mitigate attacks in seconds, compared to hours if manual intervention was previously required. Radware® (NASDAQ: RDWR) is a leading provider of cybersecurity and application delivery solutions serving multinational customers and ISPs.
Telxius upgraded its DDoS Shield service based on the rising complexity of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and the inherent stress put on traditional Security Operations Centre (SOC) processes. Telxius powers its DDoS Shield services utilizing Radware’s advanced defenses. Telxius makes this enhanced capability available through the DDoS Shield to Telefónica companies and other ISPs globally as a security managed service, which is currently available.
Telxius operates an international high-capacity fiber optic submarine network of 87,000 kilometers and more than 16,700 cell towers. Radware’s mitigation solution allows Telxius customers to be secure and less vulnerable to sophisticated new attacks that may affect unprepared legacy defenses. Radware’s DefensePro® product is one of the most advanced in the market for DDoS prevention, protection and IoT botnet attack mitigation. DefensePro is an award-winning real-time perimeter DDoS defense and attack mitigation device that offers both capacity and mitigation less prone to false positives.
“The security of our network is a value-added service that is key for our business. We must ensure a seamless experience for our customers when an attack takes place and keep them protected from new attack methods, and Radware is the right partner for it”, said Rafael Castell, Head of Product Marketing at Telxius.
“Carriers today have to prioritize security if want to offer competitive services. Their customers expect service to be protected, but attackers are finding new ways to bypass legacy technology and manual operations,” said Mark McIIvane, Radware Vice President, Global Carrier Sales and Business Development. “Radware is pleased to have been recognised by Telxius for its security and technology leadership. Year after year, we see DDoS attacks becoming more complex and dynamic. However, with Radware’s support, Telxius can offer its customers one of the most advanced security services on the market.”
About Radware
Radware® (NASDAQ: RDWR), is a global leader of cyber security and application delivery solutions for physical, cloud, and software defined data centers. Its award-winning solutions portfolio secures the digital experience by providing infrastructure, application, and corporate IT protection and availability services to enterprises globally. Radware’s solutions empower more than 12,500 enterprise and carrier customers worldwide to adapt to market challenges quickly, maintain business continuity and achieve maximum productivity while keeping costs down. For more information, please visit www.radware.com.
Radware encourages you to join our community and follow us on: Facebook, LinkedIn, Radware Blog, Twitter, YouTube, Radware Connect app for iPhone® and our security center DDoSWarriors.com that provides a comprehensive analysis on DDoS attack tools, trends and threats.
©2019 Radware Ltd. All rights reserved. The Radware products and solutions mentioned in this press release are protected by trademarks, patents and pending patent applications of Radware in the U.S. and other countries. For more details please see: https://www.radware.com/LegalNotice/. All other trademarks and names are property of their respective owners.
About Telxius
Telxius is the infrastructure company of the Telefónica Group. It manages an international network of 87,000 kilometres of high capacity fiber optic submarine cables, including the two highest capacity systems in the world, MAREA and BRUSA, both already open for business. MAREA, a joint project with Microsoft and Facebook, is the highest-capacity submarine cable to ever cross the Atlantic. With its 11,000 km and cutting-edge technology, BRUSA links the United States and Brazil. SAM-1, PCCS, and UNISUR represent additional high capacity routes that link the United States and Latin America.
Telxius has also over 16,700 telecommunications towers in six countries, featuring one of the most extensive tower catalogues in the world, effectively serving customers as the leading tower company in Spain, Germany and Argentina and as a main provider in Brazil, Chile and Peru. For more information, please visit www.telxius.com or our social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook).
This press release may contain statements concerning Radware’s future prospects that are “forward-looking statements” under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements preceded by, followed by, or that otherwise include the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "plans", and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would", "may" and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. For example, when we say that “carriers that sell services can rely on Radware to rapidly develop solutions to new threats ”, this is a forward looking statement. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties and actual results, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, could differ materially from Radware's current forecasts and estimates. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the impact of global economic conditions and volatility of the market for our products; changes in the competitive landscape; inability to realize our investment objectives; timely availability and customer acceptance of our new and existing products; risks and uncertainties relating to acquisitions; the impact of economic and political uncertainties and weaknesses in various regions of the world, including the commencement or escalation of hostilities or acts of terrorism; Competition in the market for Application Delivery and Network Security solutions and our industry in general is intense; and other factors and risks on which we may have little or no control. This list is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that could cause actual results to differ. For a more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties affecting Radware, reference is made to Radware’s Annual Report on Form 20-F, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the other risk factors discussed from time to time by Radware in reports filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and, except as required by applicable law, Radware undertakes no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statement in order to reflect events or circumstances after the date any such statement is made. Radware’s public filings are available from the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or may be obtained on Radware’s website at www.radware.com.
Concepción Gutiérrez
conchi.gutierrez@telxius.com
Deborah Szajngarten
deborah.szajngarten@radware.com
Anat Earon-Heilborn
ir@radware.com
Copyright GlobeNewswire, Inc. 2016. All rights reserved.
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Trends & Forecasts
The Philippines: President Aquino’s Legacy and What's Ahead
By Daniel Wagner • Tuesday, August 04, 2015 | Topic: World
Many are unaware that Bloomberg predicts the Philippines to become the second fastest growing economy in the world in 2015 — a stunning achievement for a country that has for many years been considered an under performer. Since 2010, GDP growth under President Benigno S. Aquino III was an average of 6.2 percent — the highest in four decades, and coinciding with the Great Recession.
GDP is projected to increase more than six percent this year and next. By contrast, average GDP growth in the country was 4.4 percent between 1999 and 2009. Clearly, Aquino's 'medicine' for the Philippines has worked very well.
In his fifth and last State of the Nation Address, which the President recently delivered before Congress, Aquino underscored that if economic gains under his administration can be sustained, and if a target of 6.8 percent is achieved for 2015, the Philippine economy will be posting “the fastest 6-year average growth period in six decades.”
With sustainable sound economic growth in the long term, more nuanced debates now focus on whether the overall benefits to the macro economy will genuinely trickle down and bring about meaningful reductions in poverty and unemployment.
Has the Aquino administration succeeded in shedding the long-held stigma of being the 'Sick Man of Asia' and of catapulting the Philippines into the Asian Tigers club? Adherents to income growth and classical liberal economics seem convinced that the Philippines has already escaped the lower-middle income trap. The current debate should focus on whether the Philippines can break out into a high performance economy, achieve a better performance ranking under the Global Competitive Index, and transition from being a factor-based economy to one that is efficiency-driven.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the competitiveness ranking of the Philippines jumped by 7 slots, from 52 in 2013-2014 to 59 in 2014-2015. “The country's gain of 33 places since 2010 is the largest over that period among all countries studied,” the latest WEF report stated.
The Philippines has made some important changes — but there is much more work to be done.
That said, the Philippines has done rather poorly in the World Bank's (WB) Doing Business rankings, which judges the desirability of doing business in a country based on 10 key indicators. According to the rankings, the Philippines slipped 9 places (out of 189 countries) from 86th in 2014 to 95th in 2015 (the lower the score being better).
The Philippines actually declined in 8 of the 10 indicators, and remained unchanged in the other two. So while, according to the WEF, it is becoming more competitive, according to the WB it is becoming less desirable as a place to do business — a rather strange dichotomy.
The incidence of poverty remains virtually unchanged — at 25 percent since 2009 — as has the unemployment rate, which has remained in the 6-7 percent range. Proponents of 'inclusive growth' accuse the Aquino administration of growing the economy without raising the percentage of workers who benefit in the process.
Likewise, the Gini Index, which measures income inequality, has remained unchanged at .46 (out of 1.0, a lower score again being better) since Aquino took office. So while Aquino has been successful in moving the economy forward, his administration has not been a success at tackling the most pervasive and structural problems facing the Philippine economy — unemployment and income inequality. In the latter, he is not alone, as income inequality is rising around the world, and is proving to be the most pressing and intransigent economic challenge of our time.
Since inclusive growth and jobless growth will become the two key economic issues for Aquino's successor, the President has encouraged that person to continue the 'daang matuwid' (or the 'straight path') reform platform of his administration. After garnering at least eight sovereign credit rating upgrades by Moody's and other rating agencies since Aquino took office in 2010, and with the Philippines having attained 'investment grade' status with a positive outlook, Aquino's successor must be able to translate the gains in the macro economy into tangible gains in human development. It will no doubt also prove to be as difficult to achieve going forward.
In fairness to President Aquino, his reforms were only generated in late 2010 and early 2011, so they have only been in effect for four years. The Supreme Court's declaration in 2014 that both the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) as well as the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) — two of Aquino's key programs designed to speed up public spending — were void and unconstitutional, had a chilling effect on the Congress and all line agencies under the executive, and made legislators more risk averse to anything related to budget-driven public spending.
As the second most disaster prone country in the world (up from number three in 2013 under the World Risk Index), the Philippines had to contend with mega-disasters such as Super Typhoon Haiyan and a 7.2-magntitude earthquake just a month before Haiyan. According to the National Economic Development Authority, these mega disasters caused a revision to quarterly growth from 7 percent in the quarter immediately prior to the events, to about 4 percent.
Critics of Aquino have been encouraged to be more reasonable in their assessment of his performance under a constitutionally mandated 6-year term. There is no question that in just 5 years, Aquino's accomplishments have exceeded many expectations and have outperformed all previous administrations. In nominal terms, the Philippines is already growing at least 10 percent year-on-year. Inflation has remained steady and real GDP per capita grew nearly 18 percent between 2010 and 2014.
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Aside from the burden of transposing the gains in the economy into tangible gains in poverty alleviation and inequality, Aquino's successor must be able to translate economic leadership into a more meaningful role in regional politics. The country's largest trading partner is also its most contentious, in terms of conflicting claims to the islands of the South China Sea. The Philippines' biggest import partner in 2015 (China) accounts for 13 percent of all Philippine imports and 12 percent of all Philippine exports. China's brazen de facto expropriation of a number of islands in the South China Sea has raised alarm bells throughout the region.
While the Aquino Administration has aggressively challenged China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Aquino and his successor need to do more to strengthen the country's military alliances to be able to more assertively protect its interests in its territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone. Since re-establishing permanent U.S. bases in the country is not an option under the 1987 Constitution, Aquino and his successor must maintain various status of forces agreements (SOFAs) and conduct ad hoc joint military exercises with the U.S. (and lately, Japan) to enhance its military presence near the disputed islands. Despite some reform and modernization over the armed forces, the Philippines will not achieve a minimum credible defense posture in the remainder of Aquino's term.
Because Aquino's anointed successor, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, has fared poorly in surveys leading up to the synchronized national and local elections slated for May 2016, Aquino and the ruling Liberal Party are worried about continuity, and need to play upon their considerable successes. Aquino's anti-corruption efforts have been resounding.
This includes a string of high level corruption cases which have led to three senators jailed, a former president under hospital arrest, a chief justice impeached and convicted by the Senate, and an Ombudsman having resigned to avoid impeachment. In his final State of the Nation Address, Aquino urged his successors — including members of the opposition — not to lapse into reactionary politics or reverse government programs simply to engage in contrarian politics.
While Aquino's and Roxas's daang matuwid has brought about the kind of change the country really needs through its strong anti-corruption campaign, Liberal Party stalwarts expect that the new administration will end up using it against them, the Philippine political process not having changed its stripes since 2010. Jejomar Binay, the incumbent Vice President and now a leader of the opposition, recently quit his cabinet post and accused Aquino and his party of 'selective justice' and of using the state apparatus only for political aims. This is a big part of the problem. Rather than focusing on the substance of an issue, Philippine politicians (like many around the world) tend to cherry pick their concerns, engage in demagoguery, and appeal to the lowest common denominator among the electorate.
In a bid to secure the gains of his administration beyond 2016, President Aquino has turned to Senator Grace Poe, a young senator who has consistently topped all surveys for both the presidency and vice presidency. Since Aquino had already endorsed Roxas for the presidency, Aquino's gesture was largely seen as courting Poe to run as Roxas's vice president. While an independent, Senator Poe ran under Aquino's coalition in 2013 and won a landslide victory. Today, Aquino's successors include only three potential contenders: an experienced and telegenic but dismally ranked Roxas, a popular but allegedly corrupt Binay who belongs to the old political guard, and a young, popular, but inexperienced Poe.
Any of the three, if elected as president, stand a good chance of sustaining the many achievements of the Aquino Administration. It is now a question of whether Filipino voters can break their own well-worn path of choosing a member of the country's famous dynastic political clans, or business tycoons, or celebrities to lead their country, or will deliberately choose a new brand of politicians.
The Philippines has made some important changes to the way it does business, but there is much more work to be done. It is our hope that Philippine voters will choose to build on that change, rather than settle for 'business as usual' traditional politics. The country's recent achievements could easily be undone by reverting to the tainted political model of the past. The Philippines and its people deserve better.
Edsel Tupaz, a public interest attorney and legal academic, contribute to this article.
About The Author Daniel Wagner
Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions and the author of the book "Managing Country Risk."
www.countryrisksolutions.com
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By Saurabh Datar December 15, 2015
Foreign STEM students face uncertain futures in battle over work program
Thousands of international students studying in the United States are anxiously awaiting a forthcoming decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that could change regulations governing post-graduation work training programs.
While the department has proposed increasing the time for which these students can work on a student visa, an ongoing lawsuit that seeks to shorten that time period has left students uncertain of what the future holds.
Every foreign student can work in the United States for one year on a student visa under the Optional Practical Training program, or OPT program. But for those with degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, this period can be extended by 17 months without having to apply for a work visa.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, 34,000 foreign students were working on the so-called STEM extension as of Sept. 16.
But American technology workers believe the STEM extension disadvantages them. Last November, Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an American technology workers’ union, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, challenging the OPT program and STEM extension. This past fall, a federal court in Washington D.C. invalidated the STEM extensions, a move that could force these 34,000 students to leave the U.S. unless Homeland Security finalizes a new set of rules for the STEM extension by Feb. 12.
Gyanasekaran Radhakrishnan, a software engineer with eBay, says his employability will take a hit if the STEM extension is cancelled and he has to leave the U.S. (Saurabh Datar/Peninsula Press)
Gyanasekaran Radhakrishnan is typical of the students who could be impacted. Since finishing his engineering degree at Clemson University in 2014, Radhakrishnan has been working in San Jose at eBay as a software engineer. He has about 13 months left on his STEM extension.
“Nobody had any idea such an order would be passed. My employability will suffer if I have to go back to India. A lot of investments I’ve made here will not bear fruit,” he said.
Jagdeesh Narayanan’s one-year OPT period ends in January. A 28-year-old business analyst in New York, he hoped to get a STEM extension, but is now confused about what will happen and is worried about repaying his $30,000 student loan. “As an international [student], it is very difficult to find an employer to sponsor your visa. It will take a long time for me to repay my debt if I end up earning in Indian rupees.”
The federal court deemed that the Department of Homeland Security had not followed proper procedure while initiating the STEM extension back in 2008. So, it asked the authority to republish it, per the process defined by law.
On Oct. 19, the department published a draft rule proposing to increase the STEM extension to 24 months, giving STEM students a total of 36 months to work on a student visa. A DHS official refused to comment on the rule, saying it was still a draft.
“Our nation will benefit from keeping international students here, educated in U.S. colleges and universities here while they receive additional training, rather than sending them out of the country,” said director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Sarah R. Saldaña, in an Oct. 16 statement. “At the same time, U.S. employers will benefit from the increased ability to rely on the skills acquired by U.S. educated-STEM students, as well as their knowledge of markets in their home countries.”
Nearly one million international students were enrolled in American universities during the 2014-15 academic year, and according to the NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a nonprofit for professionals in international education, these students contributed $30.5 billion to the U.S. economy through their tuition and living expenses. They also support 373,381 jobs due to their spending in higher education, retail, accommodation and other relevant industries, the analysis concluded.
Foreign students contributed $30.5 billion dollars to the U.S. economy in the academic year 2014-15, through tuition and living expenses. This map shows the state distribution of these contributions. (Saurabh Datar/Peninsula Press)
What lies ahead for STEM students?
John Miano, lawyer for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, sued the Department of Homeland Security last November, challenging the OPT STEM extension. (Photo courtesy of John Miano)
The proposed STEM extension comes amid heated debate over the H-1B work visas, which, American workers have argued, has forced them out of jobs. Only 85,000 of these visas are issued every year, but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received nearly three times that number of applications this year for the H-1B visa.
While Silicon Valley executives have long complained about the insufficient number of engineers to fill positions, Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America, says these students are cheap labor hired instead of local workers.
The decision to allow STEM students to stay an extra 17 months beyond the initial year allowed under law came after “tech companies lobbied for it to circumvent the H-1B visa quota,” said John Miano, attorney for the union.
According to Miano, companies “love having OPT STEM workers” because corporations don’t have to pay taxes and have a compliant workforce. Miano claimed employers could “get away with paying minimum wage and didn’t have to pay workers when they are not working,” and this meant OPT STEM workers cost less to the company.
Peninsula Press contacted several tech companies by email. Google and Amazon did not respond. Facebook responded, but said “they are unable to accommodate the Press’ interview request.”
Leslie Dellon, an attorney at American Immigration Council, a non-partisan think-tank based in Washington D.C., thinks the STEM extension is here to stay: “I think the DHS has responded well to the lawsuit and done a good job in addressing the concerns raised by the court.”
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Record-setting router controls light one photon at a time
Physicists from Sweden and Spain have created a router than can quickly and efficiently direct information at the tiniest possible level.
“If you want to make a real quantum network, you have to have the ability to do things like route photons – everything we do in a real communications network,” said Chris (C.M.) Wilson of the Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden.
[At left is a close-up photo of the chip containing one of the researchers' artificial atoms. Photo courtesy of Io-Chun Hoi/Chalmers University of Technology.]
Wilson and his colleagues Io-Chun Hoi, Göran Johansson, Tauno Palomaki, and Per Delsing, along with Borja Peropadre from the Instituto de Física Fundamental Serrano in Madrid, Spain, have done just that, creating a quantum bit that can route information to one of two outlets in nanoseconds. The achievement could help spur on the development of quantum information networking.
Conventional computers, at their hearts, work with bits – the smallest units of information. Bits are binary; they can be either a zero or a one. They are responsible for all the information processed inside a computer.
At the quantum level, however, a quantum bit - or “qubit”- does not have to be one or the other. It can be both at the same time. The fact that a quantum system can be in both states at the same time is a key ingredient of quantum computation and will allow theoretical quantum computers to do difficult calculations far faster than conventional computers. This special nature, however, makes creating quantum systems challenging.
In their experiment, the researchers worked with microwave photons – little packets of light from the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The photons act as information carriers. The team routes the photons using a custom-made quantum bit, called an artificial atom. They use a green control light to turn the artificial atom on and off.
When the green light is off the artificial atom acts like a mirror reflecting the photons which are then routed to a first output. When the green light is on the photons are no longer reflected but instead transmitted and routed to a different output. Switching between on and off, and therefore between output ports, takes only nanoseconds.
The artificial atom, made from aluminum, was created in a clean room using the same nanofabrication techniques used to make other modern electronic devices. The artificial atom must be very cold to work properly. To test it, the group’s first artificial atom was cooled down and then tested over a period of a month before being warmed back up. The cooling, testing and warming process was then repeated twice more with little adjustments to the experiment made before each new test. This intense series of tests helped the researchers create a more effective atom for their second sample.
“After we understood all the basic physics behind the device, we made a new sample – a much better sample because we knew what to do,” Hoi said.
With the first sample, when the artificial atom (green light) was turned on, about 90 times more light passed through than when the atom was turned off (when it became a mirror), matching previous similar work. With the second sample, though, the team improved their artificial atom so that when it was turned on, about 99 times more light passed through than when it was turned off – making the difference between on and off far more apparent.
“The difference between 90 and 99 may not sound great,” said Jens Koch, a professor of physics at Northwestern University, “[But] the requirements for achieving the goal of quantum computing has a lot to do with how close we get to 100. Ninety-nine is a great result.”
Koch said the research will help quantum information developers thinking about scaling up quantum systems from a few qubits to hundreds or thousands of qubits.
When it comes to quantum information, there are two different worlds: Quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Quantum computing involves processing information and doing difficult calculations. It is task-oriented. Quantum cryptography, on the other hand, is security-oriented. It involves making the distribution of information between distant parties absolutely secure. The router developed by the researchers in Sweden and Spain will be more applicable to the encryption side, they say, helping to route secure information at the quantum level.
Banks first encrypted data at the quantum level in 2004 when a secure money transfer was made between the city of Vienna and an Austrian bank. Quantum encryption was again used to securely transfer ballots to Geneva in the 2007 Swiss national elections.
This paper appeared in the APS journal Physical Review Letters on Tuesday, Aug. 9.
Labels: quantum mechanics
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There have been several TV shows called Wipeout. This ticket is for the syndicated game show that ran September 12, 1988 to June 9, 1989 and had Peter Tomarken as its host. The game revolved around a large board that displayed sixteen possible answers to a question such as “Name a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor.” Eleven of the answers on the board were correct and five were wrong. The five wrong ones were the “Wipeout” answers. If a contestant picked a correct answer, the contestant won money and retained control of the board. If the contestant picked a “Wipeout” answer, he or she lost all the money they’d built up and also lost control of the board. It was a fast-paced game and Tomarken was a good host but it never quite caught on.
Posted in Game Shows
Larry Sanders Show, The
Folks who went to see The Larry Sanders Show tape only got to see portions of each episode. The innovative, widely-acclaimed situation comedy ran on HBO from August of 1992 to May of 1998. Chronicling the life and backstage dealings of a neurotic talk show host (and often employing anecdotes from backstage at real, contemporary talk shows), the series was shot on both film and tape. It was tape when we the audience were watching moments from the show that Larry Sanders starred in for an entity referred to only as “The Network.” It was film when we saw the things the viewers of that show did not see. Tapings, which sometimes involved shooting the tape segments for several episodes, were popular…and attendees said they were a lot of fun even if one only got to see about 20 minutes of taping. The lines between reality and acting were often blurred, both on the series and at these tapings.
Posted in Sitcoms
This appears to be a ticket for an unsold pilot. The original It Takes Two aired on NBC from March 31, 1969 to July 31, 1970 and was hosted by Vin Scully. It was a very simple game: Three celebrity couples competed. A question would be raised which had a numeric answer and probably involved an educated guess as to that number. Each member of a couple would give their estimates separately and then the average of the two would be the guess for that couple. So if you knew the answer but your mate was way off the mark, he or she would ruin things for your team. Anyway, this is not a ticket to that series.
It’s also not a ticket to the 1997 revival done for the Family Channel and hosted by Dick Clark. So I’m guessing it’s an unsold pilot.
Posted in Game Shows, Mystery Tix
That Was the Week That Was was an acclaimed but short-lived satiric show in England then again in America. The British version went on the air in November of 1962 and went off at the end of ’63. One of its last episodes was among its most memorable: A shortened episode that paid tribute to John F. Kennedy shortly after his assassination. The audio from it was released as a record album and it remains one of the few relics of that live show. Other weeks, it was songs and sketches about what was happening in the world with David Frost as its host.
The pilot for an Americanized version aired in this country on November 10, 1963. Ratings were soft but critics raved about the show which was also headed up by David Frost and which started his rise to fame in the U.S. A weekly version commenced on January 10, 1964. Frost, commuting from the U.K., continued to host or at least dominate the proceedings. Nancy Ames was the “TW3 Girl,” singing the title and closing song which each week featured new and topical lyrics. The rest of the cast changed from week to week but at times included Henry Morgan, Alan Alda, Mike Nichols & Elaine May, Elliot Reid, Buck Henry and many more. For a half hour, they’d talk about items in the news and parody whatever there was to parody.
There were two other notable contributors though you didn’t see much of either on screen. Comedy songwriter Tom Lehrer wrote tunes, many of which he later recorded and put out as an album entitled That Was the Year That Was. And puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, best known for the kids show Kukla, Fran & Ollie invented a new art form with what he called “Hand Ballets.” They were little vignettes set to music in which Tillstrom used his bare hands as puppets and would mime some in-the-news situation. The most memorable one was an interpretation of the Berlin Wall. One of Tillstrom’s hands played the wall; the other represented a person who lived in East Berlin and who was in agony about being separated from his family on the other side of the wall/hand.
TW3 was a modest success in America and NBC kept it on the air expecting that it would draw extra attention during the ’64 Presidential Campaign. What they hadn’t reckoned with was this: It was then relatively easy and not all that expensive for a political candidate to buy a half-hour or even an hour of prime-time TV time. Most of the candidates did that, often pre-empting regular programming with little advance notice. You’d tune in to see your favorite show and discover it was not on and a political ad was in its place. The Republican National Committee took to buying the time slot for That Was the Week That Was, over and over just to keep it off the air and stifle its somewhat-liberal viewpoints. This was a special problem for TW3 as it was done live, and material written for one week was often out-of-date and unusable a few weeks later. Often, they would write and rehearse for several days and then find out that the show would not be airing; that a special touting Barry Goldwater for President would air instead. By the time TW3 did air again, it had lost its mojo and whatever steady viewers it had. It ended in May of ’65.
The ticket above is to a live broadcast that probably did air since it was one week after the election. Leland Hayward, who got billing over the title on tickets and some other places, was a show business entrepreneur who bounced back and forth between being an agent and a producer. His most notable work was on Broadway where he “produced” (i.e., put together the deals for) shows like Mister Roberts, Gypsy and The Sound of Music. His main contribution to That Was the Week That Was was probably just getting it on the air.
Posted in Comedies, Variety Shows
Earn Your Vacation
Quick: Name a show that was hosted by Steve Allen and later by Johnny Carson.
If you said The Tonight Show, you’re right…unless someone wants to nitpick. Allen’s version was only called Tonight, not The Tonight Show. But you’d certainly be right if you named Earn Your Vacation. Allen hosted the radio version after a while was followed on the schedule by a half-hour Steve Allen Show done from the same studio after they cleared away whatever was needed to do the game show. On Earn Your Vacation, most of the contestants were school teachers and if they could answer enough questions, they won trips to exotic locales. The show survived into 1951 when it was retooled into Your Tropical Trip with Desi Arnaz. In 1954, it came back to TV as Earn Your Vacation again and it was hosted by the then-new-to-television Johnny Carson.
Mr. Carson must have had some fun with the name of his bandleader. Ludwig Elias Gluskin (1898-1989) headed up a number of popular dance bands throughout Europe in the twenties and thirties, migrated to the U.S. (where he was born) in the forties. This was reportedly because, being Jewish, he had trouble getting work on that continent during World War II. He hooked up with CBS here and became a constant presence on radio programs, including a long stint providing the music for The Burns and Allen Show. He followed Johnny to his next job…The Johnny Carson Show.
Posted in Game Shows, Radio Shows
Your Tropical Trip
I Love Lucy went on the air October 15, 1951. Here’s what Desi Arnaz was doing just before that. He was the host of Your Tropical Trip, a short-lived CBS radio show that ran on Sundays. It went on the air on January 20, never found a sponsor and went off when Desi got busy playing Ricky Ricardo and producing the new TV series. Most accounts say it was busy work that CBS gave him to keep him and his orchestra in Hollywood and working while I Love Lucy was prepped, though none seem to know when he stopped doing it. Many songs which Arnaz later performed on the classic sitcom were first performed on the radio show and some companies later took radio transcriptions and released them as records.
Your Tropical Trip was a revamp of an earlier radio show called Earn Your Vacation. Later, it was turned back into Earn Your Vacation and put on TV where it was hosted by a new-to-TV kid named Johnny Carson.
Hold That Note
For a while in the fifties, music-themed game shows were very big. One of the less-successful ones was Hold That Note starring Bert Parks. Parks had been hosting the current incarnation of a game show called Break the Bank in that same time slot, sponsored by the same sponsor. This was back when every season, some network would have some version of that show. Its host and rules changed but the hallowed name of Break the Bank went on.
Finally though, the name had run out of stream so on the night of January 22, 1957, the few viewers who did tune it in had a surprise: In a decision made too late to even be in TV Guide, Break the Bank was replaced by Hold That Note. Even some of the contestants were folks who’d won on the previous week’s Break the Bank and thus won the right to come back and play on the next episode.
Largely imitative of the more popular Name That Tune, the idea of Hold That Note was for contestants to identify a song from its first few notes. There were bonus questions and jackpot rounds and Bert sang…but it was all for naught. The show went off the following April and Bert went on to another show. And another show. And another show.
Darn little is known about the game show Window Shopping. As of this moment, it isn’t even mentioned in the Internet Movie Database. We know it debuted on ABC on April 2, 1962 and went off the following June 29. Bob Kennedy was the host and the way it worked was that three contestants would be shown a photo and would have to remember as many details as they could, then describe what they had seen. They won points for every detail they could give without duplicating an opponent’s response. At the end, the player with the most points won and he or she had those points converted into seconds. They could that study a window of prizes for that many seconds, then they would face away from the window and describe the prizes. Every prize they described, they would take home…and if they remembered one prize in particular, the name of which the host had in an envelope, they’d take home all the prizes.
That was the game. How was the show? Who knows? No one seems to have watched it, no one seems to remember it and no one seems to have a copy of an episode…a sad fate for a series that was all about being observant and remembering what you saw.
Arthur Murray Party, The
Arthur Murray was the founder and figurehead of a chain of studios that would teach you to dance, thereby making you more attractive and popular. The Arthur Murray Party was a weekly show that was basically an infomercial before that term was invented. Each week, Arthur and his wife Kathryn hosted a big party filled with instructors from his schools who would dance together and with guest stars, making it all look so fun and easy.
The series started in 1950 on ABC, the moved to the DuMont Network, then back to ABC, then over to CBS and continued to rebound between networks, NBC included, until it finally went off in 1960. Its form was often parodied as was the stiffness of his host, who was often compared to Ed Sullivan. But it entertained a lot of people and probably sold them a lot of dance lessons.
Posted in Variety Shows
Two Top Bananas
Don Rickles and Don Adams star in one of several early Showtime specials that tried to capture the look and feel of a classic burlesque show with old routines and older strippers. This may also have been the first made-for-cable TV show to be released on home video. I still have a Beta copy of it somewhere.
Posted in Specials
Hard to Classify
Unsold Pilots
Variety Shows
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Foreign Law, Sharia and American Jurisprudence
Increasingly, state legislatures have voted to ban the use of Sharia law in federal and state courts. Legislators in almost two-thirds of state legislatures have introduced bills in the last three years to block courts from considering foreign or religious laws in their rulings.
By Andrew Thomas | September 26, 2013
American judges, including justices of the United States Supreme Court, increasingly rely on and cite foreign law in their rulings. The public is beginning to react accordingly to what many perceive as a threat and affront to U.S. sovereignty. In a rising wave of states, the voters and their elected representatives are taking steps to halt this trend.
One flashpoint in this conflict is Islamic law, or Sharia. Based on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad, Sharia is being applied in a variety of U.S. legal cases, particularly in family law and suits involving U.S. Muslims. The laws of Sharia are largely religious, encompass all human conduct, and are subject to extreme application. This has led Americans to take preemptive action to prevent the enshrinement of Sharia in U.S. law.
Increasingly, state legislatures have voted to ban the use of Sharia law in federal and state courts. Legislators in almost two-thirds of state legislatures have introduced bills in the last three years to block courts from considering foreign or religious laws in their rulings. Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and most recently North Carolina enacted such legislation. Democratic Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a similar bill in Missouri.
The vast majority of these bills do not single out Sharia law as the catalyst for the reform. Only 21 of the 92 bills introduced between 2010 and 2012 specify a prohibition on considering Sharia or other religious laws. An important exception was a voter-approved measure in Oklahoma called “Save Our State Amendment.” On the ballot in 2010, it directly prohibited courts and state judges from considering Sharia in rendering decisions.
The ballot language read in part: “The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law.” The author of the measure, State Representative Rex Duncan, described the measure as a preemptive strike designed to stop international and Sharia law from infiltrating Oklahoma courts. Given a choice of voting yes or no, seven out of ten Oklahomans voted yes.
Before the law could take effect, however, a Muslim man in Oklahoma City and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) brought suit in federal court. A federal judge struck down the law as unconstitutional, saying it violated the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment. “It is abundantly clear that the primary purpose of the amendment was to specifically target and outlaw Sharia law,” the judge wrote.
A federal appeals court upheld the ruling. The court held that supporters of the law, backed by the 70 percent of state voters, “do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment sought to solve.” The panel stated there was not “a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma.”
The court failed to explain why Oklahoma voters could not pass legislation designed to preempt the emergence of a problem. Indeed, and to the point, there is disagreement even among devout Muslims about what constitutes Sharia. Many Americans and Westerners equate Islamic law with a sanction for terrorism, cruel and unusual punishments for sex crimes, and misogyny. They do not want to see such principles take root in the U.S. legal system.
Sharia is an Arabic word that means a path to be followed. It is derived from the precepts of the Quran and Muhammad; interpretations of Sharia are called “fiqh,” or Islamic jurisprudence. Sharia regulates personal and collective actions. Some majority Muslim nations, particularly those in the Middle East, have adopted Sharia as the national judicial code. Other nations, generally those on the geographical fringes of Islam in Africa and Central Asia, have legal standards that are less stringent.
The rule of law and constitutionalism, however, are absent in the Arab world. Though the Islamic golden age left us important intellectual accomplishments by Averroes, Avicenna, and other original thinkers, much of Islam today rejects the Western notion of individuality and God-given rights as recognized by the Founders. In Islamic nations, the absolute sovereignty of Allah and the enforcement of an official, established religion by the state leave little space for the individual. Muhammad united church and state and created a political order based on Sharia, where political and social independence is subordinate to theological considerations and the notion of civil rights is alien. In this context, Sharia law may be seen as quite hostile to American jurisprudence, particularly when better understood by the general public.
Critics of Oklahoma-style crackdowns have raised the prospect of Americans losing basic rights if courts are banned from relying on international law. One writer with the ACLU recently raised the prospect of marriages and adoptions by Americans in foreign countries being disallowed and not recognized by U.S. courts should such reforms be adopted. Those opposed to reliance on international and Sharia law point out that their reforms do not create such extreme situations, and these examples are fear tactics of the left. Indeed, there are no examples of such bizarre outcomes in states that have barred judicial reliance on international law.
The legislation passed in states other than Oklahoma do not single out Sharia or other religious laws and are more likely to survive judicial scrutiny. Regardless, it is likely resistance to the growing invocation of international law by U.S. judges, and Sharia in particular, will continue to mount as Americans see their sovereignty under attack by judges looking beyond U.S. borders for legal guidance.
Andrew Thomas is a graduate of the University of Missouri and Harvard Law School. Twice elected as Maricopa County Attorney, the district attorney for greater Phoenix, Arizona, Thomas served a county of four million residents and ran one of the largest prosecutor’s offices in the nation. He established a national reputation for fighting violent crime, identity theft, drug abuse and illegal immigration. He is the author of four books, including Clarence Thomas: A Biography and The People v. Harvard Law: How America’s Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech. Mr. Thomas is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis.
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Kenny lattimore make it last forever
View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the Vinyl release of Loveable (From Your Head To Your Toes)/ Make It Last Forever on Discogs. Label: Arista - • Format: Vinyl 7 Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore - Loveable (From Your Head To Your Toes)/ Make It Last Forever (Vinyl, 7", Single) | Discogs. Lyrics to 'Make It Last Forever' by Chante Moore & Kenny Lattimore. Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end / Let's make it last, let's make it last forever and ever / Don't our let our love end / Discovered times using Shazam, the music discovery app. Kenny Lattimore - Forever HQ. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download. All Tracks - Kenny Lattimore. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download. Kenny Lattimore - Always Remember Play Stop Download. Kenny Lattimore & Chante Moore Make it last forever. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download "For you I will" by Kenny Latimore. Source: youtube. Play Stop.
If you are looking kenny lattimore make it last forever
Kenny Lattimore & Chante Moore( Make It Last Forever ) 2003, time: 4:39
Make It Last Forever Lyrics. Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end. Let's make it last, let's make it last forever and ever. Don't our let our love end. Let me hear you tell me you love me. Let me hear you say you'll never leave me. Oh, girl, that would make me feel so right. Let me hear you tell me you want me. Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore - Make It Last Forever Lyrics. Artist: Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore. Album: Things That Lovers Do. Heyo! SONGLYRICS just got . Aug 29, · Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore - Make It Last Forever Kenny Lattimore & Chante Moore - You're All I Need To Get By (by request) - Duration: treborps 64, views. Lyrics to "Make It Last Forever" song by Kenny Lattimore: Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end Let's make it last, let's make it las Kenny Lattimore - Make It Last Forever Lyrics | realhealththing.xyz Check out Make It Last Forever by Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore on Amazon Music. Stream ad-free or purchase CD's and MP3s now on realhealththing.xyz5/5(1). Lyrics to 'Make It Last Forever' by Chante Moore & Kenny Lattimore. Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end / Let's make it last, let's make it last forever and ever / Don't our let our love end / Discovered times using Shazam, the music discovery app. Kenny Lattimore - Forever HQ. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download. All Tracks - Kenny Lattimore. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download. Kenny Lattimore - Always Remember Play Stop Download. Kenny Lattimore & Chante Moore Make it last forever. Source: youtube. Play Stop Download "For you I will" by Kenny Latimore. Source: youtube. Play Stop. Lyrics to "Make It Last Forever" song by KENNY LATTIMORE & CHANTE MOORE: Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end Let's make it last, let's make it la. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the Vinyl release of Loveable (From Your Head To Your Toes)/ Make It Last Forever on Discogs. Label: Arista - • Format: Vinyl 7 Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore - Loveable (From Your Head To Your Toes)/ Make It Last Forever (Vinyl, 7", Single) | Discogs.Lyrics to "Make It Last Forever" song by Kenny Lattimore: Make it last, make it last forever, don't let end our love end Let's make it last, let's make it las. Artists Kenny Lattimore, Chanté Moore. Release. $ Length ; Released ; BPM 84; Key E min; Genre Funk / Soul / Disco; Label Arista. Lyrics for Make It Last Forever by Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore. Oh, ooh Yeah, yeah I would never let you go Ooh This time it's forever. Make It Last Forever by Kenny Lattimore & Chanté Moore was written by Teddy Riley and Keith Sweat and was first released by Keith Sweat with Jacci McGhee. Make It Last Forever by Kenny Lattimore and Chanté Moore - discover this song's samples, covers and remixes on WhoSampled. -
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Kamil Tchalaev
K. Tchalaev
Kamil Tchalaev (31/05/1962), a Russian composer and singer. He was born in Moscow, Tchalaev pursued a classical musical formation notably in violin and bass studies at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory College of Moscow before becoming a bass singer and instrumentalist at the Lenkom Theater. Already at 20 he began practicing sacred singing followed by choral directing which led to his first "independent recordings" in Moscow both as a singer and composer. He made his debut at the Anatoly Vassiliev Academy of Drama in 1985 and gave the premiere of his Symphony No.1. He also participated in the production of The possessed by Dostoyevski. In 1989, he left Moscow, lived briefly in Finland and finally settled down in Paris where he currently resides.
He was seen in 1992 at La Comedie Francaise in The masked bal of Lermontov and in Moliere's Amphitryon. During this period, he also pursued studies of electronic music at the prestigious IRCAM under Pierre Boulez and composed his second String quartet, a series of Convertible Musics and specialized as a Bass Singer in the lyrical vocal repertoire as well as the contemporary - Berio, Wenjing, Messiaen, Xenakis, Saariaho, Cage, under the direction of Eric Ericson, Laurence Equilbey, Laurent Heyrabedian, Kent Nagano, Jonattan Nott, David Robertson, Peter Sellars... His discography includes more than 20 recordings on various labels.
Correspondingly, Tchalaev studied ethnographic film at L'Ecole of Superior Studies in Paris (Religious Sciences) and also pursued ethnomusicological studies as well. He possesses a 5-octave range and practices vocal techniques from Eastern Europe, has perfect pitch, and also owns a rare collection of musical instruments all of which he plays. Tchalaev is often considered one of the most original and unclassifiable musicians of his generation.
Source: http://www.tchalaev.net/kamil
Text/libretto: Latin
Duration: 37'52
In memory of: Igor Vernik
Label(s): Tangram 852 034
A requiem dedicated to Igor Vernik (1911-1994).
Contributor: Herman Ram
Requiem aeternam contains:
- Kyrie (2'38)
- Invitatoire (3'32)
- Nocturne (1'55)
- Lectio (6'12)
- Requiem (3'10)
- Dies irae (3'27)
- Lacrimosa (3'11)
- Domine (3'00)
- Sanctus (2'38)
- Agnus Dei (4'56)
- Lux aeterna (2'03)
- Epilogus (1'04)
Source: booklet of cd Tangram 852 034
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RON 'BUMBLEFOOT' THAL Doesn't Regret His Time With GUNS N' ROSES
Former GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal says that he doesn't regret his time with the band despite the fact that he didn't get to write any new music with the Axl Rose-fronted outfit.
Thal never officially announced his departure from the GN'R, but a source confirmed to Detroit music writer Gary Graff back in 2015 that the guitarist had been out since the end of the band's second Las Vegas residency in 2014.
Thal later revealed that he was focusing on his solo career after spending eight years playing in GUNS.
During an appearance earlier this week on "Trunk Nation", Eddie Trunk's show on SiriusXM channel Volume (106), Thal was asked if he had any regret about his nearly decade-long stint with GUNS. He responded: "You could look at anything and say, 'What if I took a different path?' 'What if I did different things?' 'What if I said no and did this instead?' 'What if I just focused on my solo stuff or producing or whatever else or film and TV music?' Ugh… nah. Your life is your life, and whatever decisions you made, they were based on who you were, who you are and what was supposed to happen and what's meant to be and who you are today and what you learned from it and all of that mumbo-jumbo crap. So, yeah. Do I regret it? No. Absolutely not. If you'd asked me three years ago, I would have [given a] different [answer]. But, no. Absolutely not. I got to be part of making millions of people cheer and enjoy themselves. It's wonderful."
Asked what his personal highlight was from his time with GUNS N' ROSES, Thal said: "The first thing that always comes to mind is playing the Bridge School Benefit [organized by musicians Neil Young and Pegi Young], when we got to play a show… It was a benefit for [the Bridge School, which assists children with severe physical impairments and complex communication needs]… And having the kids and their families right on stage with us on this big platform behind us. I remember just almost ignoring the audience in front of us and just going back to them and just taking a kid's hand and helping him strum the guitar. Things like that. That's always the first thing that comes to mind."
Thal joined GUNS N' ROSES in 2006 and played on 2008's "Chinese Democracy", an album which contained music that had been written before he came into the group. He has also released a number of solo CDs.
Thal is currently involved with ART OF ANARCHY alongside CREED singer Scott Stapp and DISTURBED bassist John Moyer.
Thal didn't publicly address his exit until last year when he told Loudwire: "All I could say is you reach a time when you just know it's time to move on and you just know that what you've seen for your life, what you see the future of your life and what that is, it's not what you pictured for yourself."
He continued: "When I started playing music, I was six years old, and when I thought about what I wanted and what my goals were, and what makes me alive inside making music, and I just… I was looking at what I was doing, and it didn't match up. And I just needed to… I needed to go."
Tags: guns n' roses
Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist GILBY CLARKE Clarifies His Non-Involvement In 'Not In This Lifetime' Tour
Watch Ex-METALLICA Bassist JASON NEWSTED Perform Cover Of 'I've Been Everywhere'
SAMMY HAGAR & THE CIRCLE Release Official Music Video For Cover Of DAVID BOWIE's 'Heroes'
GLENN HUGHES Doesn't Rule Out Another Collaboration With TONY IOMMI
MICHAEL ANTHONY: EDDIE VAN HALEN 'Never Let The Fame Or Stardom Or All The Accolades Go To His Head'
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Federal Bailiff Service
Russian prosecutors found negligence in Federal Bailiffs Service’s bodies
15:30 25/05/2018 The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has revealed negligence in actions of the Federal Bailiffs Service’s regional departments related to the execution of court rulings in favor of businesses.
Russian bailiffs recover $2.1 million in favor of Tsapok gang’s victims
15:10 01/02/2018 The court bailiffs of Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region have recovered 119 million rubles (about $2.1 million) in moral damages in favor of the victims of the infamous Tsapok gang.
Russian businessman sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for murdering lawyer
15:58 06/02/2017 Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court has sentenced entrepreneur Rashid Boziyev to ten years and six months in high security penal colony after he was found guilty of killing a lawyer during property register.
Russia’s Justice Ministry, Bailiff Service to control debt collection agencies
17:58 15/12/2016 Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree authorizing Justice Ministry and the Federal Bailiff Service to take control over activities of debt collection agencies.
Russian bailiffs seize €10,000 granted to Khodorkovsky by ECHR
13:41 07/06/2016 Compensation for moral damages granted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to Mikhail Khodorkovsky from Russian budget has been seized by Russian bailiffs and used for repayment of his debt to the budget.
Malicious debtors to be restricted from driving in Russia
12:26 15/01/2016 Russian bailiffs will begin from Friday to limit driving privileges of citizens who have accumulated debts exceeding 10,000 rubles ($131).
Administrative case opened by Russian bailiffs against Navalny
12:13 15/10/2015 The Federal Bailiff Service Directorate of Moscow has opened an administrative case against Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny for failure to comply with the bailiffs’ legal requirements.
Russia's bailiffs seize about $12 million allegedly linked to Kolomoisky’s bank
17:05 26/12/2014 Russia's Federal Bailiff Service announced on Friday that 191 million Ukrainian hryvnia (about $12 million) linked to Privatbank of Ukraine's billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky have been seized.
Maybach confiscated from unemployed Siberian debtor
13:00 16/10/2014 Court bailiffs confiscated a Maybach 62 from an unemployed resident of a suburban development in the Novosibirsk Region. The premium class German car was pledged by the bank, the regional branch of the Federal Court Bailiff Service reports on Thursday.
Moscow bailiffs seize Bashneft stock
16:09 30/09/2014 Moscow bailiffs are proceeding with the enforcement of the court order to seize the Sistema-held stock of midsized oil producer Bashneft, Interfax reports on Tuesday, citing the Federal Bailiff Service.
Russian bailiffs go after lawmaker Ponomaryov’s assets over Skolkovo debt
15:38 05/09/2014 The Federal Bailiff Service is going to seize assets belonging to State Duma lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who was ordered to pay over $74,000 to the Skolkovo Foundation, Russia’s high-tech development center.
Lawmaker’s property to be seized to repay debt to Skolkovo Foundation
16:28 23/04/2014 Bailiffs are trying to locate the property of State Duma lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who has refused to pay 2.728 million rubles (up to $83,000) to the Skolkovo Foundation, Russia’s high-tech development center.
Authorities evaluate footballer Arshavin’s income for alimony payments
15:43 14/04/2014 Russia’s Federal Bailiff Service is in the process of examining the income earned by former Arsenal football player Andrey Arshavin in order to extract alimony payments for his ex-wife Yulia Baranovskaya, her attorney Natalia Aksenyova told RIA Novosti on Monday.
Khodorkovsy’s business partner barred from leaving the country
11:03 14/04/2014 Russian Federal Migration Service has officially notified Platon Lebedev, former business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that he is temporarily prohibited from leaving Russia.
Bailiff service on the fence about Khodorkovsky case damages
14:22 30/01/2014 Head of the Russian Federal Bailiff Service Artur Parfyonchikov allows the possibility of both ceasing the proceedings in extraction of 17 billion rubles from recently pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and seeking harsher liability if the compensation will not be payed.
Russian debtor undergoes sexual reassignment surgery to evade bailiffs
13:58 27/01/2014 A female resident of Astrakhan, a city in southern Russia, who owed a total of 130,000 rubles ($3,795) under seven claims, underwent a sexual reassignment surgery, reported the press service of the local bailiff service’s department.
Russian bailiffs collect 155 mln rubles in fines for corruption in 2012
14:35 03/12/2013 Russian bailiffs have collected only 155 million rubles ($4.7 million) in fines for corruption related offenses out of the two billion rubles ($60.3 million) ordered by the courts in 2012.
Russian Bailiffs officially informed of Berezovsky’s death
14:13 14/11/2013 Russian Federal Bailiff Service received the official notification of late oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s death and requested the notary chamber to start the inheritance proceedings.
Disgruntled convict detonates hand grenade in Russian court
14:50 01/11/2013 On Friday, a man unhappy with a court’s decision against him, detonated a hand grenade in a court in the Russian town of Kurgan, a police source told RIA Novosti.
Panamanian ship seized by Russian authorities for poaching
10:51 24/10/2013 Bailiffs have turned a Panamanian ship called Rain, which was detained for poaching, over to Russian authorities, the Federal Bailiff Service reports on Thursday.
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The Subject Is CHARACTER
WSJ's Peggy Noonan Drills Down To The Truth
This week we discover Secret Service agents steping over the line of honor and integrity…while on assignment! In our own GOP primaries, voters find themselves having to decide between great men with great speaking ability, who try to deflect attention away from absence of character in their personal lives. Peggy Noonan writes today that we are in a new time, when character is secondary to self-interest.
What women are looking for in 2012, are leaders with character AND skills.
Why? Because as we look at the day-to-day decision-making in The White House, more and more Americans have a sense that the direction of the country is determined by opportunism, paybacks, and to preserve POWER.
Read a bit today about how Peggy Noonan frames the problem:
“Now I’d go a step beyond that. I think more and more people are worried about the American character—who we are and what kind of adults we are raising.
Every story that has broken through the past few weeks has been about who we are as a people. And they are all disturbing.
A tourist is beaten in Baltimore. Young people surround him and laugh. He’s pummeled, stripped and robbed. No one helps. They’re too busy taping it on their smartphones. That’s how we heard their laughter. The video is on YouTube along with the latest McDonalds beat-down and the latest store surveillance tapes of flash mobs. Groups of teenagers swarm into stores, rob everything they can, and run out. The phenomenon is on the rise across the country. Police now have a nickname for it: “flash robs.”
Flash Mobs Are Trendy...But Sometimes Publicly Destructive
That’s just the young, you say. Juvenile delinquency is as old as history.
Also starring on YouTube this week was the sobbing woman. She’s the poor traveler who began to cry great heaving sobs when a Transportation Security Administration agent at the Madison, Wis., airport either patted her down or felt her up, depending on your viewpoint and experience. Jim Hoft of TheGatewayPundit.com recorded it, and like all the rest of the videos it hurts to watch. When the TSA agent—an adult, a middle aged woman—was done, she just walked away, leaving the passenger alone and uncomforted, like a tourist in Baltimore.
GSA Official Before Congress This Week...And Also...Bathing On The Taxpayer.
There is the General Services Administration scandal. An agency devoted to efficiency is outed as an agency of mindless bread-and-circuses indulgence. They had a four-day regional conference in Las Vegas, with clowns and mind readers.
The reason the story is news, and actually upsetting, is not that a government agency wasted money. That is not news. The reason it’s news is that the people involved thought what they were doing was funny, and appropriate. In the past, bureaucratic misuse of taxpayer money was quiet. You needed investigators to find it, trace it, expose it. Now it’s a big public joke. They held an awards show. They sang songs about the perks of a government job: “Brand new computer and underground parking and a corner office. . . . Love to the taxpayer. . . . I’ll never be under OIG investigation.” At the show, the singer was made Commissioner for a Day. “The hotel would like to talk to you about paying for the party that was held in the commissioner’s suite last night” the emcee said. It got a big laugh.
GSA's Jeff Neely Under Fire For Treating Taxpayer Money Like....His PLAY Money.
On the “red carpet” leading into the event, GSA chief Jeffrey Neely said: “I am wearing an Armani.” One worker said, “I have a talent for drinking Margarita. . . . It all began with the introduction of performance measures.” That got a big laugh too.
Their leaders didn’t even pretend to have a sense of mission and responsibility. They reminded me of the story a year ago of the dizzy captain of a U.S. Navy ship who made off-color videos and played them for his crew. He wasn’t interested in the burdens of leadership—the need to be the adult, the uncool one, the one who maintains standards. No one at GSA seemed interested in playing the part of the grown-up, either.
Why? Why did they think this is OK? They seemed mildly decadent. Or proudly decadent. In contrast to you, low, toiling taxpayer that you are, poor drudges and drones.”
Noonan has THAT right. The taxpayer is viewed today as the “drones.” We are the last priority, and the first to be robbed of what little we have.
Time for women in the country to demand higher ethics in public office?
THAT’s why The Kitchen Cabinet has established that very principle as one of our missions. If the nation’s leaders are not exemplifying integrity as they do the People’s business, permission seems given for an absence of integrity…everywhere.
Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics, Uncategorized by Sonja Eddings Brown, Apr 20, 2012
« Enlightened Women Are EVERYWHERE…But Especially In Northern California! CONTRACEPTION & POLITICS: TKC Talking Points For Women »
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e3 PARTNERS > India > Understanding One of the World’s Least Reached Countries
Understanding One of the World’s Least Reached Countries
It’s the seventh largest country by area and the second most populous. It’s home to over 53 cities with over one million residents and boasts a population of over 1.2 billion people. India is one of the world largest political and economic forces, valued at over $2.183 trillion.
But despite its size and global importance, it’s also one of the least reached countries in the world. Since its ancient days, India has been home to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. But in the first thousand years since Jesus’ birth, western religions have also moved in – namely Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Yet after centuries of expansion, the Gospel is still scarce in Indian culture.
Today, 2,233 distinct people groups call India home. Of those, 2,013 are considered unreached. This means that over 90% of the groups, making up over 94% of the total population, have few, if any believers in their communities.
For centuries, Christians have tried to reach India with Gospel. It was even the starting point for the modern missions movement. So how can such an important country remain dark to the story and message of Jesus?
Persecution against Christians.
In recent years, Hinduism has gained influence among government officials. And while expression of religion is technically protected, many public figures have now called for an eradication of Christianity from the country. One leader even put a 2021 deadline on the initiative. There is also a call to ban Christians from the Himalayan regions sacred to Hindus. This makes foreign mission work more difficult and even suppressing home-grown initiatives.
Spiritual warfare.
While we are often less accustomed to spiritual warfare here in the United States, spiritual awareness is baked into the fabric of Indian culture. Many believers report oppressive, even violent, experiences with dark spiritual forces. This greatly impacts the way mission work is accomplished and hinders the efforts in very practical and basic ways.
Strong social hierarchy.
The caste system and the social hierarchy it produces remains strong in Indian culture today. In the past, violence has even broken out between castes. The Dalits, once known as “untouchables,” are still relegated to the margins of society. New Christians must deal with the social ramifications of following Jesus after a lifetime of cultural separation. This can hinder the developments of new churches that take the Gospel deeper into Indian culture.
Despite these and other hindrances, God is still moving. e3 Partners alone has launched thousands of new churches that are transforming their communities and multiplying into new towns and villages. While many obstacles stand in the way, India is an exciting frontier for global missions and you can be a part of it. We are launching expeditions into the region all year long. You can find a trip and be part of church planting, community transformation, and medical work all over the country! Visit www.e3partners.org/india to learn more.
Categories: India The Unreached
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Market Watch: Liqueur Mixology Is A Balancing Act
READ FULL ARTICLE @ marketwatchmag.com
As today’s drinker is increasingly exposed to historic cocktail recipes, an appreciation of storied and artisanal liqueurs is a natural progression. Indeed, most traditional tipples call for at least one liqueur, and sometimes a liqueur can even fill the role of the base spirit in a mixed drink.
“Liqueurs have served as invaluable mixing ingredients since the dawn of the modern cocktail age in the mid-19th century,” says Gregory Buttera, Chicago-based bartender and Italian portfolio specialist at Campari America. “Liqueurs go in and out of fashion decade to decade, but they always feature prominently in the world of mixology.” Campari America’s stable of liqueurs includes Campari aperitif, Aperol aperitif, Averna amaro and Cynar amaro. Buttera adds that many once-forgotten brands are experiencing a renaissance of sorts, thanks to the resurgence of classic cocktail culture. “Some liqueurs had fallen almost completely out of use by the early 21st century, but they’ve now returned to prominence as mixologists embrace historic recipes,” he says.
Camille Vidal, global brand ambassador for St-Germain elderflower liqueur, also notes a recent shift in the category’s popularity. “At one time, a Margarita would have been made with sour mix, but these days, cocktail bars are much more likely to adhere to the traditional recipe and include an orange liqueur, such as Cointreau,” she says. “We’ve also seen the re-emergence of classic drinks like The Last Word with Green Chartreuse liqueur and the Bobby Burns with Bénédictine liqueur. This trend has been amazing for these older premium liqueurs.”
Furthermore, the rise in popularity of such storied brands with origins dating back hundreds of years has paved the way for modern liqueurs to enter the market. Newer names like St-Germain, Barrow’s Intense ginger liqueur and RumChata cream liqueur have helped expand the mixologist’s cocktail toolbox and open up a world of new drinks options with a nod to the classics.
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Welcome to TOBIAS MENZIES ONLINE @ tobiasmenzies.org a website dedicated to the talented British actor Tobias Menzies. Perhaps best known for his roles as Edmure Tully in GAME OF THRONES and as Marcus Junius Brutus in HBO's ROME, Tobias came to the fore in a very notable way with his stunning portrayal of the dual characters of Frank Randall and his forefather the notorious Captain Jonathan Wolverton "Black Jack" Randall in the STARZ series OUTLANDER. Currently being seen as Prince Philip in THE CROWN, Tobias is making his mark on the world. Tobias' films include UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS, CASINO ROYALE, UNA, FORGET ME NOT, ATONEMENT, and FINDING NEVERLAND. Feel free to browse the site and to make this your premiere source for news on Tobias' career. This site as a strict NO CANDIDS policy. Some albums contain adult content. If you do not wish to view such content, please leave now.
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Tag Archives: st. john’s
Canada, Newfoundland
Liberals sweep Newfoundland and Labrador
December 2, 2015 Kevin Lees Leave a comment
Liberal leader Dwight Ball will become the 13th premier of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The headline across Newfoundland and Labrador is that it will, once again, have a center-left government after a widely anticipated Liberal rout led by the incoming premier Dwight Ball.
The headline across Canada, however, is that the Liberal Party (or provincial-level Liberal parties, some of which have greater or lesser affiliation with the national party) now controls every provincial government in Canada with two exceptions — Saskatchewan, where premier Brad Wall’s center-right Saskatchewan Party dominates politics and will likely return to a full third term after provincial elections in April; and Alberta, where premier Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party ousted a 44-year Progressive Conservative Party in May.
The November 30 provincial election leaves no Conservative or Progressive Conservative government in any of Canada’s provinces.
Ball’s Liberals won 57.2% of the vote to just 30.1% for the Progressive Conservatives, who even narrowly lost in the provincial capital of St. John’s, the Tory stronghold. It was the strongest Liberal victory in the province in 49 years (though not as strong as former premier Danny Williams’s Progressive Conservative rout in 2003), and it marked the most dramatic swing in the province’s electoral history.
In any event, though Newfoundlanders have been expecting a return to Liberal government for a while, it marks something of an apogee for the Canadian left just over a month since the country elected prime minister Justin Trudeau and a majority Liberal government. The most immediate post-election Forum poll from mid-November gave the Liberals a whopping 30-point lead — 55% of voters support Trudeau’s Liberals to just 25% for the Conservative Party and a staggering 12% for Thomas Mulcair’s New Democratic Party.
So the Trudeau honeymoon period is well underway, as he grapples with climate change in Paris with other world leaders and begins to implement a new policy direction for Canada.
RELATED: The lessons of Newfoundland’s 1948 referendum
Ball, a former pharmacist who lost his first attempt to win a seat in the General Assembly in 2003, subsequently won a by-election contest in 2007 by a margin of just 18 votes in the northern electoral district of Humber Valley. After the Liberals failed to win the 2011 provincial election, Ball was appointed as interim leader, and he won the permanent leadership in the December 2013 leadership race. Ball’s platform included a promise to end Davis’s plan to raise the provincial sales tax from 13% to 15%, even though revenues are set to decline with global oil prices and, accordingly, the province’s newly found oil wealth. Continue reading Liberals sweep Newfoundland and Labrador →
brad wallcanadaconservativedanny williamsdunderdaledwight balljustin trudeauliberalnew democratic partynewfoundlandnewfoundland and labradornotleypaul davisprogressive conservativest. john's
The lessons of Newfoundland’s 1948 referendum
July 22, 2015 Kevin Lees 1 Comment
Imagine a North America with three, not two, countries north of the Rio Grande — the United States, Canada and… Newfoundland.
Newfoundland!? That’s right. The Canadian outpost in the north Atlantic. Imagine today a proud population of nearly 530,000, now basking in the proceeds of a thriving offshore oil market, growing interest in summer tourism and a historical reliance on fisheries.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds — and if not for the votes of 7,000 Newfoundlanders on this day in 1948, the proudly sovereign country of Newfoundland and Labrador might exist today as a strategic Atlantic hub.
With an area slightly larger than Bangladesh or Greece, and with a population similar to that of Luxembourg and larger than the populations of Iceland, Belize, Brunei or Malta, the Canadian province today has a GDP per capita of nearly $68,000, in Canadian dollars (as of 2013) — much higher than the Canadian average of nearly $54,000.
On July 22, 1948, nearly 150,000 Newfoundlanders voted in the second of two fiercely contested referenda. They decided, however narrowly, in favor of confederation with Canada. On April 1 of the following year, Newfoundland and Labrador became the 10th Canadian province. The referendum brought to an end 15 years of uncertain status — that’s because in 1934, the essentially independent ‘Dominion of Newfoundland’ reverted back to colonial status after a financial crisis left the country unable to service its debt.
Sound familiar? Relations today between Greece and the rest of the eurozone (most especially Germany) are as strained as ever. With a third bailout effectively ceding control of Greek fiscal policy from prime minister Alexis Tsipras to European authorities, Newfoundland’s example holds instructive lessons on sovereignty and debt. The referendum — and the failure of the pro-independence campaign — also provides a data point for aspiring nations like Scotland and Catalunya.
Nearly 80 years of sovereignty
Newfoundland first won self-rule in 1854, with the introduction of ‘responsible government,’ and it acquired more formal dominion status (equivalent to the dominion status Canada held) in 1907. Continue reading The lessons of Newfoundland’s 1948 referendum →
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Author Archives: farideldaoushy
COVID-19 Vaccins are here – Success Story to Defeat Our Common Enemy ‘COVID-19’
The worldwide endeavours and efforts to create safe, effective, accessible and affordable COVID-19 vaccines are beginning to bear fruits and to demonstrate the very beginning of the end to defeat COVID-19 and save the life of humans on Earth. 2020 is now ending by a remarkable achievement and success as 2020 will be remembered as one of worst years in human history for the past centuries, if not more. A handful of vaccines have been authorized around the globe; many more remain in development. Here you can follow the advances in the global landscape of vaccines (https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker). Other detailed information on development of COVID-19 candidate landscape are also complied in the WHO database (https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines).
The biggest vaccination campaign in modern history has begun. This is a remarkable event and a major milestone in modern history that brings happiness and relief for the global citizens as more than 4.2 million doses in seven countries have been administered, according to data collected by Bloomberg. Delivering billions more will be one of the greatest logistical challenges ever undertaken in human history (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/).
Advances in science and technology have always demonstrated enormous capabilities to save humans from common threats as in many other cases in human history. The boundaries between science fiction and technological realities are now vanishing very very fast and the 21st century can be a turning point for more and more common solutions to bring resilience and prosperity as long as politics (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) and political well act hand in hand with science and technology. ICT and IOT can bring together the global efforts and endeavours in sustainable tracks of success by decreasing ‘top-bottom and bottom-top’ communication gaps. COVID-19 has indeed showed how humanity can join together and unify to defeat common threats.
By the end of 2020, sustain-earth.com wishes all of us a Happy soon coming 2021.
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Part II of the ‘Sustainability in Science and Technology’ – The Human Performance.
The performance of humans is driven by diverse needs for food and security to overcome the challenges for decent live on Earth.
This is an introduction to Part Two of the WEBINARS on “Sustainability in Science and Technology” – The Performance of humans’, hosted by sustain-earth.com.
Africa is the origin of homo sapiens and the renewables helped their evolution during millions of years and their migration out of Africa 70 000 years ago.
During the hunting gatherer era humans started to master artefacts and simple tools, also to build small communities and settlements. They domesticated animals, plants and learned to cultivate land and build shelters for their living.
The agricultural era that started 10 000 years ago culminated in an outstanding ancient Egyptian civilisation that lasted 3000 years. During this era people used water to promote agriculture, farming and to produce food. These achievements were made possible by taking advantages of renewable resources only, the sun (heat and light), water from the Nile and limited use of natural resources.
The mechanisation of agriculture in the 18th century during the first industrial revolution triggered increasing use of artificial pesticides and fertilisers. However, the limited water resources on Earth caused new needs for diversification of water production and management in order to have clean, affordable and accessible water for the growing population and the increasing urbanisation. The first industrial revolution involved various manufacturing processes supported by water and steam power.
The second industrial revolution in Britain was based on increasing electrification and use of combustion engines, rapid standardisation and industrialisation of many sectors in the 19th and 20th centuries. The widespread developments of the first and second industrial revolutions created huge pollution and waste in the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere that continued and continued until now. New but limited renewable technologies, however, with zero net emission of green house gases started to appear by the end of the 20th century. This was due to the fear that fossil fuels are limited and have negative impacts on life. These developments were possible by more affordable access to renewable energies and the expanding use of alternating and direct current motors. Indeed, there are still several environmental challenges for scaling-up and scaling-out the renewables. Among these are the storage of renewables and integrating them in well-established grids. However, renewables and batteries require needs for new materials and further expansion of mining and processing that are dependent on heavy consumption of water and energy.
The third industrial revolution of digitalisation started by the end of the 20th century and opened new possibilities for increasing efficiencies and volumes of communication not only between humans but also between humans and machines, and between machines and machines as well.
The Information-Communication-Technologies and the Internet of Things will allow extensive and intensive expansion of Science and Technology with new gates for innovation worldwide on all levels and in many sectors. We have now many examples around the world which demonstrate that the boundaries between science fiction and technological realities are vanishing very very fast. We are, now, in urgent needs to proceed with the 4th industrial revolution and to continue with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning but with careful attention to the demands of renewables, preservation and protection of life.
Pre-announcement for Forthcoming WEBINARS 2021: Sustainability in Science and Technology.
The WEBINARS on Sustainability in Science and Technology will be hosted by sustain-earth.com. and will appear in 2021. They are coordinated by Professor em Farid El-Daoushy (Uppsala University, Sweden) and will be given by many professionals and professors from around the world. It is based on trans-disciplinary and trans-sectoral approaches to explain and detail several patio-temporal yet complex, wicked and interactive problems that piled-up over very long periods of time and caused the evolution of a new geologic era, i.e. the so-called anthropocene.
In part one, the natural drivers of life on planet earth, in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere, will be explained to give the necessary bases for understanding the boundary conditions of the natural climate and environment systems of the Earth. In part two the life-styles of humans ‘homo sapiens’ on planet since their evolution on Earth, and migration out of Africa 70 000 years ago, i.e. during different transitions and changes from the hanter gatherer era until now will be followed. Part three will give the impacts of the combined spatio-temporal interactions between human life and the planets’ own drivers on the global economic systems. Further part three will involve issues related to growth economy versus circular economy. In part four analysis of the performance of sustainability with reference to the first three parts will be done. In this context, resilience in human knowledge versus science, technology and innovation will be examined. These four parts together will give background information on ‘what, why and how’ what regards sustainability can be put together in a resilient framework to scale-up and scale-out science, technology and innovation to meet the UN-SDGs in order to achieve prosperity on planet Earth.
In summary the forthcoming WEBINARS can be described as follows:
Part One: The performance of planet Earth.
Part Two: The performance of humans ‘Homo Sapiens’.
Part Three: The performance of world economic systems with consideration to growth economy versus circular economy.
Part Four: The performance of sustainability. Resilience in knowledge versus science and technology.
Highly Recommended – All Our Food Is Nature Made. However ‘AI’ and ‘ML’ can Improve Food Industries.
Photosynthesis is the main reaction behind all life forms on planet Earth, it triggers life processes in global eco-systems on land and in aquatic systems (ocean, lakes and rivers). For photosynthesis to do its job and produce all forms of healthy and nutritious food that makes up global biodiversity, including us humans the ‘Homo Sapiens’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human) water is needed. Indeed, even if we say water is the origin of life, it isn’t totally 💯 correct as we still need carbon dioxide in trace amounts. An important question is high trace is trace? Even though we have water and carbon dioxide at the right concentration, we aren’t done yet, as we also need solar energy ‘light photons’ to initiate this magic reaction and the very secret of nature that evolved four billions of years ago, the ‘photosynthesis’.
There are many other imperatives that are needed for the natural photosynthesis to do its job properly and to keep it in tact with all the functioning and metabolism processes of life forms on earth apart from the reactants, i.e. water, carbon dioxide and the photon from the sun. We need healthy atmosphere and healthy hydrosphere, these underlying spheres of life are currently undergoing continuous degradation by us humans. This indeed imposes great threat for the proper functioning and metabolism of the very basic mechanism that fuels the life on Earth, i.e. the photosynthesis.
The atmosphere is important for agricultural sectors and farming, apart from supporting the forest eco-systems. Naturally healthy and fertile soils, are also needed, that have the right mixture of nutrients and free from toxic chemical remains and heavy metals. Also, soils need to have good water holding capacity which is regulated by the organic content. For the atmosphere to be healthy environment for the photosynthesis to take place on land, we must have suitable atmospheric composition, e.g. carbon dioxide concentration that allows having appropriate temperature, in addition to being a necessary component for photosynthesis. Also, not to have toxic compounds in the atmosphere such as nitrogen oxides that through photo-reactions can produce boundary-layer ozone that has negative impacts on growth of vegetation, in particular forests.
What regards aquatic systems we still need suitable temperature (which is dependent also on the heat-balance in the atmosphere) in water bodies, suitable pH as acidification from acidic nitrogen- and sulphur-oxides destroys the living-habitats of fish such the corals in the ocean, also it destroys the food-web and kills fish as in fresh-water lakes and rivers; suitable amount and levels of oxygen for breathing is also imperative in aquatic systems. Naturally, we need also other trace nutrients in particular phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium (applies also for healthy vegetation on land and agricultural production). However, excess amount of nutrients cause eutrophication as the water bodies become overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which induce excessive growth of algae. This results in oxygen depletion in the water body after the bacterial degradation of the algae. As an example is the so-called ‘algal bloom’ or great increase of phytoplankton levels. Eutrophication is often induced by the discharge of nitrate or phosphate-compounds, fertilisers or sewage into aquatic systems.
We humans so far failed to imitate nature, i.e. to do what is known as ‘Artificial photosynthesis’ which still science fiction. Would we ever have Artificial Intelligence ‘AI’ to cultivate our earth, produce our food and create an Artificial Biodiversity? ‘AI’ can create robots and machines that imitate us humans in many ways through collecting the patterns of our behaviour. Robots can’t run the life on our planet itself but they can be better version of humans through Machine Learning ‘ML’ and thereby replace humans to do many many jobs in food industries, and also many other industries.
The implementation of AI and ML in food manufacturing and restaurant businesses is already moving our industry to a new level of performance, enabling fewer human errors, less waste of abundant products, less infections. They also allow lowering costs for storage, delivery and transportation. They can create happier customers through timely and quicker service. Even they can allow voice searching, more personalised and effective orders. Robotics for big factories and restaurant businesses will occupy its niche very soon and will bringing more benefits in the long run. Both AI and ML benefit from the enormous flora of sensors, actuators in addition to digital coding and programming.
For more details on these issues see: https://www.google.se/amp/s/spd.group/machine-learning/machine-learning-and-ai-in-food-industry/amp/.
Being able to read all the article we invite you to follow us and subscribe to sustain-earth.com. Meanwhile enjoy these drinks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT53K9d0vUU
Introduction – Part One: The Three Main Drivers of Life on Planet Earth “Energy, Water and Natural Resources”.
Introduction to the forthcoming WEBINARS, hosted by sustain-earth.com, on “Sustainability in Science, Technology and Innovation ’SISTI’ of Water, Energy and Natural Resources”. Part One of the introduction – The three main drivers of life on Earth: “Energy, Water and Natural Resources WENR”. These drivers, by being dependent on the main underlying and interactive sphere of the Earth System (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere) are decisive for the performance and quality of both the life on planet Earth and the life of humans.
These three drivers ‘WENR’ have, so far, sustained all life forms on planet earth. Energy from the sun triggers photosynthesis where water in the HYDROSPHERE together with carbon dioxide in ATMOSPHERE have been the bases of all life in the BIOSPHERE both on land and in aquatic systems. Minor amounts of earth’s mineral resources in the upper LITHOSPHERE are also used as nutrients in the evolution of biodiversity and associated eco-services we benefit from as well as the production of our food. Homo Sapiens are not only part of the global biodiversity but they are becoming the main actor shaping it. Homo Sapiens extended the production. use and consumption of energy, water and the natural resources in the atmosphere (where oxygen is also crucial for life), hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere (including fossil minerals) for their living. The extensive and accelerating use of these drivers has surpassed the natural capacities and boundaries of planet earth to sustain all its life forms.
These drivers are imperative to achieve sustainable prosperity through integrated and resilient economic, environmental and social synergies. They involve trans-disciplinary and trans-sectorial (nexus) interactions in the socio-environment-economic fabrics that are shaping the future our planet including all societies around the world. Incorporating Environment-Social-Governace ‘ESG’ is fundamental for healthy and wealthy economies around the world.
To join, follow and get all the updates about our WEBINARS, directly to your e-mail, subscribe @sustain-earth.com. We have also created YouTube channel to support our activities, subscribe and join us.
Highly Recommended 💯 – Public Health Risks, The COVID-19 Can Spread by AC and Building Ventilation
Though the expectation of vaccine is around the corner, we still need to wait for at least few months. Meanwhile COVID-19 will not go away by itself and it will still be with us for sometime.
It is commonly known that COVID-19 can spread through aerosol droplets for quite some distant, get attached and accumulated on surfaces for time periods that allow them to circulation in buildings by ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Though there are risks and indications that AC and ventilation systems can cause spreading of COVID-19 there are still limited, systematic detailed and comprehensive studies on the exact effects of humidity, temperature and the technical specification of filters in large central ventilation and AC system. Through the so-called ‘Memory Effects’, e.g. in Offices, Towers, Restaurants, Hotels and similar Complex Buildings. In theory, it is enough that few infected persons can cause spreading of COVID-19 in the whole building if control, considerations and precautions are not well in place. Though out-door air can be used to some extent to mitigate this problem there are still several limitations. So, degraded indoors air-quality can in itself cause serious public health issues as we still don’t have enough knowledge. Even being tested negative isn’t enough to be safe in air-flights (https://www.google.se/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/14/travel-and-coronavirus-do-pre-flight-covid-19-tests-work.html).
We are facing the threats of a second wave that may very well be much aggressive and we need to be very careful about indoors air-quality. Air-quality is definitely a serious matter that requires good sanitation in air and also how to deal with it needs to call our attention.
Few observations, literature and research articles on this matters are given here.
https://www.google.se/amp/s/nationalpost.com/health/covid-19-likely-spread-by-building-ventilation-say-canadian-researchers-working-on-an-hvac-fix/wcm/fda18c51-8cce-4640-8855-52cec5b0410f/amp/
https://nationalpost.com/health/covid-19-likely-spread-by-building-ventilation-say-canadian-researchers-working-on-an-hvac-fix
https://www.urbaneer.com/blog/can_i_catch_covid_19_from_heating_ventilation_air_conditioning_systems
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/air-conditioning-coronavirus/
https://www.businessinsider.com/turning-off-ac-could-limit-chance-of-infection-experts-say-2020-4
Is Urbanization Done Right – COVID-19 and Greening of Cities
In the past decades we have observed an accelerating urbanization around the world where many old cities expanded enormously. Leaving little spaces for the citizens to move freely, to breath fresh-air, to exercise in natural environments and even be exposed to the sun. In many cities there are no affordable and easy access to parks, forests and green areas. Even more serious new cities in many parts of the world are built intentionally with increasing densification where living areas are designed to meet the needs of working adults, transport systems and cars as if recreation and children don’t exist.
All of us have definitely experienced the considerable degradation in the life-quality of our modern cities. They became parts of complex industrial production sites and we became part of complex machinery systems. Even with the invent and use of ICT we still over crowded in small areas, i.e. to be as productive as possible. In the early days of the ICT is was believed that people can be more flexible and resilient and not always forced to be in working places. However, business-as-usual became part of our life-style as if ICT doesn’t exist.
COVID-19 has drawn our attention to how urbanization and modern life-style brought with several negative impacts to life-quality. In many cities and urban areas around the world it is even hard to apply ‘physical distancing’ as there are no spaces to do so. Also, ‘stay at home’ isn’t a suitable practice as household may have many persons living in the same appartements and houses. Public transport systems, schools and public services can still be very crowded. Even the use of masks are not standard in many places or even not recommended or recognized as being a safe option. One can ask what options are left other than transmitting infections.
A city is more than its buildings and more than just housing. Modern densification is often about constructing as much housing as possible, as quickly as possible. Of course, considerations are great for housing but in the rush to build quickly it is important to slow down and ask ourselves: What kind of environments and life-style are we creating? Why and for whom are we building? How can we create cities and living environments that are sustainable, resilient and comfortable for everyone? Are our urban spaces contributing in a good built environment for pleasant life?
The Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning has produced a
document in response to public debate on the densification of cities and communities, and to provide inspiration and guidance regarding ways to supplement the existing environment. Densification is not only about housing, it is about good built environment and life-quality for the people who live, work and spend time in the city. This publication gives views and arguments concerning some of the challenges and opportunities of densification. It also has interviews conducted with a few people about how they approach the challenges that exist. For example: how people’s needs for sunlight and daylight can be satisfied, how disturbing sounds in a dense city can be handled, how vegetation can be used as a resource, how room for public services can be created, and how a densification strategy for the entire city might be developed. It highlights a number of examples of municipal densification projects, all of which have added value over and above new housing. Mirja Ranesköld, planning architect, was the project leader and Elin Normann Bjarsell, landscape architect, was a member of the project team. Other coworkers contributed with their views and suggestions during the course of the project. The interviews were conducted by Elisabeth Klingberg at PratMinus (https://www.boverket.se/globalassets/publikationer/dokument/2017/urban-density-done-right.pdf).
Here some example of successful planning in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, where I spent marvelous time in its ’Slottsskogens’ (https://www.goteborg.com/en/slottsskogen/) with an animal park, one of the oldest in Sweden. Just to demonstrate the old good times.
A post shared by Farid El-Daoushy (@sustain.earth)
2020 – 24 Hours of Daily Reality Taking Place on Earth and Countdown to Uncertain Future
Interesting and scary reading that describes the daily reality around the world as experienced during 2020. What is going on planet Earth and the impacts of our irresponsible use of the global natural resources, in particular energy resources (by industry, transport, building and others), is based on scientific data and statistics specially what regards the atmospheric pollution. Among such impacts is the accelerating increase in the earth’s surface temperature (1880-2019).
What is happening in the atmosphere is triggering a global ‘Domino Effect’ with severe impacts on all other key spheres on Planet Earth. In particular the hydrosphere, the biosphere and ecosphere with tectonic threats on our living landscape (both rural and urban) and on daily basis. Global warming is also a medical emergency in times where COVID-19 pandemic makes the life more severe for many of us. The can be. connections between global warming and the COVID-19 pandemic. What is more serious is the scientific and technological advances, for many reasons, would not protect us against the consequences of global warming and will not bring back the decline in natural resources including loss of biodiversity. What is done is done and can’t be redone. As an example the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissor is unlikely to solve diseases caused by air and water pollution, also the mitigate the loss in biodiversity and tackle degradation in life-quality of atmosphere, bio and eco-sphere.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gus8YH7ROjn-twSwt7K_Yxk6MuCNquII/view?usp=drivesdk
Sir David Attenborough and BBC for the Nobel Prize in Peace
The Nobel Prize for Peace (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-peace-prizes/) has been awarded 100 times to 134 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2019, 107 individuals and 27 organizations. Among the International organizaions: Red Cross that got the Prize three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees got it two times (in 1954 and 1981), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. (2007), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBatadei (2005). These are some examples, in the same manner, we can argue that BBC and Sir David Attenborough would also be excellent candidates that deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace.
The world was just waiting for this incredible event of Sir David Attenborough to join the Instagram. It is just to use Instagram as amplifier for lifting-up biodiversity as an important part of ‘Life on Our Planet’. In just few days his Intagram Account went viral (https://instagram.com/davidattenborough?igshid=11ay0osmkukkp) with millions of followers and more to come. It is as he has an important message to us. The power of social media can hardly be ignored anymore even by highly educated professionals and politicians. What is more important is the content of social media channels that keep improving as more and more are becoming dependent on them and critical voices continue to add new dimensions as ‘survival of the fit’ is becoming an evolution and the norm for progress on the Internet. With the rise of the Internet (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet) and the boom 🤯 of social media (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media) it is crucial to underline that quality of the content is being recognised more and more by the users. For a great portion of us, that can’t afford regular schooling and/or the expensive higher education, the social media channels are becoming an important source, if not the only source, of knowledge. Classical, conventional and international broadcasting channels (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_broadcasting) aren’t the only standard source of information and knowledge for many of us as they used to be. Though these trends, the global education systems, including higher education, are still closed systems as they don’t necessarily serve, i.e. the needs, the majority of the world population but rather an elite minority, as in football and other sports. Education, knowledge and knowledge transfer are imperative also as tools for public awareness, to share the responsibility, and not necessarily as a passport to the labor market that still support growth/linear economy. Universities and higher education institutes still lack efficient tools to reach out to the normal citizens, mediate knowledge and come near the society through tight engagement and active interactions. This is also the case for public education funded by taxes. Though the extreme importance of education institutes, in particular higher education, they still use ‘business-as-usual’ strategies without enough outreach policies to mediate and advocate knowledge to the public for protection and preservation of our common natural resources. This is the third duty of the universities and not only to perform pure ‘Research and Education’ that still can’t cope to solve existential problems as climate and environment changes, and the collapse in biodiversity, also to offer the necessary services to the citizens in major health disasters and pandemics as COVID-19. This is partly because universities and higher education continue to fail in creating partnership for goals neither with the citizens nor with the politicians as these are also part of their responsibilities, i.e. not to be isolated from the society and live on their own.
Sir David Attenborough and BBC achieved what the world universities failed to do, i.e. communicate science and technology in pedagogic and simple way, to inspire and motivate people, specially the young ones. To raise biodiversity as equally important, as climate change what regards our survival on planet Earth, is without hesitation an outcome of the work of Sir David Attenborough and through the systematic and continuous support of BBC (https://www.google.se/search?q=david+attenborough+nobel+prize&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=sv-se&client=safari). This is why they are very well placed to be nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Recent Addition: Professor Torbjörn Ebenhard on the Editorial Board, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.
We are greatly honoured to have Professor Torbjörn Ebenhard on the Editorial Board of sustain-earth.com. Professor Torbjörn Ebenhard is the Deputy director of the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Professor Ebenhard is a biologist with a B. Sc. degree from Uppsala University and a Ph. D. degree in zoological ecology from the same university. His early research was focused on island biogeography and conservation biology. Presently he is employed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and based at its Swedish Biodiversity Centre (CBM). It is a special unit for research and communication on conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity as a crucial issue for society, especially as related to Sweden’s implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Its mission is to initiate, conduct and coordinate policy-relevant research on the complex interactions between biodiversity and social development, and contribute to society’s capacity to manage these interactions in a sustainable way.
Apart from administrative tasks of Professor Ebenhard at CBM, he works on a number of assignments from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, supporting their activities on biological diversity in Sweden, and in international negotiations. Professor Ebenhard is mainly involved in the negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), as a member of the Swedish national delegations. He is also member of the Scientific Council on Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Services at the SEPA, and serves on the board of WWF Sweden.
As explained by Professor Ebenhard “The recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services produced by IPBES shows that the present and projected global loss of biodiversity jeopardizes our possibilities to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Humanity is ultimately dependent on biodiversity for its wellbeing and survival. The food we eat, the clean water we drink, the clean air we breathe, fibres for clothing, wood for building homes, and bioenergy to replace fossil fuels – all is provided by biological diversity. But more is at stake. As we deplete the resources that could support us, we also annihilate living organisms and degrade natural ecosystems. According to the IPBES report at least 1 million species of animals and plants are now threatened with extinction. However, the IPBES report also gives hope, as it states that we can bend the curve of biodiversity loss, if we are determined to do so. What it takes is nothing less than a transformative change of the entire human society.”
Professor Ebenhard also reminds us that “Ten years ago the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to which almost all countries are party, decided on a strategy and a set of global goals to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity, the so-called Aichi targets. They represent a high level of ambition, a much needed component of the transformative change IPBES envisages. CBD’s report Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, issued in September 2020, shows that none of the 20 Aichi targets will be met in full. This disappointing result, at a time when all targets should have been met, is due to a widespread inability by governments to implement the CBD strategy at the national level. Goals and targets at the national level have generally been set at a too low level of ambition, and national measures to reach these goals and targets have been insufficient. We do know, however, that when governments, as well as companies and individuals, have taken appropriate action, it does work, as shown by many successful cases of conservation and sustainable use around the world. But they are too few to bend the negative curve at global level.”
According to Professor Ebenhard “We now suffer the ravages of the covid-19 pandemic to our health and economy, while the growing climate crisis promises to make things much worse, but the looming biodiversity crisis will be of a completely different magnitude. The challenge now is to find integrated solutions, where the entire human society is involved in handling pandemics (there will be more than the present one), climate change and biodiversity loss. For this to happen we need people and decision makers to be aware of the nature of these crises, involve all stakeholders, set new ambitious strategies and goals for biodiversity and ecosystem services, strengthen national implementation and global cooperation, and work in a truly integrated way to address biodiversity loss, climate change and human wellbeing.”
Swedish Biodiversity Centre: https://www.slu.se/en/Collaborative-Centres-and-Projects/swedish-biodiversity-centre1/
Convention on Biological Diversity: https://www.cbd.int/, and its report Global Biodiversity Outlook: https://www.cbd.int/gbo5
IPBES: https://ipbes.net/, and its Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: https://ipbes.net/global-assessment
Read more about the global biodiversity in the 2020 report (in English by the World Wildlife Fund ’WWF’, leading organization in wildlife conservation and endangered species (https://f.hubspotusercontent20.net/hubfs/4783129/LPR/PDFs/ENGLISH-FULL.pdf). Alternatively, hear the views of Swedish experts (in Swedish) on the state of biodiversity by 2020 where Professor Torbjörn Ebenhard is also contributing in (https://youtu.be/kf-bvla6GrU).
Torbjörn Ebenhard
New Addition – Editorial: Professor Anders Wörman. ‘KTH’ Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
Professor Anders Wörman is the Head of division for Resources, Energy and Infrastructure, The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (https://www.kth.se/profile/worman).
His research interest spans over wide-range of trans-disciplinary and trans-sectorial areas in engineering sciences and technology within water resources, hydrology and environmental hydraulics. Ongoing research are due to water and energy availability in terrestrial hydrology, effects of climate fluctuations and landscape changes on runoff, hydropower regulation, extreme flows in rivers and safety of embankment dams. His skill and expertise include: environmental impact assessment; water quality; water resources management; engineering, applied and computational mathematics; hydrological modeling; rivers; civil engineering, hydrologic and water resource modelling and simulation; water balance; waterfall runoff modelling; aquatic eco-systems; surface water geo-statistics; contaminant transport; groundwater penetration; radar and climate change impacts.
Professor Wörman was co-founder and the first manager of the undergraduate educational programme for Environmental and Aquatic Engineering at Uppsala Univ. before being chair prof. at KTH. KTH has dedicated research programmes in Applied Sustainability. One of such programmes is oriented towards finding customized solutions to develope sustainable and resilient technical applications that are climatically and environmentally suited for Africa (https://www.kth.se/en/om/internationellt/projekt/kth-in-africa/africa-1.619441). It is interesting to mention that the world longest river, the Nile, spans over large catchment areas that are located in different climatic/weather (spatio-temporal variability in temperature and precipitation) zones (http://atlas.nilebasin.org/treatise/nile-basin-climate-zones/). These special features of the Nile call for technologies that can cope with climate-environment changes of both natural and man-made origins. Combination of natural and man-made climate changes will certainly induce severe constraints and limitations on what, why and how ‘Water, Energy and Natural Resources (fossil and mineral deposits, eco-systems and biodiversity)’ Nexus need to be carefully accessed on long-term and large-scale bases. In this context, Prof. Wörman has trans-disciplinary and trans-sectorial knowledge suited to handle the complex, inextricable and multi-layered interactions within and between Water, Energy and Natural Resource Systems. These interactions are imperative to understand of coherent and resilient coupling with the Socio-Economic-Environment ‘SEE’ aspects in communities living in river-catchment systems in Africa. These issues are of special interest as river-systems are the dominant landscape units with huge importance for preservation and protection of renewable and fossil resources.
Editorial: What is Digital Water? Professor Bengt Carlsson, IT and System Control, Uppsala University explains.
We are delighted to have Professor Bengt, Carlsson at Department of Information Technology, Division of Systems and Control, Uppsala Univesity, on the Editorial Board of sustain-earth.com. As Prof. Bengt Carlsson put it in his words “Treating wastewater is great, but making the treatment resource-efficient is even greater”. Among the expertise of Professor Bengt Carlsson: energy efficiency; automatic control system identification; sustainable development; and wastewater engineering.
Sweden has been been a pioneer in water quality and water cleaning both what regards natural and urban waters. However, the digitalisation is now part of production, use and consumption of water worldwide as the pressure on water resources increased enormously and still accelerate. Here, we give an example on The UK Digital Water Utility Experience (https://youtu.be/V8DEAy3o0S8).
What are the greatest challenges for water and wastewater treatment today?
Some of the greatest challenges for water and wastewater treatment today is the contributions of pharmaceuticals that has increased pollution loads on environment. One challenge, is therefore, to effectively separate such residues in treatment plants and another is to cope with achieving climate-neutral wastewater treatment plants.
This post will be further updated and revised very soon.
Editorial: Dr. Mikael Höök, Expert on Global Energy Systems and Natural Resources, Uppsala University
An international Editorial Board in under construction to empower sustain-earth.com and to scale-up and scale-out Science, Technology and Innovation ‘STI’ for promoting and implementing the UN-SDGs, i.e. Socio-Economic-Environment ‘SEE’ aspects of human life on planet Earth.
It is a great honor to have Dr. Mikael Höök, Associate Professor, Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University (https://katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N5-943) to join the Editorial Board of sustain-earth.com. Being pioneer in global energy systems, Dr. Höök leads the research group ’Global Energy Systems’, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development Programme. He has interests in popularization of science and research in energy systems, and bridging them to socio-economic-environment policy-making.
He has a PhD with specialization in global energy resources. His research deals with availability and production of fossil fuels with focus on oil and coal, but also supply of other natural resouces such as lithium and other raw materials for clean/green energy technologies. His research interests include also quantitative modelling of energy systems, fossil fuel production, field-by-field analysis, and long-term supply of natural resources. He is also very interested in wider issues like energy systems developments, resource depletion, energy security, climate impacts and sustainability. Currently, he leads several research projects focused on global oil supply outlooks and resource supply for energy transitions. He also teaches courses focusing on energy systems, energy security analysis, natural resources and sustainability. He is a lifetime member of International Association of Mathematical Geology and Geosciences (IAMG) and HP Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS).
Follow some interesting topics on global energy issues addressed by Dr. Höök in the ’Evolution Show Podcast’ by Johan Landgren (producer and host). The Global Energy Trends, Part II (https://youtu.be/DdmVr4rTUGw): Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s role in the energy market will follow Part I on Global Energy Trends (https://youtu.be/DdmVr4rTUGw) dealing with Oil Addiction and US shale boom; how would we be able to build a sustainable future without fossil fuels?
Leasons Learned – Global Quality of Education and COVID-19: No Teacher or Student Be Left Behind?
The ‘ICT’ Information Communication Technology has enormous impacts and caused huge changes in our lives and on all levels, this is however specially true in the developed world. Meanwhile, the heterogeneity, what regards accessibility, affordability and diffusion of modem ICT, is still a worldwide issue. The majority of people in the developing world still suffer from serious inequalities which indeed sets major constraints in many life situations. In this context, the UN-SDGs, including targets therein, represent the intertwined relations and the increasing complexity of the socio-economic-environment aspects in modern societies. The UN-SDGs is an inter-connected package of interactive goals all of it have multi-layered dynamics with continuous and tight feedback impacts within and between each other. They have to be promoted and implemented in parallel and coherently, and above all to operate in phase with each other. Delayed effects in the function between and within the goals can have unprecedented consequences for major groups in societies as is presented here.
COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated, for example, how education is being severely affected in many countries (https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/08/sg_policy_brief_covid-19_and_education_august_2020.pdf) where the teachers and students became incapable of performing their activities as in normal situations. Many indeed were left behind and still. During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNESCO came with initiative against the COVID-19 “NO TEACHER OR STUDENT SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND” as proposed by the Chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO. As we didn’t have enough room for preparedness on how to meet the pandemic, the UNESCO initiative provided little solutions to promptly help the situation but it paved the way on how to tackle similar situation in the future, specially the second wave of the pandemic which already started in some countries. The impacts of COVID-19 are devastating to the fabrics of life, in general, as we know it, particularly on the education systems in the developing countries. According to UNESCO, some 107 countries implemented nationwide closures of schools by 18 March 2020, in response to the pandemic. This affected over 861.7 million children and youth, i.e. about 45 per cent of the global population of children and youth in schools or according to latest figures up to 78% of global population of school children and youth. Almost a whole generation in the developing world became at risk over night. In the coming second wave if this isn’t dealt with on time, this unprecedented situation could lead to the collapse of school systems in many developing countries as the local governments can’t cope with such enormous consequences of the virus.
The UNESCO initiative focuses specifically on providing a concrete, meaningful and timely response to the unprecedented crisis that the coronavirus is inflicting on the education system in the developing world.
Its objectives were/are: (1) to generate extra-budgetary funds from the World Bank, IMF, regional banks, governments, NGOs, public and private donors, and other voluntary supports; (2) to provide urgently needed funds to schools in developing nations in order to permit the payment of two to three months salaries to teachers; (3) to assist schools to adapt their working methods to enable students to pursue studies under confinement; (4) and to revalue the teaching system/profession in the developing countries (https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/no_teacher_or_student_should_be_left_behind.pdf).
As an example, we can see the case of South Africa and how the digital inequalities in e-learning, in their complex education system, has impacted pupils specially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, e.g. the rural communities. We can name some different reasons for the complexity, which also apply to many other countries in Africa. Language is one, most pupils don’t speak English, as a mother tongue while the official language dominating many classrooms is English. French, for example, is still a dominant language in other African countries while the population in general may have different mother tongues or dialects. Also, the effects of the virus have kept pupils and teachers at home. While e-learning is the solution, the reality in South Africa, as in most developing countries, is very different. Teachers have varying digital skills and many families and teachers cannot afford the systems necessary to sustain some online learning activities. COVID-19 has shown that technology is not anymore a luxury but rather an important component of the education process. However, we still define poverty in conventional ways ‘business-as-usual’ even in world organizations such as IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the WB (World Bank).
In presenting solutions, a wide range of factors must be considered. These range from access to computers, to teacher training, to the social and economic challenges faced by teachers, pupils and schools in their communities. Though Information and Communications Technology ‘ICT’ is taught as a school subject, the government needs to consider an additional range of issues to solidify its commitment towards e-learning. This includes policies and strategies surrounding connectivity, data costs, skills development, hardware access as well as contextual multilingual digital learning content. Many schools still have little or no technology facilities, e.g. tablets and advanced computing systems. Formal training in applied technical skills needs to be extended to all teachers. Adequate digital skills training should become a mandatory component of all teacher training programmes in universities, universities of technology and colleges. Another obstacle is the cost of data-transfer which is among the highest in Africa.This means that pupils can’t always easily access information on their mobile phones. In fact, when pupils and teachers receive the right support for digital learning, the response is often remarkable. Many teachers can willingly dedicate their weekends and school holidays to digital learning and teaching, with no financial incentives. There is also bright spots of collaboration between computing students from the University of the Western Cape with teachers in a high school in an underprivileged part of Cape Town. Their work together has cultivated computing skills and sparked learners’ interest in other subjects like chemistry and astronomy. To know more about the problems of e-learning under the constraints caused by COVID-19 in South Africa see this reference (https://theconversation.com/how-south-africa-can-address-digital-inequalities-in-e-learning-137086).
Lual Mayer – A Self-Made Computer Innovator – From Refugee ‘South Sudan Civil War’ To Business Owner of Peace ✌️ in Washington DC
Follow the story of Lual Mayer who is now managing his own business in Washington DC for Computer Gaming to involve and engage children and youth for peace making. Mayer a survival of the Civil War in South Sudan that spend 22 years of his childhood in a refugee camp in Uganda. A true self-made innovator, who never a saw a computer in his life, that learned by himself how to master a computer and manage codes to build computers games for peace making. For many of us this a magical story of turning the impossible, where many may experience civil wars in Africa and refugee camps full of instrumental obstacles not only to survive but more importantly to be an innovator to inspire millions to fulfill impossible dreams
Towards Sustainable Africa – 13 African Companies Finalists for The 2020 Transformational Business Awards
Thirteen African private sector companies are among the twenty-nine finalists competing for the 2020 Transformational Business Awards worldwide. International Finance Corporation ‘IFC’ and the Financial Times ‘FT’ announced these companies as the world’s most innovative, forward-thinking companies that are moving the world closer to reaching sustainable development goals and creating equitable prosperity for all.
The Transformational Business Awards is a premier global program recognizing private sector companies that make a difference in addressing development challenges and in helping the world achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The winning African enterprises demonstrated innovation within key sectors and needs including drinking water; sanitation and waste recycling, renewable energy solution, ICT-communication and remote diagnosis; education and livelihood development for refugees. Generally, the twenty-nine finalists selected from the pool of 179 entries are creating jobs, tackling the challenges of urban infrastructure, growing food in tough places, delivering clean water, helping refugees integrate into society, and much more; and financial services for small farmers.
Join us to congratulate the African winners (and other participating nations ‘Partnership for Goals) from Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, DR Congo, Burundi, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Egypt, DR Congo, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, DR Congo, South Sudan and South Africa. Read story: https://africasustainabilitymatters.com/thirteen-african-companies-named-finalists-for-the-2020-transformational-business-awards/
The 2020 Transformational Business Awards where Africa was the winner of almost 50% of the awards.
The 2020 Transformational Business Awards
Japan to Join Egypt in Building the Largest Archaeological Museum in the World
One of UN-SDGs is Partnership for the Goals, i.e. Goal 17. It is to enhance global Partnership for Sustainable Development. It is for participation and engagement of multi-stakeholder that mobilise, collaborate and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries. One of the major and grand projects that was recently conducted in Egypt is the construction of the world largest museum in Egypt that is about to ready early next year. Japan is actively participating is much major achievement of the 21st century.
In the past history several international actions, programmes and expeditions were conducted to save, update and put together the cultural heritage of the Egyptian civilisation. One of such major work was carried out to save the two temples of Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt. Carved in the living rock which rises from the banks of the Nile, these temples were threatened with complete destruction in connection with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Saving these tempels were initiated through an International Campaign launched by UNESCO in 1960. The temples were dissected and removed stone by stone to higher ground (https://addpmp.slamjam.com/index/the-world-saves-abu-simbel) and reconstructed to stand in all their grandeur orientated as before towards river and sun.
The Grand Egyptian Museum G.E.M. also known as the Giza Museum will house the artifacts of ancient Egypt, including the complete Tutankhamun collection, and many pieces will be displayed for the first time. Described as the largest archaeological museum in the world was planned to be completed in 2020 but COVID-19 delayed it from being complete by one year, so 2021 when it will be opened.
Follow the amazing work of the participating teams in the construction of the world largest museum in human history (https://youtu.be/cJObBxzWeZ8).
Nanotechnology inventions of the Ancient Civilisations
Historical texts from Spain, Italy, the Middle East and Egypt revealed how lustreware, pottery, batteries, steel swords and hair-dyeing were using nano-composites generating metal-glass and metal coatings on surfaces in different ways to produce impressive products of exceptional quality with enhanced material’s properties (https://www.theguardian.com/nanotechnology-world/nanotechnology-is-ancient-history). Damascus steel swords from the Middle East were made between AD300 and AD1700 with impressive strength, shatter resistance and exceptionally sharp cutting edge. The blades contained oriented nanoscale wire-and-tube-like structures with exceptional qualities. Pottery across the Renaissance Mediterranean was often decorated with an iridescent metallic glaze of colour and sheen down to nanoparticles of copper or silver.
Ancient Egyptian hair-dyeing, dating to the Graeco-Roman period, was shown to contain lead-sulphide nanocrystals of 5 nanometre diameter (https://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-ancient-egyptians-used-nanocosmetics/).
Though craftsmen were highly skilled to produce such materials that by modern definitions falls under nanotechnology they didn’t not know that they were working on the nanoscale. Such amazing inventions from ancient times dated back to thousands of years are numerous examples of ancient technology that leave us awe-struck at the knowledge and wisdom by the people of our past. They were the result of incredible advances in engineering and innovation as new, powerful civilizations emerged and came to dominate the ancient world. Many of such ancient inventions were forgotten, lost to the pages of history, only to be re-invented millennia later. Among the best examples of ancient technology and inventions are: 2000-years-old metal coatings superior to today’s standard; 2000-years-old Bagdad battery; 1600-year-old Roman artisans of impregnated glass with particles of silver and gold; the Assyrian Nimrud lend of the oldest telescope; the steam engine by the Hero of Alexandria and many more (https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ten-amazing-inventions-ancient-times-001539).
(In https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-science-space-ancient-technology/roman-nanotechnology-inspires-holograms-102783)
Prosperity – Africa in the 21st Century
In a series of posts we will explore why the 21st century will be prosperous for Africa. Indeed, there are various reasons to predict why Africa will continue to shine more and more though the threats that climate change, including global warming, will hit Africa more than other continents (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Africa). Naturally there are other threats that so far hindered Africa from faster developments as compared to the rest of the world, specially that the history of Africa is very much different. Here is a list of key factors, among others, about the ongoing tectonic changes and drivers that will bring a lot of positive socio-economic impacts in Africa.
– African identity, slavery and colonialism distorted her identity and disoriented her values. However, Africa was not the only continent that suffered colonization. The concept of African identity has changed are still changing relatively fast specially with the growing restrictions in migration.
– African independence, decolonization and transition to independence characterized the past century and national identities in many parts of Africa are gradually emerging.
– Large-scale infra-structures, there are mega projects taking place in Africa (the case of Egypt participation in partnership for goals, Goal 17 of UN-SDGs) such as developing its transport systems to connect the continent from the very north in e.g. Egypt to its very south, South Africa, also from the west to the east (https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/77914/Egypt-launches-32-projects-in-Africa-in-1-year-report). One example is the enormous use of smart phones technology in trade, business and finance.
– Coupling rural to urban regions, this among key and important issues in the development of Africa as 70% of African are living in rural Africa and producing 70-80% of agricultural outputs.,
– African Union, AU is a continental body of the 55 member states that make up the African Continent. It was officially launched in 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, 1963-1999).
– Human resources, population growth and youth, towards 2100 the population of Africa will peak to about 40% of the world population with very high percentage of youth.
– Natural resources Africa is abundant with natural resources including diamonds. gold, oil, natural gas, uranium, copper, platinum, cobalt, iron, bauxite and cocoa beans. This is of course in addition to its amazing biodiversity.
– Generation shift, new generations and leaders are currently shaping and reshaping Africa, combating corruption, enhance good governance and transparency and taking advantage of modern technologies, e.g. ICT, IOT, crowdfunding, protection of natural resources, also in the energy, agriculture, farming, tourism and other sectors.
– Security, many African countries are becoming more aware about the improvement of national integrity and internal security and safety of population specially that Africa has a complex diversity of ethnic groups. Remarkable developments in safety in Africa took place and still the focus of the African countries.
– Biggest market in the world, the needs of Africa will make it one of the biggest market in the 21st century. There is diversification and expansion the economy and trade both internally and with the rest of the world including Europe and Asia. This will generate tectonic changes in international trade, business, transport and mobility in labor and services.
– Global investments. Based on data through 2017, France is the largest investor in Africa, although its stock of investment has remained largely unchanged since 2013, followed by the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom and China. Geographically Europe and Asia can be linked through North Africa and the GCC countries.
– UN-SDGs the world has created a global agenda for promoting and implementing sustainability which Africa will benefit considerably from it. UN-SDGs and involved targets for developments are key issues that are shaping policies and strategies to cope with poverty, hunger, gender, inequalities, education quality, health, water and sanitation, energy, strong institutions, life quality, biodiversity, ……. etc.
THE DESIRE TO TEACH their children about computers drew these Samburu women to a classroom in a settlement north of Nairobi. They are learning about tablets—designed to withstand tough use—that connect to the Internet through a satellite and come preloaded with educational programs. Technology now has arrived in isolated regions of Africa primarily in the form of relatively inexpensive cell phones. From National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/12/africa-technology-revolution/
Full Documentary of the Nile’s Social Life by Joanna Lumley
Though many journeys and expeditions were done to discover the secrets of the Nile, very few of them, if any at all, touched upon the diversity of life, traditions and cultures of the Nile people. The Nile people have deep rooted love and worship for the Nile and its waters for thousand of years. The Nile and its waters meant, still mean and will continue to do so for generations. The life of the Nile people is as complex as evolution and history of the Nile itself. In this context, the socio-economic performance of the people of the Nile is very central and crucial for finding sustainable and peaceful ways to share such magnificent gift of nature. These indeed, are parts of wicked conflicts of how to put such enormous diversity in political agreements for lasting harmony in the Nile Basin as a whole. This is also the case of the rest of Africa as rivers and their catchments are basic landscape units of existential importance for the livelihood of the African population. However, vast regions of Africa don’t enjoy surface water resource or rain and other alternatives are imperative such as groundwater, desalination and water reuse. In most cases we need to think in 3D-solutions that couple surface water with groundwater and also to understand the long-term consequences of water production, use and consumption on the landscape level on longterm and large-scale levels. This can be simple to say if such resources were infinite, however water scarcity in Africa is the highest in the world yet major threats are emerging due to climate change, growing population, increasing diversification in economy, acceleration of urbanisation and industrial activities with all consequences of growing waste and pollution. The search for how such transboundary solutions of the water resources to be shared is a major political issue. All of this come in the time of today’s very rapid and fast growing ’diversification’ of the socio-economic-environment conditions needed for the ongoing transformation to sustainable societies.
Joanna Lumley’s journey, in search for the very source of the Nile, by being the longest river in the world, comes with very interesting introduction on the cultural diversity of the life and livelihood of the population in the Nile Basin. Among the amazing issues is the longstanding socio-economic diversity that shaped the life in the Nile Basin for thousands of years ranging from e.g. evolution of tourism; preparation for marriage; social gathering and social therapy ‘Soffi’; beauty treatment ‘Dukhan دخان’ (form of SPA) of body, skin and smell; sports in rural areas; local food and drinks; coutry-side work and services. Traveling, for example, comes with major challenges because of the unique landscape in the African canyons, river-catchment and forests. Respect and appreciation of cultures is the secret of not only social success but more importantly to bring about harmony and resilience in the complex social mosaic that requires modern understanding of ‘what, how and why’ issues in modern sustainability.
Just to give few examples is how to live and travel in one of Africa’s largest canyons of the Blue Nile, 250 miles long. Also, how to manage the 60 rivers that drain rainwater to Lake Tana in Ethiopia. The country with 4/5 of the african mountains and Africa’s oldest cultures that is most diverse with great influences from ancient Egypt and Arabia.
One of the great future challenge of the 21st century is how to deal with the growing scarcity of Africa’s white gold ‘water’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity_in_Africa As of 2006). One third of all African nations suffers from clean water scarcity and Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any other place on the planet. It is estimated that by 2030 that 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable.
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Colorado Supreme Court rules that developers can retain perpetual control over HOA covenants 3 views
Colorado's new construction defect law takes effect in September: What you need to know. 3 views
<< Witt named to 2018 Super Lawyers
Thursday, December 13, 2018 @ 10:12 PM
Today, the Colorado Court of appeals reversed a order that had deemed a homeowner association’s lien to be spurious.
The case arose after a developer approved a property owner’s application to annex additional real estate to a community in 1999. Several years later, the developer repurchased the property through a foreclosure sale. Despite its prior approval of the annexation, the developer refused to pay community maintenance assessments, which prompted the association to record a lien under its covenants and a statutory provision of the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act (CCIOA).
The parties remained in a standoff until 2016, when the Colorado Supreme Court announced two decisions that adopted a stricter standard for annexing property into communities subject to CCIOA. Relying on this new authority, the developer at Stroh Ranch argued that the 1999 annexation was no longer valid. The district court agreed and declared the association’s lien to be spurious.
The court of appeals reversed and awarded attorney fees to the association. The court held that the association’s lien was not a spurious lien because it was both provided-for by CCIOA statutes and had been agreed-to by the property owner under the terms of the 1999 annexation form. The court held that the annexation form was not a spurious document because, even if it did not technically comply with the 2016 caselaw, this alleged invalidity was not “readily open to notice or observation.”
The court’s opinion was unpublished and therefore does not create binding precedent, but it may nevertheless serve as a caution for property owners seeking to attack liens under Colorado’s spurious lien and document statute.
Attorney Jesse Witt represented the association in the appeal, Stroh Ranch Development, LLC v. Stroh Ranch Business Circle, Inc., Case No. 2017CA1481 (Colo. App. Dec. 13, 2018)(unpublished).
For an expanded discussion of this issue, please see Mr. Witt’s full summary here.
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Kalypso Duo
Duo Kalypso was formed by Miha Rogina (saxophone) and Sae Lee (piano), who are accredited for their innovative interpretations of musical works. Both are graduates of Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSM) and Prize-winners of major international solo and chamber music competitions. The duo has worked with today’s leading musicians including Pierre Boulez, Fabio Luisi and Sergei Markarov, and has appeared at major international concert stages throughout Europe, Asia and USA such as the Musikverein in Vienna, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg or Izumi Hall in Japan. Individually, they have performed as soloists with a number of orchestras worldwide including the Vienna Symphony Orchestra as well as Philharmonic orchestras of Bratislava, Bruges, Hoffer, Kansai, Maribor, Paris Laureates, Pleven and Sofia, Symphony Orchestra of Slovenian radio-television, and Thailand Philharmonic orchestra. Sae Lee and Miha Rogina both work at Ljubljana University, Faculty of Music and have held masterclasses at universities across Japan (Senzoku gakuen University, Showa University, Osaka University etc.), UK, Latvia, Poland, Germany and Austria. Their extensive repertory includes the original works for saxophone and piano, contemporary music, jazz, ethno, tango and their own transcriptions. Their concerts are broadcasted by radio and TV stations worldwide.
Miha Rogina, saxophoneSae Lee, piano
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2010: 347,483, #51 in U.S., #9 in California
1950: 34,784
2010 Metropolitan Area: 839,631, #62 in U.S.
Bakersfield was founded in 1869 on the delta of the Kern River. It is located near the southern end of California’s Central Valley, with the Sierra Nevada to the east, the Tehachapi Mountains to the south, and the Coast Ranges to the west.
Tallest building: Stockdale Tower (1982), 176 feet (not downtown)
Bakersfield has no downtown department stores.
Amtrak’s San Joaquin has several trains daily from Bakersfield going north to Sacramento and Oakland. Amtrak also provides bus service south to Los Angeles. Bakersfield has a new (2000) downtown Amtrak station.
The Bakersfield Museum of Art is located downtown.
(Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri)
The Maya Cinemas 16 opened in 2009, just south of downtown. The Bakersfield Fox Theater is a restored 1930 movie palace that presents concerts and independent movies.
The Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra plays at Rabobank Theater (1962). Broadway in Bakersfield presents touring musicals at Rabobank Theater. Stars is a dinner theater in downtown Bakersfield.
The Bakersfield Blaze, Single-A California League affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, went out of business after the 2016 season. The Bakersfield Condors of the East Coast Hockey League play at Rabobank Arena (1998).
Map of Downtown Bakersfield
Kern County Tourism Bureau
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Double Trouble #2 on Cadair Idris
Waiting for boarding instruction.
At about 8:00 pm on August Bank Holiday Monday, Aberdyfi Search and Rescue Team (ASART) was called to assist in the search for a missing seven-year old boy on Cadair Idris.
The child was part of a larger group from Manchester, who had fragmented into
two parties during their time on the mountain, and each assumed the child was
with the others. The party was lightly equipped, and had no provision for a long stay on the mountain, or for the rapidly encroaching darkness.
As volunteers from the Team assembled, a Hasty-Party was dispatched to assess the situation and met a very confusing scene of separate groups of party members and onlookers spread out on the mountainside. The child had been identified as being stuck on a grass ledge a third of the way down the very steep Cyfrwy crag face, and the Rescuers were able to give a grid-reference to the inbound ‘Rescue 122’ Sea King helicopter from RAF Valley. The very steep nature of his location meant that a helicopter rescue may not have been possible, so other ASART volunteers started making their way up the hill carrying the heavy crag-rescue equipment.
In the meantime, other problems started to appear. One of the walking group at the foot of the cliff, a 70 year old man, was diabetic, and having neither food nor water to manage his condition, was starting to feel ill. Elsewhere in the same group, an injured knee was reported.
After some very skilful flying, and assisted by the still, clear conditions, the winch-man from Rescue 122 was able to secure the child, and the pair were hoisted back onboard the aircraft. Having delivered the child, who was shaken but uninjured by his
experience, back to the Ty Nant car-park at the foot of the mountain, the pilot returned to the base of the cliff to pick up a further four of the party, including the diabetic man.
The ASART members on the hill were just setting about their descent off the mountain when news arrived from North Wales Police of a male paraglider from Cardiff who was benighted on the summit of Cadair Idris, and was resigned to spending the night in the summit shelter. The team prepared to turn back uphill again, but fortunately Rescue 122 also got this information,
making a third trip to the summit area to pick up the man, before heading north to attend another emergency near Caernarfon. The Team was down off the mountain by 11:30 pm for one of their most ‘incident-rich’ call-outs for some time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-23853982
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The Yosemite Fires: Settler Colonialism & Indigenous Wisdom
The removal of Indigenous folks from the geographies they maintained for millennia came hand in hand with the displacement of ecological wisdom.
This article originally appeared in Atmos Magazine.
woke up to the scent of fire, and found Yosemite engulfed in smoke and raining ash. A sepia filter filled the sky over the meadows that were bright blue the day prior.
The night before, the Creek Fire had begun in the South of Yosemite in the Sierra National Forest. Currently, it continues to burn since its spark on September 4th; it now holds the spot as California’s 5th largest fire in the state’s recorded history, with over 300,000 acres burned. In fact, the five biggest fires on record in California have all occurred within the last two years.
But these fires are not simply nature on its course—they’re climate fires.
The Creek Fire, like many other fires ablaze on the West Coast, came about as a result of changes in land management practices, increased lightning, heatwaves, and vegetation dryness (also known as “fuel”)—all of which have been made significantly worse due to the ongoing climate catastrophe.
The day before ash consumed Yosemite, I spent the day in the park’s meadows—an ecological site that serves as a reminder of those that once stewarded the iconic landscape.
Long before colonizers arrived, Yosemite’s Indigenous Ahwahneechee people maintained the meadows by periodically burning them—a practice known as cultural burning. This encouraged the growth of desirable plants, such as deer grass, which was used in basket making—a circular system that sustained its people’s cultures and economies.
Before the park was named Yosemite by settlers, the area had been called “Ahwahnee” by Indigenous people, meaning “big mouth”—referring to the towering embrace of Yosemite’s peaks around its valley floor.
Yosemite, on the other hand, translates to “those who kill”— a slur that was used by surrounding Miwok tribes who feared those who lived in Yosemite. When the Valley was eventually named by Lafayette Bunnell, a member of a battalion that violently displaced the Indigneous population, he wrote:
“It would be better to give it an Indian name than to import a strange and inexpressive one; that the name of the tribe who had occupied it, would be more appropriate than any I had heard suggested that we give the valley the name of Yo-sem-i-ty, as it was suggestive, euphonious, and certainly American; that by so doing, the name of the tribe of Indians which we met leaving their homes in this valley, perhaps never to return, would be perpetuated.”
In many ways, the naming of the National Park reflects the ways settlers appropriated the idea of indigeneity, without actually centering its Native peoples—rewriting what it actually means to be “American”. White settlers like Bunnell who came to the Valley were keen to uproot the Native population, which he described as “very troublesome to the miners and settlers.”
In 1850, the California legislature passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians—a law which, for its benign name, instated state-sponsored violence against California’s Indigenous communities. For one, it outlawed intentional burning, or cultural burns—a key act in suppressing Indigenous stewardship over the land.
It also allowed any white person to declare Native Californians to be vagrants—a charge that would then sanction those Natives to be seized and sold at public auction, enabling those that purchased them to have their labor for four months without compensation.
osemite, now considered the crown jewel of the U.S. National Park roster, was born as a project of settler colonialism and white occupation. In 1851, James Savage, a prolific business man during the Gold Rush era, led a group of vigilantes to encroach on the grounds of the Ahwahneechee, using embers of campfires to set their wigwams ablaze.
Bunnell, in his record of the attack, wrote: “The whole transaction had been so quickly and recklessly done that the reserve under [John Boling and] Savage had no opportunity to participate in the assault, and but imperfectly witnessed the scattering of the terrified warriors… twenty-three were killed; the number of wounded was never known. Of the settlers, but one was really wounded, though several were scorched and bruised in the fight.”
Following this attack, then-California governor John McDougall believed that military force was necessary to maintain a stronghold over resistance from California’s Native peoples, and enlisted Savage as the Major of the Mariposa Battalion. The militia, authorized by the state, had the genocidal mission of “the war of extermination,” issued by California’s first governor Peter Burnett.
nother salient figure in the history of Yosemite is naturalist John Muir, often hailed as the father of the National Park System. Muir helped define Yosemite’s boundaries as a National Park, and is attributed for informing President Theodore Roosevelt’s decision to sign into existence five national parks and many national forests during his presidency. In 1892, he founded the Sierra Club, spearheading the modern U.S. conservation movement.
But there’s a darker side to Muir’s legacy and the romanticized understanding to America’s environmental movement, which he helped imbue. Muir’s musings on Yosemite and the larger Western frontier venerated the idea of “pure wilderness,” often an escape from man to refuge where “no marks of man” were visible. His writings were often predicated upon the absence of human life—however, his extensive travels were not without interaction with Indigenous people.
In his book The Mountains of California, Muir describes the Natives he sees as “ugly, and some of them altogether hideous,” with “no right place in the landscape,” and “was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.” The reality of Muir’s racism, and its ripple effects on other early Sierra Club members and leaders that were vocal advocates for white supremacy continue to inform the Sierra Club today, leading the organization to actively center anti-racism in their work to rectify their problematic legacy.
ithin a century, the erasure of Yosemite’s Indigenous populations and the construction of the pristine myth of the Western frontier fueled by Muir’s venerated writings contributed to creating false notions of white “discovery” and nativity to the land and a paternalistic understanding of preservation.
Similar to the frameworks established in the 1850s that banned cultural burns, Muir was an advocate for fire suppression in Yosemite, preaching that fire should be absolutely excluded from all Sierra forests in order to “save” Yosemite’s landscapes. In 2010, research from Pennsylvania State University found that a century of fire suppression in Yosemite Valley led to decline of biodiversity, a 20% reduction in tree populations, and increasing vulnerability to catastrophic fires prior to expulsion of its Indigenous community.
As fires continue to consume multiple geographies, from California to Australia, Indigenous land management techniques are routinely cited as key methods to maintain the landscape’s vulnerability to extreme wildfires.
ut these calls for ancient knowledge are met with a generation of leaders who continue to deny the realities of climate decline. Notorious climate deniers like Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil are known for their track record of harm against Indigenous communities—whether allowing the construction of oil pipelines through Indigenous territories or deforestation in the Amazon—while perpetuating nativist ideas on who belongs on the land in the first place.
History has shown us countless incidents of settler colonialism that justified conquest by undermining Indigenous knowledge and humanity through European understandings of codified written property rights.
In Australia, European colonizers established the false notion of terra nullius, or “nobody’s land,” to describe the Australian landscape as deserted and uncultivated—despite the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait people belonged to the land for over 65,000 years.
In Europe, the Catholic Church established the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave justification to Christian European explorers to assume control over the lands held by Indigenous nations on the basis that the “discoverer” could label the inhabitant’s way of living inadequate according to arbitrary European standards. This created a way of legitimizing dispossession of Indigenous communities worldwide, while reinforcing a culture of supremacy on both racial, cultural, and religious terms for European Christians.
And while the beliefs and practices of Indigenous cultures should never be reduced to a monolith, a key pillar of many Indigenous cultures has been the idea that one cannot “own” land.
As written in Indian Country Magazine, Indigenous thought understands that “people belong to the land, rather than the land belonging to the people… From the Indigenous point of view, treaties memorialized agreements with colonists over the shared use of the land. Indians were willing to share land with the colonists for farming, hunting, and gathering, but did not expect the colonists to assume exclusive rights to all of the land or extinguish Indian territorial rights.”
Displaced indigenous knowledge and worldviews, drowned out by settler colonialists, created the forces by which extractive and exploitative systems and leaders have continued to reign supreme today—despite the damning impacts on our ecology on both an environmental and social level. If country officials want to know anything about managing fire, or how to live with it, they’ll need to realize the future was written a long time ago.
Edit: The lives of Indigenous people in the Sierra Nevada have changed greatly since the 1790s, when the first influences of non-Indigenous people were felt. During the 19th century, Mono Lake Paiute people from east of the Sierra Crest, former Mission Indians from the California coast, and Chukchansi Yokuts and Western Mono people came to live with the Indigenous Southern Miwok people of the Yosemite region. It’s important to name the Indigenous communities that continue to live and work there today and connect with their homelands in Yosemite. Not acknowledging this history and their presence today only promotes erasure.
This post was originally written for Atmos by Aditi Mayer.
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Through our scholarship program, we aim to support the development of skills in the maritime industry and build our brand as an employer of choice.
The 2020 scholarship program is representative of the community we serve and recognises potential, assists those in need and rewards high achievement. We partnered with the University of Wollongong (UoW) and the University of Tasmania (UTAS) to offer several scholarships from the commencement of this year. Additional scholarships will be on offer in second semester.
We have awarded three of our scholarships. Find the details below.
AMSA Vocational Near Coastal Seafaring Indigenous Scholarship
This scholarship is available to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander students who are commencing a Certificate III in Maritime Operations (Master up to 24m near coastal) followed by the Certificate III in Maritime Operations (Marine Engine Driver Grade 2 near coastal) at the Australian Maritime College (AMC) in the second half of 2020.
Selection will be based on the applicant's aspiration to work in the industry and having career goals which align with AMSA's vision and mission.
IMPORTANT: Applicants who apply for this scholarship MUST meet the Commonwealth definition of Aboriginality to be eligible.
The Commonwealth definition of who is an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person is someone who meets all the following:
Is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent.
Who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.
Is accepted as such by the community in which he/she lives.
Apply or find out more at the University of Tasmania website.
AMSA Excellence in maritime policy scholarship
The scholarship will be awarded to a student undertaking the Master of Maritime Policy to analyse the legal, political and operational factors that contribute to the development of the law of the sea and maritime policy, with the aim of devising solutions to gaps in legal and policy frameworks. A research project or minor thesis aligned with our work will be highly regarded.
Apply or find out more about this scholarship on the University of Wollongong website.
AMSA Excellence in maritime studies scholarship
This scholarship has been awarded.
The recipient of this scholarship is Matthew Ellis. Matthew will be studying a Graduate Certificate in Maritime Studies at the University of Wollongong.
Matt is interested in pursuing a research project, investigating the policy and operational role, satellite imagery could play in SAR and marine pollution incidents, both in Australian waters and in areas of the Pacific.
Available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who are commencing a Certificate III in Maritime Operations (Master up to 24 metres near coastal) followed by the Certificate III in Maritime Operations (Marine Engine Driver Grade 2 near coastal) at the Australian Maritime College (AMC) in the first half of 2020.
Find out more on the University of Tasmania website.
AMSA Women in maritime engineering scholarship
The recipient of this scholarship is Hayley Bellinger. Hayley will be studying a Bachelor of Engineering (Marine and Offshore Engineering) with Honours at the University of Tasmania.
Hayley is the Ambassador at the Australian Marine College. She is driven by her desire to improve safety at sea through the design of systems on board vessels, including fire and pollution reduction systems.
AMSA First year access scholarship for maritime studies
The recipient of this scholarship is Naomi Caucau. Naomi is studying a Bachelor of Engineering (Naval Architecture) with Honours at the University of Tasmania.
Naomi is motivated by her experiences growing up in Fiji, Naomi is pursuing a career in naval architecture in order to design safer, sustainable and more affordable marine vessels for communities that depend on maritime transportation.
Find information about the AMSA vision and mission.
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Home Page > Picture Archives > Year 1998 > Album 62 > Photo 10 > Similar
62-10. A church at State Street opposite to Chauncey Hill Mall. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
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.../1998/62/09.htm similar
State Street near Chauncey Hill Mall. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Fountain of Purdue University Mall. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Purdue University Memorial Union from State Street. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Intersection of State Street with South Street (The Village area, shopping district). West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Abandoned historical houses on Ferry Street and Saint James Lutheran (?) Church. Lafayette, Indiana, March 22, 1998.
Baby snakes on a trail along Wabash River under State Street bridge. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 21, 1998.
View of an opposite bank of Wildcat Creek from Clegg Botanical Garden. Lafayette, Indiana, March 21, 1998.
Purdue University Mall and Bell Tower. West Lafayette, Indiana, February 27, 1998.
View of trees cut by beavers and industrial buildings on the opposite side of Wabash River from Heritage Trail to Fort Ouiatenon. Near West Lafayette, Indiana, February 8, 1998.
Ferry Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 22, 1998.
Cincinnati(?) Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 21, 1998.
A house at State Street. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Abandoned old houses at State Street. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
North Street near intersection with Erie Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 21, 1998.
Brown(?) Street near intersection with Erie Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 22, 1998.
6th(?) Street near intersection with Union Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 21, 1998.
Pablo Serra, Huan Pablo Neirotti and Alexei Sergeev at a dinner in a restaurant on State Street. West Lafayette, Indiana, February 26, 1998.
View of houses across railroad from Erie Street. Lafayette, Indiana, March 22, 1998.
- Trip to Harrison-Crawford State Forest, South Indiana, May 15-17 (Indiana and Lafayette, May 15 - 24, 1998)
Purdue University Hall and Recitation Building. West Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Remains of a cardinal (the state bird of Indiana) on a trail from Lafayette to Battle Ground along Wabash River. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
- West Lafayette, Oct. 26-28 (Lafayette - Knobstone Trail, Indiana, October 25 - 31, 1998)
- A park near Celery Bog in West Lafayette 10/25/98 (Lafayette - Knobstone Trail, Indiana, October 25 - 31, 1998)
A house at South 9th Street. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Main Street in downtown Lafayette. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Intersection of Columbia Street and 9th Street. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
- Near Clinton, West Indiana 6/28/98 (Lafayette, May 24 - July 12, 1998)
.../1999/100/000.htm similar
Purdue University Mall. West Lafayette, Indiana, October 10, 1999.
Fountain of Purdue University Mall. West Lafayette, Indiana, September 21, 1999.
I-65 road between Lafayette and Chicago during a snow storm. Indiana, March 9, 1998.
.../1999/102/00.htm similar
A barn opposite to Harrison High School, 2 miles north from West Lafayette. Indiana, October 16, 1999.
Grand View Cemetery. West Lafayette, Indiana, February 8, 1998.
Purdue University Mall during afternoon hours. West Lafayette, Indiana, September 21, 1999.
View of Tippecanoe Courthouse and the downtown from Big Four Depot. Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Purdue University Mall and Electrical Engineering Building. West Lafayette, Indiana, September 26, 1999.
View of Tippecanoe Courthouse from Amtrak railroad Station. Lafayette, Indiana, March 10, 1998.
Purdue Memorial Union (student services). West Lafayette, Indiana, February 27, 1998.
- Watching sparrows in grassland near Universal mine, West Indiana 6/28/98 (Lafayette, May 24 - July 12, 1998)
Tippecanoe County Historical Museum (Moses Fowler House) at 9th Street. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Saint John s Episcopal church at Ferry Street. Lafayette, Indiana, May 3, 1999.
Downtown Lafayette. The First Merchant s National Bank at 316 Main Street (built in 1918) is at the center. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
View of Purdue University Mall from the second floor of Electrical Engineering Building. West Lafayette, Indiana, September 21, 1999.
- Erie, Ferry, State, Valley Street and downtown Lafayette 4/12/98 (Lafayette, April 5 - 28, 1998)
An alley in downtown Lafayette parallel to Columbia Street with a view of Tippecanoe County Court House. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Downtown Lafayette. Carnahan-Ross-Kaplan Building at 622 Main Street (built in 1862) is to the left. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
S.-w. side of Purdue Mall, view from Electrical Engineering Building. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, October 29, 1999.
Purdue Mall, the fountain, and Hall of Administration, view from Electrical Engineering Building. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, October 29, 1999.
- near Agricultural Mall in Purdue campus 4/28/98 (Lafayette, April 5 - 28, 1998)
- Near Wabash River 5/24/98 (Indiana and Lafayette, May 15 - 24, 1998)
Downtown Lafayette. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Pablo Serra and Huan Pablo Neirotti at a dinner in a restaurant near Purdue University. West Lafayette, Indiana, February 26, 1998.
An alley in downtown Lafayette. Indiana, January 18, 1998.
Tippecanoe Battlefield, north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
View of Fairfield and Alcoa plants from S. R. 52. Lafayette, Indiana, February 7, 1998.
"Indiana" Entertainment Center opposite to Akademicheskaya subway station (Russians believe that the state of Indiana is still inhabited by American Indians). Saint Petersburg, Russia, April 21, 1999.
A gate to Tippecanoe Battlefield Park, north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
Gen. W. H. Harrison s monument at Tippecanoe Battlefield, north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
A statue at the top of Tippecanoe County Court House. Lafayette, Indiana, January 18, 1998.
View of Wabash River from Heritage Trail north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
Heritage Trail along Wabash River between Lafayette and Battle Ground, Indiana, February 22, 1998.
View of Tippecanoe Courthouse in downtown Lafayette from Amtrak Station. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
Heron Island on Wabash River between Lafayette and Battle Ground, Indiana, February 22, 1998.
Garden Street. West Lafayette, Indiana, May 2, 1999.
- North Salisbury Street 4/5/98 (Lafayette March 22 - April 5, 1998)
Rotten wood on a trail from Lafayette to Battle Ground along Wabash River. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
A raccoon eaten by an eagle(?) on Heritage Trail from Lafayette to Fort Ouiatenon. Indiana, February 8, 1998.
View of Wabash River from Davis Ferry Bridge north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
A shrub in a forest on Heritage Trail near Battle Ground, north from Lafayette. Indiana, January 31, 1998.
- Final banquet at Midwest Theoretical Chemistry Conference in Purdue University 5/23/98 (Indiana and Lafayette, May 15 - 24, 1998)
Picture archives | Full List | Statistics | Home page
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Spotlight on Vivek Murthy, Surgeon-General Nominee
Posted by Biz India | Feb 2, 2014 | Opinion, People
By Jennifer Haberkorn
February 02, 2014 – President Barack Obama’s selection (last November) of a 36-year-old founder of an Obamacare advocacy group to serve as the nation’s top doctor has brought accusations that he’s too young and too political to be surgeon general.
Vivek Murthy, a Boston physician, software entrepreneur and political ally of the president, will face a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
If confirmed, Murthy would be one of the youngest surgeons general in history. And he’s expected to be a much more vocal national presence than recent physicians who have held the post. His immediate predecessor, Regina Benjamin, had a low political profile.
But first, Murthy has to get through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s confirmation hearing, at which Republicans are expected to ask tough questions about his experience and his background with the political organization Doctors for America, which began in 2008 as Doctors for Obama and evolved into a physicians association closely associated with the president’s health law.
Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general in the George W. Bush administration and then ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat against Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona in 2012, warned the White House against nominating such a “relatively inexperienced and untested physician” who doesn’t have the “right” to be considered for surgeon general at this point in his career.
In letter to Obama, Carmona said that a nominee without significant public health experience or a background in the career uniformed services risks “a distinctive disadvantage in credibility, knowledge and depth and breadth of experience when attempting to address complex public health issues.”
Murthy is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He’s also the founder of TrialNetworks, an Internet portal for clinical-trial operations that counts Merck and Biogen Idec as customers. Earlier, he helped start a rural community health program in Sringeri, India, and an HIV/AIDS youth education program in India and the United States. He went to Harvard for his undergraduate degree and Yale for medical and business degrees.
The concerns over Murthy’s nomination are unlikely to kill his chances of getting through the Senate, especially if his nomination requires only 51 votes under newly adopted Senate procedures. Republicans — especially those up for reelection this fall — have been skeptical about doing anything that could remotely be seen as supporting Obamacare. He is expected to have wide support from Democrats, although those facing reelection in states that opposed Obama might be nervous about backing the nominee.
The surgeon general’s job is to oversee the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and to be the voice for improving health and wellness, on topics as wide ranging as HIV/AIDS, smoking cessation and flu outbreaks. The post has little direct association with Obamacare besides leading the National Prevention Council, which organizes a national strategy on health promotion and prevention. Murthy was appointed to that council in 2011.
Kenneth Moritsugu, who was a deputy surgeon general in the Clinton administration and an acting surgeon general in the George W. Bush administration, told POLITICO that he’s not “for or against” Murthy’s nomination but stressed that experience in the public health field and a track record of success are the top qualifications for a surgeon general.
“There is concern regarding an individual’s background and experience,” Moritsugu said. “In addition, the surgeon general, while politically appointed, needs to become science-based upon acceptance and confirmation and swearing-in. Science-based is extremely important in being a successful spokesperson to and for the American people, and individuals who are younger in their career may not possess those capabilities.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, Murthy is likely to be asked whether he plans to speak publicly on Obamacare and about his history with Doctors for America. He could also face questions about a series of tweets from his personal Twitter account that link gun safety with health and whether he has the background needed for the job, which does bring a potential public-health bully pulpit.
Murthy’s supporters say that his political activism and leadership skills will bring dynamism to a job that hasn’t been very high profile in many years.
David Satcher, who was surgeon general in the Clinton administration, said he’s impressed with Murthy’s résumé and has no qualms over his age or lack of experience in the commissioned corps.
“I don’t believe the president should be constrained in his nominations to people who are in the commissioned corps,” Satcher said. “Because I think sometimes the president uses political appointments to try to make an impact,” he said, noting that Murthy’s nomination could boost diversity and further outreach to underserved communities.
Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the HELP Committee and the Senate’s strongest advocate for public health, said he supports Murthy’s nomination and that he expects him to be a public face of prevention and wellness.
“What I’m hopeful [for] is that the surgeon general will begin to highlight the aspect of the Affordable Care Act that goes to exactly what he should be doing — prevention and keeping people healthy in the first place,” Harkin said last week. “This needs to be more publicly supported and talked about by the surgeon general. So I hope that’s one of the things that he will do, assuming he gets the position. I think he probably will.”
Ali Khan, a friend of Murthy’s who is a physician at Iora Health and on the faculty at Yale-New Haven Hospital, said the fact that Murthy is “only slightly gray and not perfectly gray” shouldn’t be a roadblock.
“The nomination makes perfect sense for the simple reason that he has an absolutely extraordinary depth of experience,” Khan said. “I’m thinking about not only questions of medicine and health care but really around public leadership and deep-seated community service.”
Khan said Murthy’s wide range of experience — particularly his M.B.A. and entrepreneurship — should be seen as a positive in an age when physicians are being pushed to use technology to advance health.
If confirmed, Murthy is expected to be a vocal surgeon general, a stark contrast from Benjamin, who held the job for most of the Obama administration. Benjamin was nominated after television correspondent Sanjay Gupta, a physician, took his name out of the running for the job in the early days of the administration.
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Bruno de Oliveira Jayme, Ph.D.
I’m a verb
Inside my Classrooms
Inside my Studio
Complete CV
Cycling around the world
I am becoming an artist everyday through my connections, interconnections, and misconnections with my physical world(s). The dirty and noisy streets of São Paulo, the uncomfortable–comfortable Canadian way of life, and the struggles of the social movements in Latin America inform my art education practices, and for over 20 years, I’ve been exploring popular art as pedagogical tools with the ultimate goal of promoting social change.
I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba, where I research, supervise graduate students, and teach undergraduate and graduate courses on creative and critical pedagogies, curriculum, arts–based research, qualitative methodologies, and environmental adult education.
In my first postdoctoral studies, at the University of Victoria, I investigated the nonverbal ways in which children with hearing loss, access ideas and develop their understanding of 3D objects in art and mathematic classes. In my second postdoctoral research, conducted at Royal Roads University in the Research by Design Laboratory, I explore the role of graphic novels in including youth in political discourses on climate change.
In my Ph.D. research, titled: “The heART of Social Movements and Learning” and funded by both SSHRC and IDRC (International Development Research Centre), which I combined arts-based methodologies and popular education to trouble discrimination suffered by recyclers in Canada and Brazil. By working with recyclers from São Paulo, I created a traveling art gallery that aimed to: (a) monitor individual and community empowerment as an outcome of such art creation and exhibition; (b) evaluating the effectiveness of art projects to alleviate stigmatization experienced by recyclers; and (c) determining whether using art as a communication tool leads to enhanced participatory policy-making processes. My Ph.D. studies unfolded in the context of the Participatory Sustainable Waste Management (PSWM), which was an interdisciplinary partnership between the University of Victoria and Universidade de São Paulo. The PSWM is a project funded by CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) that was designed to empower and strengthen recycling co-operatives, and promote social inclusion of recyclers in urban areas of Brazil.
As an art educator, I was honoured to be the co-director of Tumbleweeds Theatre Company and Acting School for 12 years. Tumbleweeds was a non profit community theatre where we worked with youth from all ages that were within the spectrum of autism to create and perform meaningful plays with and for our local community.
In the past, I have taught drawing and painting at the Mosaic Learning Society. There, I have had the honour of meeting brilliant youth from different spectrum of autism. I’ve learned so much from them. Nowadays I do run a home base art studio where I develop new approaches to acrylics, projections, spray paint, oils, while exploring the magical world of contemporary expressionism and abstracts.
2 thoughts on “I’m a verb”
notltelling on February 27, 2014 at 2:42 am said:
I love your style! Keep it up 🙂
Alexis on March 21, 2014 at 12:16 am said:
Can I say that you are an inspiration. I just love you.
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Studio of Performing Arts
Schedule/Calendar
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Jeanne Dion Arsenault,
BA in Dance
Jeanne fell in love with dance at the age of 2 and a half years old at Linda's School of Dance in the town she grew up in Salem, NH. She continued her education in dance, graduating from Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales in Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance. Along with regular technique dance classes she also studied; Biology, Kinesiology: the study of kinesthetic movement, Labanotation: writing of dance, and Child Psychology and Development.
She returned to her home town to open her own studio that she has successfully run for 26 years. She has volunteered to choreograph for local elementary schools, high schools and taught dance at Salem High School for one semester. After moving the studio to Windham, NH she found her forever home in Atkinson, NH where the studio is currently located. There is no greater pride then having alumni return with their own children to give them the gift and love of dance. This makes the studio seem more like family. Her method of teaching is to help a child expand their creativeness and enhance their overall idea of dance as an art form in a positive atmosphere where they can be cared for and listened to. She has had dancers and assistant teachers go on to be dance instructors, elementary teachers, performers in Disney World, Florida and actresses in New York and California. Her Competition Team performs at several benefits to give back to her community and has won medals and high score awards at several competitions. Just recently the Competition Team was accepted and performed at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. This was a very proud moment for her and her dancers.
A Dream Come True!
Jenica Arsenault,
Jenica recently graduated Dean College with a Bachelor's Degree in Dance, concentrating in studio management. She began dancing at the age of three at the Studio of Performing Arts, and throughout the years blossomed into a choreographer and teacher. At Dean College, Jenica has been in many performances including, Faculty Showcase, Arts Mosaic, and Dance Company. In addition to her dance, Jenica also wrote a book titled, Movement Is a Must for K-12 Education: How to Make It Happen. In this book, Jenica discusses the importance of movement within education, in and outside the classroom. Jenica traveled to Disney World in Orlando, Florida and continued her education in the Disney College Program. There she worked in the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in Cinderella's Castle in Magic Kingdom. She learned more about the business side of her education, and realized that teaching children is truly what she wanted to pursue in life. Jenica is a person that believes dance is so important for everyone because it teaches them discipline, strength, determination, and provides them with a sense of self confidence needed in everyday life. Jenica is excited to embark on her new journey at the Studio of Performing Arts.
Ashley Charlebois
She was bitten by the bug of dance when she was three years old and never looked back. Ashley grew up dancing at the Carlene Nazarian's Dance Center in Salem, NH and danced there till she was 18. For years she traveled all over the US taking master classes and conventions hosted by leading choreographers. She is trained in all aspects of dance, but her love is Hip Hop. She has learned from Napoleon and Tabitha, Darren Henson, David Scott, Wade Robson, Dena Rizzo, Geo Hubela and so many more. She has taught at multiple dance studios over my career in both NH and MA. She has had students go off and compete in the International Hip Hop Competition in Germany where one student placed 11th in the world. Other students have gone off to lead the "Dancer's Life" dancing with celebrities like Lady Gaga, Becky G. and more. She has loved Hip Hop before judges knew how to judge it and very excited and motivated to instill that same love and respect to every class she teaches.
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Have you ever pretended something to be real so strongly or so frequently that you forget it never actually existed? For me, I’m afraid to go swimming because I’m scared a shark will eat me. I’m not even talking about in the ocean, where that is a legitimate fear, I’m talking about in swimming pools. I’m not a stupid person. I know there’s no possible way for a shark to get into my pool. There’s no way for it to survive the chemicals in the water. There’s no way for me to miss seeing it in the crystal clear water. Yet I still have that fear in the back of my mind any time I go swimming. I’m sure it started as a game. Someone would pretend to be a shark and try to “eat” the other swimmers, but fear is a powerful emotion that doesn’t need logic. That fear of sharks isn’t helped any by classic movies like Jaws.
If you’ve never seen Steven Spielberg’s classic thriller, what is wrong with you? Go watch it now, I’ll wait.
http://www.deadpark.com/wp-content/uploads/Vertigo-Shot.mp4
I love the use of the vertigo shot in this scene. It’s probably my favorite scene from the whole movie.
Now that we’ve all seen the movie, I’ll keep this brief. Released in 1975, Jaws was a summer thriller about a great white shark who was terrorizing and eating beach goers of the fictional Amity Island summer resort town. This prompted the police chief, together with a marine biologist and a local shark hunter to hunt down the man eating shark. Not only was Jaws the highest grossing film of the summer, it held the title for highest grossing film of all time for 2 years before being dethroned by the original star wars movie.
Despite the death of the shark at the end of the first movie, the Jaws franchise went on to make multiple sequels. The final film, Jaws 4: The revenge, was released in 1987 and, unlike its predecessor, it is considered by many to be one of the worst movie sequels of all time. It was even nominated for the worst movie of the year when it was released. This didn’t stop LJN from producing a game loosely based on it that same year, simple titled “Jaws”. Now, when I say it was based on the movie, what I really mean is that they both feature a shark named Jaws. Actually, even that isn’t technically correct. To my knowledge the shark in the movie was never named, and behind the scenes he was named Bruce. So really, they both have sharks, that’s the only similarity.
Most of the game is spent between two screens, the first being the overworld map where you sail your boat around a small stretch of ocean. Here, you will navigate between two ports to buy power-ups, as well as avoid or hunt Jaws. At first, you can only tell where Jaws is when you see his fin coming up out of the water to chase you, but your first power-up equips you with a transmitter to tell how close he is to you.
The second screen is where the bulk of the actual gameplay will take place. Occasionally while sailing around, you will hit something in the water. This will apparently cause your boat to explode, forcing you to swim around in the water until a new boat shows up to rescue you. While in the water, you have the amazing ability to shoot harpoons out of your eyes. They’re clearly coming out of the diver’s eyes and not the harpoon gun in his hand.
You will defend yourself mostly against jellyfish, which swim up from the bottom, as well as sting rays, which will swim side to side. While you wait for a new boat to come, you are free to kill as many sea creatures as you can. Or don’t, it doesn’t matter, just wait for a new boat if that’s all you want.
you might want to kill a few of them though, because they will give you points and more importantly drop shells you can trade for power-ups at the ports.
Death Count: 8
The jellyfish are the weaker of the two, and will die after a single hit. However, I found them to be much more annoying. Nearly all of my deaths were caused by these boogers of the sea. The problem is that they swim up from below the bottom of the screen. This doesn’t give you a lot of reaction time when you are down there trying to pick up your shells before they disappear. Also as you increase in power, they start to float around rather randomly instead of straight up like they used to.
Death Count:14
There are also small sharks that will occasionally show up. These guys require quite a few hits to kill, and will track you as they swim from side to side. Unlike the other enemies, once they get past the edge of the screen, they will turn around and come at you again. They aren’t too hard to maneuver around, so they aren’t a huge challenge. It’s also very beneficial to try to kill them. They are guaranteed to drop a shell, and I’m not positive, but killing one of them always seemed to activate the bonus round for me.
The final enemy you can face is Jaws himself. Obviously you’ll encounter him if you run into his fin, but occasionally he’ll show up on his own if he was nearby when you entered the water. It’s sad that Jaws is somewhat of a joke in this game. He’s a huge target, he moves slower than any other enemy, and for some reason he’s unable to attack you if you are hugging the surface of the water. My whole time playing, I think Jaws only killed me once, and that was because I was swimming after him, got too close, and hit his tail. He does have a lot of health though, and your starting power level simply isn’t up to the task of killing him.
Once you collect enough shells while out at sea, head to one of the ports to buy your power upgrades. There are 9 total power levels, each with increasing cost. This power level only seems to affect the damage you do to Jaws himself because the normal enemies, like the sting rays, still seemed to take just as long to kill.
I mentioned earlier that occasionally you will get a bonus round, and I bring this up now because of how game breaking this bonus actually is. In the bonus round, you are flying a plane back and forth dropping cannon balls onto jellyfish swimming in the water. A good bonus round could net you 6 or 7 shells or even more if you’re really good. That’s great. You need those shells for the upgrades, but there are two problems with this. First off, because it’s a bonus round, you’re in no danger; these are just a free reward. Second, and more importantly, you don’t really need a lot of shells to begin with. To max out your level, you need 5 shells for the transmitter, and another 115 shells to max out to level 9. But maxing your level isn’t even close to necessary. Starting at level 3, you have enough power to kill Jaws if you want. It might take two encounters, but being able to hug to top of the water makes that easy. Shoot him in the face, hug the surface, and then shoot his tail. Rinse and repeat until he’s dead. Including the transmitter, you only need 13 shells to be powerful enough to beat the game. With a bonus round, you are capable of doing that far too quickly. On my final run, I ONLY played the bonus rounds, choosing to simply wait out the regular levels to avoid dying. When your bonus round makes the rest of the game obsolete, you’ve done something wrong.
Once you’re happy with your power level, it’s time to go kill Jaws. It’s not as easy as just getting his health down to zero though. Once he’s out of health, you will be taken to the true final confrontation with Jaws. The screen changes to a kind of first person view of the front of the boat. Your task is to line Jaws up directly in front of the boat, use a strobe to make him leap out of the water, then impale him with the front of the boat. This is a horrible boss fight, as well as a horrible plan in real life. Sail boats don’t exactly have the ability to suddenly speed up and impale a shark leaping in front of you. The best you could hope for would be the shark committing suicide on the front of your boat by impaling itself. As for the game version, it requires such perfect timing that it borders on impossible. I spent literally an hour with a save state just practicing this 1 minute fight trying to get the timing right. That’s not fun. It’s even less fun when you run out of strobes and find out Jaws is back to full health and needs to be killed again before you can make another attempt.
http://www.deadpark.com/wp-content/uploads/Jaws-Ending.mp4
The ending isn’t anything to be too happy about either. Jaws sinks to the bottom of the ocean and you fly away in a plane. The End. No “Congraturations” no “A Winner is you” no nothing, just “The End”.
At the end of the day, I have mixed feelings about this game. On a strictly technical level, this is a terrible game. The world map is tiny. With rare exception, the graphics are unimpressive. Worst of all, the gameplay is overly simplistic and repetitive. At the same time, it has that classic arcade charm to it, like space invaders.
The difference is in the details though. Games like space invaders get a pass for their simplicity because of their age. They also remain fun and challenging because of the fact that there is no real end. You just play and play as it gets harder and harder until you eventually can’t take anymore and die. Jaws doesn’t have this benefit. The NES is still an older system now, but it was capable of so much more than what Jaws presented. Also the fact that it does have a definitive ending robs it of some of its lasting charm. The final confrontation with Jaws is really what kills this game though. It was a wonderful concept, but so poorly executed that my whole view of the game dropped to near hatred.
It’s not often that a game gets less enjoyable the better you get at it, but that’s what Jaws manages to do. It was fun at first when I was terrible at it and learning what to do, but when I finally started to get good, it became tedious and annoying. Combine that with the horrible boss battle, and terribly unmemorable ending and you aren’t left with much to enjoy.
Death Count: 25
Fear the pool shark!
I hope you enjoyed Jaws. If you did, like and follow me on Facebook. Also leave your comments, suggestions, and recommendations. If you’re feeling real generous, you can even Donate to help me keep the site going. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time.
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Change FedEx To Win
This is a forum for FedEx employee's to communicate and educate each other , on the importance of becoming a Union company. This forum is open to any FedEx employee who is interested in working towards a secure future and for our Unionized brothers and sisters to help us learn the importance of a Union in the work place.
To visit the The National Labor Relation Board website CLICK HERE
A Brief History of Labor Day
The origins of Labor Day are more than a century old.
The first Labor Day parade in New York City was held in September 1982. Two men are credited with playing an important role not only in bringing about the parade but the holiday as well. Matthew Maguire, a machinist from Paterson, N.J., and Peter J. McGuire, a New York City carpenter who helped found the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, are said to have suggested a holiday to honor working people in the United States. In 1887, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day a legal holiday, and in 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday.
How unions help all workers
by Lawrence Mishel and Matthew Walters
Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions' effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections.
Some of the conclusions are:
• Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.
• Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.
• Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.
• The impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages.
• The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.
• Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer.
• Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.
• Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).
Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections.
Posted by irudedog at 08:02
I want to thank Matthew Maguire, for introducing a holiday so that we can spend our last summer weekend with our families; having a great BBQ with family and friends, but for me was going to Laughlin Nevada and appreciating my family.
I really appreciate my family on this labor weekend, because I got to see my daughters more and realize how fast they have grown on me, my daughters are always going to school and working, and one of my daughters, who I admired for also being a great mother of two wonderful grandchildren, my daughter Joanna strives to better herself in life, and shows that she is not a quitter for being a single parent, and Joanna said to me this weekend that labor day was one of her favorite holidays, because we as a family would bond together more and appreciate each other, and realize that work can keep us apart.
Now I also have a son name Joseph, who is going to be a sophomore high school student on September 2007, and spend time and appreciate him on this labor weekend, I gave Joseph a chance to drive and navigate the boat around Laughlin River, and was a great driver on the River, showing great length of safety and courtesy to others.
Joseph is a big fan of James R.Hoffa, saw the movie with Jack Nicholson, and read the book of Hoffa, the real story, Joseph said no matter what Robert Kennedy said about Jimmy; Jimmy was a great leader for the working man and took care of the working class.
Joseph also admired James P.Hoffa, who he says is a true leader for the working people, just like his father, and hopes to someday meet him, and Joseph also always gives his gratitude to Patrick D.Kelly of local 952, who looks at him as his mentor.
My wife Alba, believe unions are good for the working class, she said that without union her father and mother wouldn’t have medical benefits and a great pension, from the carpenters unions, she also thanks the unions for this wonderful holiday, Labor Day, because she also remembers those happy weekends spending with her family, and also alba is a management for her company.
So I hope from me Joe Nuno, says that everybody out there had a happy Labor weekend and a safe weekend.
Tue Sep 04, 01:15:00 AM 2007
Q: What international holiday is Labor Day’s closet relative?
A: May Day. In 1889, a workers’ congress in Paris voted to support the U.S. labor movement’s demand for an eight-hour workday. It chose May 1, 1890, as a day of demonstrations in favor of the eight-hour day. Afterward, May 1 became a holiday called Labor Day in many nations. It resembles the September holiday in the United States.
Tue Sep 04, 08:44:00 PM 2007
yesterday labor day
Today, the term "labor" can be applied to strong professional unions, the national holiday, and even academic departments in colleges and universities. The modern American labor movement has grown from its roots in the colonial craft guilds to national professional associations with membership numbering millions. For many, Labor Day may simply signal the end of the summer months. But for the American workforce, the holiday remembers those who have labored for our country since its founding.
Labor unions are the negotiators and watchdogs for the American workforce. A means of collectively bargaining with employers for fair wages and decent working conditions, labor unions are organized into two types: craft unions (skilled laborers) and industrial unions (laborers in the same industry, regardless of skill).
2007 Labor Day Message
Labor Day is our holiday. It is a time to stop and reflect on the many contributions of North America’s workers, to celebrate our accomplishments and to honor those who struggled before us.
This Labor Day, we are at an important crossroads. We have endured much and persevered through some of the toughest times in our union’s history. Now, we have the opportunity to turn those tough times into a better future for our members.
It is appropriate that we just concluded our National Staff Conference on the eve of Labor Day. IAM representatives from all over North America met to consider what we must do to ensure our union stays strong for years to come.
An important part of securing our common future is making sure the people who govern our nations are on the side of working people. We took an historic step toward that end this week at our National Staff Conference. We endorsed two U.S. presidential primary candidates, Hillary Clinton from the Democratic party and Mike Huckabee from the Republican party . We made this decision after four candidates, three Democrats and one Republican, agreed to appear at the Staff Conference and explain their vision for working people in America.
We made this historic dual endorsement after careful consideration of the candidates’ appearances, and extensive polling of our members. And, we endorsed a candidate from both parties because in the struggle ahead to fight for our members and their families we must all be united by our common bond as union members.
No matter what party, no matter what religion, no matter what ethnic background, we all want the same things: a secure job; health care when a loved one gets sick; a good education for our kids; a secure retirement and dignity on the job.
So, as we gather over this holiday weekend to celebrate Labor Day, let us focus not on our differences, but on the common bonds that unite us as union members. For as Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And this Labor Day we must begin a journey that will unite all of us to make sure the Labor Movement grows and millions more workers in North America can live better as union members.
Finally, let us remember and wish a safe return to the working men and women who have volunteered to serve in the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world.
Best wishes for a safe and happy Labor Day,
R. Thomas Buffenbarger
Labor Day, which was created to honor the working class, has been a national holiday in America for over 100 years. It is celebrated on the first Monday in September. In 1882, the first celebration was held by the Central Labor Union in New York City. It soon became a tradition in states across America, and in 1894, the U.S. Congress made the day a national holiday.
The original Labor Day holiday came complete with an annual parade and picnic, during which union members would walk through the streets carrying a banner with the seal or symbol of their union. The local members would often wear their work clothes and carry the tools of their trade. Parade floats would depict union members at work. “What they were doing was celebrating. They were celebrating the fact that they had a union and they were taking pride in their craft as skilled workers,” says Robert Cherny, a history professor at San Francisco State University.
Labor Day is also officially recognized in Canada. The provinces of Ottawa and Toronto held the first parades to honor workers in 1872, and Parliament, like the U.S. Congress, officially recognized the day as a holiday in 1894. A similar celebration is held in other countries but it is celebrated on May Day. “May 1 has come to be a socialist holiday, but both days started in the United States,” Cherny says.
Today, Americans see Labor Day largely as the last long weekend of the summer season. Indeed, most modern celebrations of Labor Day do not resemble the historical day as it started, says Cherny. “Labor Day has become a more generalized holiday,” he says. “Some see it as a day off of work and a chance to go shopping, rather than a celebration of labor unions.”
While Labor Day parades are very rare now because of the decline of unions, the Labor Day picnic still occurs in some cities. These picnics often have singing, political speeches and family activities. “What has survived around the country is the picnic, representing some continuation from an earlier period,” says Cherny. Thus, many people have informal, non-political picnics or cookouts on Labor Day, as well.
NASCAR honors its roots. Exhibits part of Labor Day festivities ... admission free with a union card (non-union members are to pay an entry fee). ...
As part of activities marking the 70th anniversary of the Sit-Down Strike in Flint, three NASCAR-related exhibits with UAW sponsorship are in Flint for the public to see today and Sunday.
The free exhibits, which arrived in three semitrailers Friday morning, are among numerous activities taking place Labor Day weekend in the Flint Cultural Center and other areas. The activities are sponsored by UAW Region 1-C and the Flint Cultural Center under the theme "Ordinary People Changing the World."
The NASCAR exhibits include hands-on racing simulators, a miniature racing track and show cars of NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler. Also on display are the red, white and blue Corvette pace car that led the 2006 Indianapolis 500, a Ford F-150 pace truck and a Shelby GT500 pace car.
The exhibits, in the parking lot next to the Sloan Museum in the Cultural Center, are open 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
"We're up here showing our solidarity," said Gary Alred, team leader of the UAW-Dodge Motorsports exhibit.
Alred said people coming to the exhibit will not only learn about NASCAR and the UAW, they'll be a part of history. He explained that this is the first time the UAW-Dodge, UAW-GM and UAW-Ford car racing exhibits have all been on display in the same location at a non-racing event.
"That's very unusual," Alred said. "It's the first time for us (UAW-Dodge) to do any kind of event in Flint."
The display in Flint was coordinated by Duane Zuckschwerdt, director of UAW Region 1-C, which is based in Flint.
Your Rights during Union Organizing
You have the right to organize a union to negotiate with your employer over your terms and conditions of employment. This includes your ri...
NEW NRLB DECISIONS FOR FEDEX FREIGHT
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FedEx plans to scrap employee bonuses this year Incentives program expected to be casualty of economic downturn
By Wayne Risher Updated: March 20, 2019 11:30 PM CT | Published: March 20, 2019 5:10 PM CT FedEx plans to scr...
FedEx Is A Self Insured Company
This means that they pay for their own medical claims. there are two kinds of self insured groups: fully self insured and partially self in...
My Annual Disappoint Letter From FedEx
I recently received my information packet for my pension. From my Viking/ FedEx pension I will be receiving $648/ month. And up to now I wil...
Meet Mark Link, Union Buster
Since the merger in January of this year, Mark Link has been harassing and intimidating pro union drivers at our Mira Loma Ca. service cente...
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About Shovel TimeThe full scoop
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International Intrigue: Why There’s No Shame in Dining at US Chains Abroad
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Where it all started. And ended (in 2006).
I was blogging about food before there were blogs. This is what I have to show for it. Read more... Email me, if you'd like.
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Lakenden
Добавь и расскажи о своем Имени и Фамилии!
Фамилий - 64709
Искать Точное совпадение слова Совпадение начала слова
ЗНАЧЕНИЕ: This interesting and unusual name, with variant spellings Lakenden, Lakenton, Lackinton etc., recorded in England church registers from the mid 16th Century, is of locational origin from a place in Somerset called Lackington. Recorded as 'Wyslagentona' in the Domesday Book of 1086 and as 'Wichtlakington' in the 1225 'Fine Court Rolls of Somerset', the place was so called from the old English pre 7th Century personal name Wihtlac, plus 'ing', people of, and 'tun', a farm or settlement, hence; 'the settlement of Wihtlac's people'. On January 23rd 1611 Robert Lackington, an infant, was christened in St. David's, Exeter, Devon and on November 13th 1635 William Lackongton was christened in St. Mary Whitechapel, Stepney, London. An interesting namebearer was James Lackington (1746 - 1815), bookseller, his shop in Finsbury square, known as the 'Temple of the Muses', is one of the sights of London. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Lakendon, which was dated February 13th 1549, at Little Hempston, Devonshire, during the reign of King Edward V1, known as 'The Boy King', 1547 - 1553. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to 'develop' often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
«Я в лесу нашёл грибок, -
Рассказал нам Филиппок. -
Я давно его искал,
Палкой кочки разгребал.
А стоял он под сосной,
Гриб красивый и большой.
И листок к нему прилип.
Гриб зовётся боровик...»
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Polikarpov I-16
Polikarpov I - 16
I have to offer a correction to the information that you have listed for the Poliparkov I-16, which is claimed to be the first cantilever-winged monoplane fighter with retractable gear, going into production in May 1934. However, not only did the P-30 go into production earlier, in January 1934, but was far more advanced in construction. Unlike the I-16, the P-30 was of all-metal construction, had a fully-enclosed cockpit, and a turbocharger for its V-1710 engine to boot. Although its P-26 stablemate was marginally faster below about 9,000 feet, at medium and high altitudes the P-30 would easily walk away from the Peashooter, or anything else in its day....Best regards...Ron Easley
Polikarpov I-16 Rata
A tiny monoplane whose achievements totally belied its size, the I-16 was the first fighter anywhere to mount an 20-mm cannon. Blooded in Spain where it was dubbed Rata (Rat) the I-16's nickname followed it into the Second World War and it became synonymous with Russian tenacity in the air, its pilots ramming the enemy if all other tactics failed.
Conceived during the 1930s 'biplane versus monoplane ' years when nobody was quite sure which configuration would be most effective in actual combat in the future, the I-16 was a remarkable aircraft.
In 1933, Polikarpov decided to opt for a monoplane and he created the smallest possible airframe using mixed materials and it became the leading Soviet fighter for nearly a decade.That this was a little too long was shown after the Germans invaded in June 1911, the I-16 being declared obsolete the same month.
The first I-16 flew on December 31,1933, the low power of the M-22 engine being duly noted. There was no alternative powerplant unfortunately although the second example was flown in 1934 with an imported US Cyclone F3 engine.
Production went ahead in May 1934 despite the I-16's shortcomings which included a lack of trimmers, stability best described as marginal, wi a tendency to stall, and engine vibration. A two-seat unarmed trainer was built as UTI02, the fuselage of the model being used as a basis for the UTI-3 trainer. Other trainers conversions followed, based on later Rata models.
The main first production I-16 was the type - 4 which had a slightly longer cowling, a Hamilton propeller and other changes.The armored I-16Sh was a ground attack variant, with four ShKAS cannon and a 220 lb bomb load. In 1938 the I-16P appeared with long-barrelled wing cannon. This configuration, along with the fuselage guns, became the standard armament of the succeeding Type 17 and later models.
The I-16's model designations extended to the Type 24, 27, 29, and 30, production continuing throughout 1939 and into 1941. Most of these were powered by the M-62 or M-63 engine and all late-production I-16s had a variety of armament options, including RS-82 rockets under the wings or a bomb load of 1,102 lb.
In service the Rata or Mosca (Fly) could be a formidable opponent, as some German airmen found to their cost - if they could not bring enemy bombers down by conventional means, some Russian pilots would attempt to ram their adversaries which invariably resulted in the loss of both aircraft involved. this air combat tactic, born out of desperation in the early days of Barbarossa, was know as a 'Taran' or ramming victory. The first occurred when an I-16 rammed an He 111 one hour after the German invasion began. In this case the Rata pilot was killed although physical contact with enemy aircraft did not always result in the demise of the Russian pilot. And of course it was not confined to pilots flight the I-16!
Polikarpov I-16 Rata/Mosca
The Polikarpov I-16 was a Soviet fighter aircraft of revolutionary design; it was the world's first cantilever-winged monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear. The I-16 was introduced in the mid-1930s and formed the backbone of the Soviet Air Force at the beginning of World War II. The diminutive fighter prominently featured in the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War where it was called the Rata (Rat) by the Nationalists or Mosca (Fly) by the Republicans, and the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. The Finnish nickname for I-16 was Siipiorava ("Flying Squirrel").
While working on the Polikarpov I-15 biplane, Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov began designing an advanced monoplane fighter. It featured cutting-edge innovations such as retractable landing gear and a fully enclosed cockpit, and was optimized for speed with a short stubby fuselage (similar to Gee Bee R-1) and a Wright Cyclone radial engine in a NACA cowling. The aircraft was small, light and simple to build.
Full scale work on the TsKB-12 prototype began in June 1933 and the aircraft was accepted into production on 22 November 1933, a month before it took to the air. The TsKB-12 was of mixed construction using a wooden monocoque fuselage and wings based around a KhMA chrome-molybdenum steel alloy wing spar, dural ribs and D1 aluminum alloy skinning on the center and leading edges, with the remaining portions of the wings fabric covered. Another modern feature were the ailerons which ran almost the entire trailing edge of the wing and also operated as flaps (in the manner of more modern flaperons) by drooping 15°. The cockpit was covered by a 16 in wide canopy which featured an Aldis tubular gun sight which could slide back and forth on runners fitted with bungee cords of rubber. A 59.4 US gal fuel tank was fitted directly in front of the cockpit. The main gear was fully retractable by a hand-crank. The armament consisted of a pair of 7.62 mm (0.30 in) ShKAS machine guns in the wings, mounted on the outboard side of the main gear and carried 900 rounds of ammo.
These features were proposed at first by Andrei N. Tupolev, however the NII V-VS was more concerned about the stresses a typical combat aircraft was subjected to in combat, and initially considered the risk too great. However TsAGI, with the help of the 3rd Design Brigade under the leadership of Pavel O. Sukhoi and Aleksandr P. Putylov eventually convinced NII V-VS that what was being proposed was not only feasible, but would enhance the aircraft's performance.
The TsKB-12 was designed around the Wright Cyclone SR-1820-F-3 nine cylinder radial engine (rated at 710 hp); a license to build this engine was being negotiated. As the license was not yet approved, Polikarpov was asked to settle for the less powerful M-22 (Soviet-built version of the Gnome-Rhone Jupiter 9ASB which itself was a licensed version of the Bristol Jupiter VI ) with 480 hp. This was deemed acceptable because the projected top speed still exceeded 185 mph.
The M-22 powered TsKB-12 first took to the air on 30 December 1933 with the famous Soviet test pilot Valery Chkalov at the controls. The second TsKB-12 with a Cyclone engine and three-bladed propeller flew in January of the following year. Initial government trials in February 1934 revealed very good maneuverability but the aircraft did not tolerate abrupt control inputs. Thus the TsKB-12 was deemed dangerous to fly and all aerobatics were forbidden. The M-22 version was preferred due to vibration of the Cyclone-powered aircraft. Pilots commented early on about difficulty in climbing into the cockpit, a trait that persisted through I-16's service life. Before continuing test flights the designers had to answer the question of spin behavior. Wind tunnel testing suggested that TsKB-12 with its short tail would enter an unrecoverable flat spin, but real-life trials were necessary to confirm this. Since Cyclone engines were rare it was decided to risk the M-22 prototype for this purpose. On 1 March and 2 March 1934, Chkalov performed 75 spins and discovered that the aircraft had very benign stall behavior (dipping a wing and recovering without input from the pilot when airspeed increased) and intentional spins could be easily terminated by placing controls in the neutral position. The stories of vicious spin behavior of the I-16 perpetuated in modern literature is unfounded (perhaps extrapolated from Gee Bee experience). In fact, the I-16's stablemate, the biplane Polikarpov I-153, exhibited much worse spin characteristics.
Service trials of the new fighter, designated I-16, began on 22 March 1934. The M-22 prototype reached 223 mph. The manually-retracted landing gear was prone to jamming and required considerable strength from the pilot. Most of the test flights were performed with the gear extended. 1 May 1934, the M-22 prototype participated in the flyover of the Red Square. Approximately 30 I-16 Type 1 aircraft were delivered, but were not assigned to any V-VS fighter eskadriliya. Most pilots who flew the I-16 Type 1 for evaluation purposes did not find the plane to have any redeeming characteristics. Regardless of pilot opinion, much attention was focused on the Cyclone powered aircraft and the M-25 (the license built Cyclone). On 14 April 1934, the Cyclone prototype was damaged when one of the landing gear legs collapsed while it was taxiing.
The third prototype with a Cyclone engine incorporated a series of aerodynamic improvements and was delivered for government trials on 7 September 1934. The top speed of 270 mph no longer satisfied the Air Force, who now wanted the experimental Nazarov M-58 engine and 290 mph. Subsequently, the M-22 powered version entered production at Factory 21 in Nizhny Novgorod and Factory 39 in Moscow. Because it was the fourth aircraft produced by these factories it received the designation I-16 Type 4. Type 4 aircraft fitted with these new engines required a slightly changed airframe, these changes included armour plating for the pilot and changes to the retract doors to allow for complete closure.
The M-25 fitted I-16, the I-16 Type 5, featured more changes, including a new engine cowling which was slightly smaller in diameter, had nine forward facing shuttered openings to control cooling flow and a redesigned exhaust with eight individual outlet stubs. The M-25 was rated at 635 hp at sea level and 700 hp at (7,546 ft. Due to the poor quality of the canopy glazing, the I-16 Type 5 pilots typically left the canopy open or removed the rear portion completely. By the time the Type 5 arrived, it was the world's lightest production fighter (3,219 lb), as well as the worlds fastest, able to reach speeds of 282 mph at altitude and 245 mph at sea level. While the Type 5 could not perform the high-g maneuvers of other fighters, it possessed superior speed and climb rates, and had extremely responsive aileron control which gave the Type 5 a very good roll rate which lead to precision maneuvers in loops and split-Ss.
A total of 7,005 single-seat and 1,639 two-seat trainer variants were produced.
Empty weight: 3,285 lb
Loaded weight: 4,279 lb
Max takeoff weight: 4,519 lb
Powerplant: 1× Shvetsov M-63 supercharged air-cooled radial engine, 1,100 hp driving a two-blade propeller
Maximum speed: 326 mph at 9,845 ft
Range: 435 mi (with drop tanks)
Wing loading: 27 lb/ft²
Power/mass: 0.21 hp/lb
Time to altitude: 5.8 minutes to 16,405 ft
2 × fixed forward-firing 7.62 mm (0.30 in) ShKAS machine guns in upper cowling
2 × fixed forward-firing 20 mm (0.79 in) ShVAK cannons in the wings
6 × unguided RS-82 rockets or up to 1,102 lb of bombs
This fabulous Polikarpov I-16 cutaway comes in full size 8.5x11 PDF for FREE included in your MyModels folder!
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Carl Kissin Improv
WHo'S KISSIN?
About Carl
Carl Kissin performed more than 4,000 shows for one of the country's premier sketch and improvisational comedy groups, Chicago City Limits. He was the show's head writer and director of their National Touring Company.
He has performed his own material on the syndicated sketch comedy show Kwik Witz, as well as on Comedy Central, The Joan Rivers Show, The Jackie Mason Show, and Today (after which Katie Couric requested that Carl write special material for her speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner).
Carl developed and directed sketches for the pilot episodes of NBC's Live on Tape and was an original staff writer and actor for the MTV show Mouth to Mouth and for The VH1 Eggman.
In other acting venues, Carl has performed in Eric Bogosian's play Talk Radio at the Public Theater, and in Oliver Stone's movie version of the play, as the character Glen.
In addition to commercials and voice-overs, his voice has been heard on National Public Radio, on As the World Turns, and on ABC’s Olympic coverage, dubbing foreign athletes.
A three-time winner of the Manhattan Monologue Slam, Carl presented an evening of his monologues in the solo show End of the Line and put his day-to-day life on stage in Carl Kissin: Reality TV—Live on Stage at the WorkShop Theater.
In a brief stint as a copywriter, he won an International Monitor Award for his commercials for Jamesway department stores. Carl is proud to have been invited to perform his Ed Koch impersonation for former Mayor Dinkins at Hizzoner's 60th birthday party and of being named the Outgoing Phone Message King in a Fox 5 News feature.
In the realm of musical theater, Carl has written and staged more than 300 song parodies for Chicago City Limits. A member of the prestigious BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, Carl has twice been honored in their Smoker (a greatest hits night). He wrote the book and lyrics for Depressed, Depressed!, as well as Date of a Lifetime (2011 New York Musical Theatre Festival Award for Excellence in Writing—Lyrics) and Alone World (2011 West Village Musical Theatre Festival Awards for Best Lyrics and Best Book).
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E3 Cortex
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With Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on the prime ministership tottering, our eyes are on Yair Lapid. Not only does he believe in the two-state solution, but he is a man who puts Israel’s security first. For Israelis who understandably regard security as the number one priority, Lapid’s sure grasp of this area does much to recommend him.
Lapid’s most recent remarks on security came at a panel discussion of a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) of Tel Aviv University on January 15. There, he throws cold water on Netanyahu’s claim to be the only one who can keep Israel secure. In fact, Lapid can do better, he claims, criticizing Netanyahu for not being serious about consulting with Israel’s best experts on defense and security who are members of the Israeli National Security Council (NSC). Rather than work with the NSC, or even his own security cabinet, Netanyahu kept them at arm’s length while making the big decisions on his own. He never allowed the security cabinet to weigh in on strategic issues like “what do we want from our relations with the U.S., and what to do with the Palestinian issue after Abu Mazen,” said Lapid. Instead, he used the security cabinet mainly to discuss “whether to blow up a truck on its way through Syria” and other minor day-to-day tactical issues.
Lapid laid out his own comprehensive view of Israeli security in a major speech at Bar Ilan University in September 2015, titled, “A New Strategic Vision for Israel.” Israelis feel less secure, he explained, because under Netanyahu security has been on a seven-year decline. First, by picking fights with the U.S., Netanyahu damaged the linchpin in Israel’s security: “The special relationship between us and the United States was always a part of our security deterrent against hostile elements in Arab countries.” As a member of the security cabinet, Lapid warned it that Netanyahu was leading Israel “to a pointless and dangerous fight with the American administration” which damaged that security by emboldening Israel’s Arab foes who might calculate that the United States would withdraw some of its support for Israel’s defense.
Also, Lapid remarked, Israeli’s growing diplomatic isolation has weakened its security. As one example, he noted that diplomatic weakness prevented Israel from taking effective measures to disarm and stabilize Gaza after the conflict in 2014:
After Operation Protective Edge I suggested in the Security Cabinet and in public forums to advance a diplomatic initiative—the disarmament of Gaza in exchange for its rehabilitation. At least after seven weeks of fighting and after 72 of our best people fell we would do something to prevent the next round. But Netanyahu is so isolated diplomatically that he failed to start the process. So, it ended with $5 billion of donations and the rehabilitation of Gaza without anyone talking about taking the weapons from Hamas and preventing the next round.
The same could be said for Netanyahu’s ineffectiveness in his diplomatic efforts to curb the threat of Iran, the rearming of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and more. They are all signs of the weakening of Israel’s security on his watch.
The Citizens Proposal lays out a plan for separating Israelis and Palestinians which, we believe would be acceptable to Lapid. It acknowledges Lapid’s concern to preserve Israeli control of the largest interior settlements, notably Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. “If I were prime minister, within three weeks, I could close a deal that says we formally freeze [construction] outside the blocs — in exchange for building within the blocs, Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel,” said Lapid on March 6 of last year. Similarly, the Citizens Proposal places Gush Etzion on the Israeli side of the proposed border and calls for special administrative arrangements for Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim.
The concept of special status with regards to the most sensitive areas of East Jerusalem was recently raised by outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry. Lapid could run with this concept, apply it to these other large settlements as well, and negotiate the terms of a border between Israel and Palestine while leaving the precise arrangements for Jerusalem and these large settlements for resolution at a later time. This sort of staged approach is what Lapid called for at a speech at the Herzliya Conference in 2013, as reported in Haaretz:
The first stage would be an Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank where there are no settlements and a freeze on construction outside the large settlement blocs. In the second stage, Israel would "move into the settlement blocks while evacuating the isolated settlements,” along with “direct negotiations [with the Palestinians] with the mediation of the United States, in Ramallah and Jerusalem, on final borders." During these two stages, the IDF would be deployed throughout the West Bank. In the third and last stage, final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state would be set, including land swaps, and talks on the remaining core issues would get underway.
Amid the fear and uncertainty that roils Israel today, Lapid is stepping up to offer a clear and common-sense approach to security and to resolving the Palestinian issue. His approach is largely in agreement with our own. We believe his time has come.
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JA Programmes
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Beyond the healthcare system towards a health-tech ecosystem
11 December 2020 Location: Online event
The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that it is not possible to have a successful economy without good healthcare. This is a wake-up call we all need to heed – it cannot be business as usual when the pandemic is over. In order to protect our people and economies against future public health threats it is crucial to improve the long-term sustainability of our health systems.
At Junior Achievement we know that fostering innovation must start at an early age, and education therefore plays a key role in ensuring that young generations of Europeans are equipped with the right skills to tackle future challenges. Entrepreneurship education at school is the best way to encourage innovative thinking and problem-solving from an early age.
Based on the success of the Bulgarian pre-accelerator BEYOND, Junior Achievement is embarking on a new collaborative project with Novartis in Europe to be piloted in Central and Eastern Europe, aimed at leveraging technology and “start-up” thinking in the medical field. By establishing a series of pre-accelerator hubs in digital health and innovation, the program will generate a stronger ecosystem of innovators who will work to re-imagine medicine as we know it.
Junior Achievement and Novartis are co-organising an event to gather all relevant stakeholders in the field of education, healthcare and innovation on 11 December 2020 (10:00 - 11:00 CET). The event aims to raise interest and awareness on the essential role played by an entrepreneurial and innovative mind-set in the healthcare sector. Follow the registration link here and join us for an interactive discussion!
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Jimmy Buffett at Xfinity Center
Jimmy Buffett Tickets
EVENT RESCHEDULED TO SATURDAY 14TH AUGUST 2021. Originally Saturday 8th August 2020. All original tickets are still valid!
The classic islander style singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett is returning to the road this coming summer and will be bringing his well loved hit songs to the live venues across North America! You can catch him as he graces the stage at Xfinity Center on Saturday 8th August 2020! Tickets are now available to book – parrotheads don't miss this!
As Jimmy Buffett has always set out to spread positivity and relaxed vibes through his music, his fan base has become international and people just can't get enough of his music. Jimmy Buffett has provided us with a long list of single and album releases throughout the decades from his debut album all the way back in 1970 to his most recent creations.
His unique and instantly recognizable 'island style' sound has transformed the music scene, particuarly with live audiences and his adoring parrotheads travel from all corners of the earth to be a part of his shows. With his band the Coral Reefer, Jimmy Buffett has released chart topping hits from "Margaritaville" which became the biggest song of the century. As well as other successful songs such as; "Come Monday" and It's Five O'clock Somewhere."
As he embarked on his path of making and performing music, Jimmy Buffett started in Nashville Tennessee during the 1960's with his country roots sound and progressed towards a more folk rock approach before settling on his upbeat "Beach Bum" look and musical style. Jimmy Buffett therefore has created a real party atmosphere for his live performances, taking his fans on a journey and providing them with a summery vacation setting for each and every crowd experience.
If you love Jimmy Buffett then be sure to be a part of his exclusive 2020 tour, there will be plenty of opportunities to sing a long to all of your favorite Jimmy Buffett tracks!
"The interactivity with the songs is what makes a Jimmy Buffett concert so fun. It’s hard not to get swept into singing along to songs and chanting out, Salt, Salt, Salt after Jimmy sings that popular line, “Searchin’ for my long-lost shaker of salt”, from the song “Margaritaville”. Or putting your hands together up over your head as you bring your fins to the left, fins to the right, as the crowd all became dancing sharks for the song “Fins”. Along with so many other hit songs like, “Volcano”, “Son of a Sailor”, “One Particular Harbor”, “Cheeseburger In Paradise”, I could go on and on, there was absolutely no shortage of crowd favorites."
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6/27/17 "Tele-Town Hall"
Posted by Melanie Koserowski · June 27, 2017 10:55 PM
Recording and Transcript of the Tuesday, June 27th "Tele-Town Hall" with Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen
The Rodney Report: Critical Junctures
Posted by NJ 11th For Change · June 26, 2017 5:10 PM
AHCA: At A Crossroads
Veterans Affairs: Fixes Vs. Cures
How Special Are Those Elections?
Staying Secure
The Senate’s radical take on healthcare, which finally saw the light of day last week, dominated voter attention -- and apprehension. We also take a look at special elections, plus our congressman’s e-News items on veterans and national security.
AHCA: At A Crossroads, And How We Got Here
This week U.S. Senators will vote on what they call the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BRCA), their version of the House bill known as AHCA, or, in yet another shorthand, Trumpcare.
This measure would displace an estimated $1 trillion over the next decade from healthcare funding to bankroll tax cuts for the benefit of the richest U.S. citizens. That is a brutal statement, we know. But then, this is a brutal bill, which:
Deepens cuts to Medicaid funding, putting poor children, those with mental-health issues, and those with disabilities firmly in the bull’s-eye.
Would leave 22 million more people without health insurance by 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said today.
Decimates protections for pre-existing conditions by loosening the rules under which states can waive coverage requirements, and allowing states greater latitude in defining what “essential health coverage” means.
Throws even those of us in large employer-sponsored plans under the bus – since under current regulations, such plans can choose the rules of any state in the country (loosened rules, remember) as their basis for defining coverage.
The Rodney Report: The Unity Edition
Posted by Elizabeth Juviler · June 20, 2017 9:00 AM
Forward, Together
Resisting A Health Care Steamroller
Gun Control Now!
Trillion Dollar Trains
In Pruitt Pushback, Climate Change Chatter Curtailed
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen began his newsletter this week with a brief item headlined simply: “Unity.” It referred to the shooting of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise, one of four wounded in an attack by a gunman identified as James Hodgkinson of Illinois, who opened fire Wednesday on members of the GOP’s House baseball team as they practiced for a charity game.
Hodgkinson, who died after being shot by Capitol police, was described in media reports as a former volunteer on the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and also, as a man with a history of domestic abuse and run-ins with the law.
“Tragedy touched Congress once again,” wrote Frelinghuysen, in an apparent reference to the 2011 Tucson shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in which six bystanders were killed and 13 wounded. He added: “I endorse Speaker Paul Ryan’s call for unity.”
If that means that as reasonable, thoughtful citizens we are unified in our abhorrence of gunfire as a way of settling an argument: Yes, of course we are unified – we remain unified.
The Rodney Report: Rhetoric and Realities
Posted by NJ 11th For Change · June 12, 2017 8:34 AM
Nice Financial Regulations You Got There …
‘Lordy, I hope there are tapes’
Healthcare in the Senate
No spending on Cruel Immigration Policies
Frelinghuysen And LGBTQ Equality
Nice Financial Regulations You Got There, America.
Shame If Something Were To Happen To Them...
Last week House Republicans nearly unanimously approved the Financial Choice Act, yet another bill that focuses on rolling back Obama-era regulations. This time, the target is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, legislation crafted in the wake of the catastrophic financial collapses of 2008. Dodd-Frank was designed specifically to protect consumers and prevent future economic meltdowns. By gutting its essential features, the Choice Act puts hard-working Americans’ financial security at risk.
The Great Recession bled nearly 260,000 jobs from New Jersey alone – a loss that was still not mitigated in 2014, by which time the rest of the country had already seen full job recovery.
Rep. Frelinghuysen’s newsletter offers five reasons he voted to approve the Choice Act. The Rodney Report will look beyond our representative’s rhetoric to examine the facts.
1. Frelinghuysen: Dodd-Frank needs reining in.
Frelinghuysen claims that Dodd-Frank was well-intended, but only succeeded in over-regulating Wall Street and hurting Main Street. Now, there is bipartisan agreement that small banks would benefit from targeted regulatory relief. But it isn’t necessary to blast Dodd-Frank apart to do this.
The Rodney Report: Done and Undone
Posted by NJ 11th for Change @🏠 · June 05, 2017 10:00 AM
Ignoring White Supremacist Attacks
Paris Accords: Retreat and Recriminations
Hurricane Awareness In a Leadership Vacuum
Jobs: Now you see them. Now you don’t
Intent, Effect And Teen Sexting
Economic news, violence abroad and children’s safety at home held major focus in Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen’s most recent newsletter. Reading it, we sense some interesting subtexts -- and some noteworthy silences, as well.
Frelinghuysen once again expressed outrage and sympathy for overseas victims of Muslim terrorists, while remaining silent about the growing trend of white supremacist hate crimes in the U.S.
Even President Trump—who rarely condemns violence perpetrated by the racist groups who fervently support him—belatedly Tweeted in honor of two Oregon men murdered by a white supremacist as they intervened in defense of fellow passengers, including a woman wearing a hijab. And despite Frelinghuysen’s ardent support of service men and women, he was silent on the Maryland murder of Lt. Richard Collins III, a newly commissioned U.S. Army officer who was stabbed to death by a white supremacist. He also said nothing about the nooses left at the African American History Museum in Washington, DC last week.
It’s appropriate for Frelinghuysen to convey concern and condolences after the attack in Manchester England, and the suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 90 civilians, including 11 Americans. The violence was horrific and stokes fears that a similar attack could happen here.
The Rodney Report has commended Frelinghuysen for speaking out against anti-Semitic graffiti and threats against Jewish institutions in New Jersey, but we are angered by his silence on the well-documented rise in hate crimes against Muslims, Latinos and Black people since Trump’s election. Many of these involved perpetrators who explicitly referred to Trump during their attacks or invoked him or his rhetoric in racist graffiti.
The Rodney Report: Unkind Cuts
Posted by Carolyn Stetler · May 31, 2017 12:47 PM
CB-Ohh No: The AHCA is Really that Awful
Slashing the Safety Net
Frelinghuysen Vs. DeVos
When Constituents Come Calling
Arms and Iran
The official start of summer also kicked off a season of budget hearings, in which NJ-11’s Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen as House Appropriations chairman should be expected to play a prominent part.
The dollars and cents issues include the long-awaited Congressional Budget Office scorecard on the AHCA, a troubling list of items on the Trump budget chopping block, and some welcome sparring between Frelinghuysen and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
CB-Ohhh No: The AHCA Really Is That Awful
During Frelinghuysen’s most recent telephone town hall, many NJ-11 constituents asked why the congressman did not insist on a CBO score before voting to pass the latest version of the American Health Care Act. He didn’t have a definitive answer at that point, but the AHCA scorecard released last week by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s brutal -- brutal enough to explain why the House leadership didn’t wait for it before pushing the bill to the floor for a vote.
According to the CBO, should the AHCA become law, 23 million more Americans will be uninsured over 10 years, 14 million in the next year alone, compared to the current law.
It gets worse from there.
The Rodney Report: Nothing Up My Sleeve
Posted by NJ 11th for Change @🏠 · May 23, 2017 9:20 AM
A week he’d like to forget
Is this proposed tax plan really a win?
Cook Takes A Look, Downgrades Rodney’s NJ-11 Forecast
Protecting Officers, Endangering Citizens
What to know about special counsels and select committees
A week he’d like to forget:
It’s was quite a week for our congressman, one that began with news that he’d been caught interfering with the employment of a constituent and NJ 11th for Change member, and ended with his chance for a 2018 reelection diminished by two publications. In between, the Campaign for Accountability (CfA) filed a complaint about his note to our member’s employer, in which he called her a “ringleader” at NJ 11th for Change. As CfA director Daniel Stevens said, “If trying to get someone fired for exercising her constitutional right to engage in political activity doesn't reflect poorly on the House, what does?" Frelinghuysen reportedly told members of The Morristown Jewish Center Sunday morning that he had retained legal counsel in response to these events. We wonder if this means a statement will finally be forthcoming — in addition to his office’s previous comment that his note was an “innocuous.”
In his weekly E-newsletter Congressman Frelinghuysen touts the tax plan being mapped out in the House, as “pro-jobs.” A closer look shows that it’s a big win for corporations and the top one percent of income earners. Corporate tax rates would be chopped by more than half under the president’s plan, from 35 percent to under 15 in the House plan. The top rate for high-income earners will be sliced from 40 to to 33 percent.
Rodney Redux: Frelinghuysen's Dad vs. McCarthyism
Posted by NJ 11th For Change · May 23, 2017 7:00 AM
Rodney Redux is an occasional series that explores Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen's career and family history as a member of one of New Jersey's oldest political dynasties.
Since the election of Donald Trump, many have excoriated Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen for betraying the legacy of his father, Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen Sr., who urged fellow Republicans to speak out against McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Frelinghuysen Sr. stood up against a tyrannical force that, for five years, resulted in the persecution of thousands of Americans. The reign of McCarthyism, which lasted from 1950 until 1955, resulted in several hundred Americans imprisoned because of their alleged political views. Many more lost their jobs after being targeted as Communists or Communist sympathizers.
The Rodney Report: Influence, Intimidation and Preserving Democracy
Posted by NJ 11th for Change @🏠 · May 16, 2017 12:26 AM
The Rodney Report is NJ 11th for Change's Weekly Analysis of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen's Words and Deeds.
Comey Fired, Rodney....Nonchalant
Breakfast Without Rodney
Frelinghuysen’s Post-AHCA Tele-Town Hall
Challenging the Frelinghuysen Status Quo
Features of our democracy that we typically take for granted — like the ability to question our elected officials and hold them to account — can suddenly look very shaky, as recent events have demonstrated in D.C. and closer to home. The President abruptly fired an FBI chief who was in the middle of investigating Oval Office ties to Russian influences. And as a couple of local developments demonstrated, NJ-11’s Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen hasn’t been handling independent thinkers so well, either.
‘One of the Ring Leaders’: Rodney Puts On The Pressure
This morning, National Public Radio ran a piece by reporter Nancy Solomon, focusing on a handwritten note sent by Rep. Frelinghuysen to the employer of his constituent Saily Avelenda, a member of NJ 11th For Change. (The story quickly gained major traction, being picked up by the AP, The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Independent (UK), Politico and NJ.com, among many others.)
As a result of this letter, Avelenda was subjected to intense and unwelcome scrutiny about her personal views, directly contributing to her decision to resign her job. NJ 11th For Change is outraged and alarmed by Frelinghuysen’s intimidating action against a constituent who opposes him politically. Has he used such actions before, and (a disquieting thought) will he use them in the future? We would like a statement guaranteeing that citizens will not be subjected to the targeting that Saily Avelenda experienced..
5/9/17 Telephone "Town Hall" Transcription
Posted by Debra Caplan · May 15, 2017 10:24 PM
Rodney Frelinghuysen Telephone Town Hall 5/9/17
Transcribed from https://www.facebook.com/NJ11thForChange/videos/633344920203474/
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Update on free community college proposal
President Obama has been stepping up his efforts to make community colleges free for students across the country. According to the White House, free tuition message will be spread by those who are interested.
A coalition of community college leaders, foundations, politicians, educators and businesses will soon be formed to make people aware of the free tuition two-year college current models. These plans were unveiled at his Michigan Macomb Community College speech recently.
This coalition will be called the College Promise Advisory Board and will operate independently. Former education undersecretary Martha Kanter who is also a professor at the New York University will lead this coalition along with former Governor of Wyoming Jim Geringer according to reports.
Kanter opined that community colleges will be helped to understand the worth of investing in people who want higher education. Towards this goal, the board will extend its expertise as even beyond high school, people desperately need higher education. In today’s society and economy, Kanter said, a high school diploma is certainly not enough.
Statistics released by the White House on free community college progress shows that by the year 2020, an associate or college degree will be imperative for at least 30% jobs and a bachelor’s degree will become a must for an estimated 35% jobs.
As announced in February, White House and the President have been striving to take the America’s College Promise program forward. The Tenessee Promise is an already existing program that offers two years of free college. President’s plan is based on the model of this last dollar state wide program.
Last dollar programs are designed to cover the glaring gap between tuition and financial aid package of students. The inaugural Tennessee Promise class commenced this fall. Free two year college programs have already been created by five communities in the last six months. This includes the Minnesota and Oregon state wide programs.
Obama’s plan is being backed by Congressional Democrats who voiced their support for free community college legislation. According to Geringer, both communities and youths benefit from the opportunity to achieve technical training and a higher degree which was the reason why community colleges were established in the first place.
Education matters beyond high school, which is an ideal affirmed by the College Promise program. Rekindling the community spirit, this program will factor in naturally inspired local support and local initiatives.
The Heads Up America campaign will further help spread awareness stressing the importance of community colleges. The ideal of offering two years free community college will be encouraged through public service announcements as a part of this campaign.
The advisory board will function for a minimum of three years the focus on which will be mainly to identify ways to pay for the free community college, according to Gail Mellow, President of the LaGuardia Community College who is also an advisory board member.
She also said that since this program is a radical idea, it will take time to solve these issues as a lot has to go into identifying who and how the benefits will be provided for. This long term issue cannot be solved in a years’ time, she said.
More blogs by Kathy
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The 6th Sino-French Forum on Architectural and Urban Sustainable Development
Under the guidance of the French Ministry of Culture and the Nanjing Municipal Government, the 6thSino-French Urban and Building Sustainable Development Forum was successfully held in Nanjing on October 24th. It is the annual forum organized by the Sino-French Architectural Association and is jointly sponsored by the association and the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau. It received strong support from a number of associations such as the French-Chinese Institute of Architecture and Urban-Rural Sustainable Development, The Center of Franco-Chinese City & Territory Association (CFC V&T) and the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau. The theme of the forum was ”The Solution to Urban Problems under the Background of High Quality Development”, corresponding to the actual context of the transformation of urban development in Nanjing from epitaxial expansion to connotative and redefined development.
The day prior to the forum, Thierry Melot, the Chairman of the of the SFACS association, alongside with 11 other French architects and urbanist received warm welcome on their arrival at the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau, from the Deputy Director Liu He and his team. The dozens of experts divided into three teams depending on their filed of expertise and each visited one of these following sites : The cityhall at The Gate of China, the Qilin Trams, the Yingtian Street Elevated Bridge. The groups met up again to visit the site of the Jiangsu Horticultural Exposition situated in TangShang. The on-site explanation by staffmembers at the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau provided valuable first-hand information for the French Expert in the Round-Table Discussion on the day of the forum.
At 9am, 24thOctober, the forum kicked off at the Conference Center of the Nanjing TangShan Yishan Hot Spring Hotel, presided over by Li Liguo, Secretary General of the SFACS Association of China. Katherine Ruggeri, Director of Cultural Affairs of the French Ministry of Culture, General Commissioner of the 50thAnniversary of the Diplomatic Relations Establishment between China and France, Mr. Wang Chengjiang, Deputy Secretary of the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau and Wang Jiaoguo, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering all gave their opening speech, respectively.
Thierry Melot gave a presentation on "The Ten Principles of Sustainable Development – Theory and Practice", using first a series of demographic and urbanization data to demonstrate the contraction between the rapidly growing urban population and the limited natural resources, he then stated that "sustainable development is a global battle that we all have to face and that its real enemy is no one but ourselves." Drawing from his 40-year long experience of being an architect and an urbanist, he explained the ten principles of sustainable development from a strategic stance, namely : I. Introspection of the future, II. Integration of common production and land use, III Construction of the city based on a refined public transportation network, IV. Construction around large-scale transportation hubs, V. Development of urban porosity, permeability, VI. Advocacy of proximity and diversity, VII. Promote self-sufficiency in energy use,VIII Management of water system resilience, IX, Creation of the iconic architectural piece, X. Highlight, strengthen the characteristics of blocks.
He Liu, Urbanist General of the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau, was the second to deliver a speech. His speech centered around the subject of 'Challenges faced in a high-quality development of the Nanjing City.' The speech was divided into three sections:1. An overview of the City of Nanjing. 2. Current considerations of the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau on the overall future planning of the city before 2030. 3. Challenges faced by the city in the process of high-quality development, including how to enhance the core competitiveness and international influence, how to strengthen the city’s development momentum, how to moderately reduce the vitality of the old city in terms of spatial patterns and to maintain the vitality of the old quarters, how to highlight the characteristics of the city etc.
The third guest speaker - Laure Meriaud, co-associate of l'Atelier 2/3/4/, gave a speech on 'Beyond Density, Optimizing Space'. She first expounded the integration of the campus concept with the urban high-density construction, and proposed the concept of ‘vertical campus’ and demonstrated the application of the concept in La Défense super high-rise buildings. Secondly, she then showed how to achieve invisible density through functional blending. Finally she showed how to improve he urban space quality while increasing the density of urban construction with a case of urban renewal in the southern gateway of Paris.
Parallel Round-Table Discussions were carried out in the afternoon, focused on three main topics: Urban Trams, Traffic Noise Control on the Highway, and Protection and Reuse of Historical Buildings.
Among them, the Chinese and French guest speakers who participated in the 'Urban Tram' special Round-Table included Thierry Melot, Chairman of the Expert Committee of the SFACS Association, Julien Schnell, the founder and general manager of the French URBBNICA Office, Senior French urbanist Guillaume Faraut, Yao Tao, CEO of the Nanjing Urban and Transportation Planning and Design Institute, and Zhang Haijun, Vice President of Jiangsu Transportation Science and Technology Research Institute. The Forum was hosted by Li MingYe, Secretary General of the Paris Department of the SFACS Association. To begin with, Zhang Haijun introduced the development status, technical characteristics and misunderstandings of trams in China, and raised problems of insufficient passenger flow, high cost of construction and inaccurate positioning. Based on the previous days’ inspection of the Nanjing Jiling Trams. Based on information gathered the at the site visit, which took place the previous day, Schnell affirmed the technical characteristics and speed, but pointed out the issues with stations been relatively far from one and another and thus low accessibility to people who near the tram line. He believes that in the process of planning, one would need to consider to provide service to as many habitants as possible, and this should include people with disabilities, the elderly and children etc. For this reason, the issue with accessibility of the tram is particularly important. He then highlighted the importance of tram in the process of urban renewal and the promotion of urban public space. Therefore, the plannings of the tram would need to focus on the integration of the surrounding urban space. Faraut compared different types of traffic patterns and emphasized the advantages of trams over other modes of transportation: clean, quiet and comfortable. Next, he pointed out some design details, including the distance between the station line and the surrounding buildings, the width of the road and the floor. Yang Tao briefed everyone on some of the motivations for the development of China's trams in the past ten years, including the consideration of the government industry, the design side, and the engineering side in combination with their own background, and responded to Melot on the topic of sustainable development war. How to win, giving priority to the development of public transport, and considering the diversity of this transportation model. Melot concludes by pointing out that the development of China's trams should be service-oriented, involving urban governance issues rather than technical issues. At the same time, the dominant culture dominated by cars is yet to be transformed.
Those who participated in the Round-Table Discussion centered around "high-speed road traffic noise control" included. Laure Meriaud of 2/3/4, Chairman and founder of Delohom Acoustics, Jean Philippe Delhom (speech by his colleague Lou Liming), Wang Hongyang, Professor of School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University, and Wu Ge, Dean of the Landscape Architecture and Tourism Planning and Design Branch of Jiangsu Urban Planning and Design Institute. The forum was hosted by He Liu General Planner. Zhang Wei, a planner of the Qixia Branch under the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau, introduced the development status of the expressway in Nanjing and the existing noise reduction measures, and proposed possible measures to reduce the noise impact in terms of legal norms, engineering measures and planning measures. The colleague of Jean Philippe Delhom introduced the relevant French legal plan, and then explained the noise reduction measures from the aspects of sound source control, building facade treatment and noise masking. In the case of Paris, Meriaud introduced the experience of noise reduction in France, including the provisions for vehicle deceleration, the design of houses along the street, the treatment of pavement materials, the setting of vegetation, and the transformation of transportation hubs. Professor Wang looked at the problem of noise management from the perspective of urban governance and pointed out how the social cost is burdened. Dean Wu Ge combined his own experience to introduce the way of noise reduction from the perspective of greening measures. Following the presentation was open discussion time between French and Chinese specialists and audience.
Specialists who participated in the Round-Table Discussion on the theme of “Protection and Reuse of Historic Buildings” were the head of the project department of SCET, architect, planner, Jelena Stamenković, president of l’Atelier Schweitzer, Professor at the Paris-Val-de-Seine, member of the National Building Industry Committee, Marie Schweitzer, French structural engineer, registered architect, and member of the International Scientific Committee expert Nicolas Cheval (speech by Jean-Marie Cheval), Zhou Qi, professor at the School of Architecture at Southeast University, and Wei Yuli, Professor at the School of Architecture at Nanjing University of Technology. The host of this Round-Table is Yao Jingjing, Urbanist General at the Sino-French Architecture and Urban and Rural Sustainable Development Research Institute. Professor Zhou Qi started off by introducing the spatial distribution of Nanjing's historic heritage and the resulting urban spatial pattern of Nanjing, focusing on the southernmost end of the Nanjing City Wall: Zhonghuamen, Laomendong, and Laomenxi. He also mentioned the preservation and reuse of Nanjing's industrial heritage. Jelena Stamenković mainly introduced how to carry out transformation in a place with high density in the old town square. She explained with a number of case studies such as the Lyon Confluence Area Planning, the Bass Warehouse, and the small city of Annemasse, that the renewal of the city is not unilateral. It is but the result of a combined effort of the government, developers and its residents. Schweitzer introduced some of the projects her office has done in Paris, especially the timber-framed buildings for the study of wooden buildings in Jiangxi and other places in China. She provided suggestions for the renovation of the old west area. Jean-Marie Cheval analyzed the repairing methods of traditional wooden structures from the perspective of building structure, including diagnosis, modeling analysis, and safety transformation.
Afterwards, all guests and specialists participated in the special round table of 'Jiangsu Province Horticultural Exposition Expo Park'. The forum was hosted by Liu Qingyu, Deputy Director of the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau. Martin Duplantier, the founder of the French architect society of Martin Duplantier, provided the planning and construction of the Jiangsu Horticultural Expo Expo Park with examples such as: the docks of the Bordeaux Gallen River, the Zhangjiajie Air Corridor in Hunan, and the Moscow Forest Park. reference. Jérȏme Dumas, Landscape Architect at INTERSCENE Landscape Architects, France, introduced the French Ange Botanical Garden, which took 10 years to design and finished building in 2010. Dean Wu Hao introduced the background of Jiangsu Horticultural Exposition Expo Park from the perspectives of site selection, location, function and project planning. Karim Thibault, the project leader of BIOTOP in France, based on the pit landscape of the Tangshan base of Yuanboyuan, gave a detailed introduction of France's experience in mine repair. Dean Yang Tao put forward his own suggestions for the perspective of the traffic planning of the Garden Expo Park. Professor Zhou Qi expressed his opinions on the expected timing operating methods of the project. Jelena Stamenković analyzed the cooperation between the public sector and the private sector. Professor Wang Hongyang talked about the future vision, multi-objective coordination, adhering to the overall optimal principle. Laure Meriaud talked about the subsequent use of the base after the big event in conjunction with the Paris Olympics project.
After the specialized Round-Table Discussions, Thierry Melot and Director Ye Bin gave closing speeches respectively. Melot expressed his gratitude to the Nanjing Municipal Government and the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau for their strong support, the summarized the development of the event from a global perspective, reaffirming the importance of sustainable development and the transformation of the paradigm of planning and construction and the adherence of principles. Ye Bin made a four-point summary of the forum, affirming first, the importance of preparation on both sides, second, the pragmatic nature of themes at the forum, third, maintain a high-level technical exchanges and academic exchanges, fourth, the increased reputation of the Sino-French Association in Nanjing, lastly, he sincerely invited the French experts and their representatives’ design units and academic institutions to actively participate in the relevant planning and architectural design of Nanjing to further improve the quality and level of urban planning and construction in Najing. The forum ended on a good note.
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Show the size of Canada compared to Togo Hide the map
If Canada were your home instead of Togo you would...
use 157.7 times more electricity
The per capita consumption of electricity in Togo is 91kWh while in Canada it is 14,350kWh
live 17.61 years longer
The life expectancy at birth in Canada is 81.67 while in Togo it is 64.06.
spend 140.7 times more money on health care
Per capita public and private health expenditures combined in Canada are $5,740.70 USD while Togo spends $40.80 USD
make 39.2 times more money
The GDP per capita in Canada is $43,100 while in Togo it is $1,100
consume 16.6 times more oil
Togo consumes 0.1638 gallons of oil per day per capita while Canada consumes 2.7216
The number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in Canada is 4.71 while in Togo it is 46.73.
be 87.3% more likely to be in prison
118 in every 100,000 people are currently imprisoned in Canada compared to 63 in Togo
The percentage of adults living with HIV/AIDS in Canada is 0.30% while in Togo it is 2.90%. 1,000 people in Canada and 7,200 people in Togo die from AIDS each year.
1.40 in every 100,000 people are murdered annually in Canada compared to 9.40 in Togo
have 70.19% fewer babies
The annual number of births per 1,000 people in Canada is 10.29 while in Togo it is 34.52.
More Information about Canada
With its 34,834,841 people, Canada is the 37th largest country in the world by population. It is the 2nd largest country in the world by area with 9,984,670 square kilometers.
A land of vast distances and rich natural resources, Canada became a self-governing dominion in 1867 while retaining ties to the British crown. Economically and technologically, the nation has developed in parallel with the US, its neighbor to the south across the world's longest unfortified border. Canada faces the political challenges of meeting public demands for quality improvements in health care, education, social services, and economic competitiveness, as well as responding to the particular concerns of predominantly francophone Quebec. Canada also aims to develop its diverse energy resources while maintaining its commitment to the environment.
Languages spoken: English (official) 58.7%, French (official) 22%, Punjabi 1.4%, Italian 1.3%, Spanish 1.3%, German 1.3%, Cantonese 1.2%, Tagalog 1.2%, Arabic 1.1%, other 10.5% (2011 est.)
Reading about Canada
Check out the recommended reading list below for great sources of information on Canada
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Compare Czech Republic to other countries
Show the size of Czech Republic compared to Ukraine Hide the map
If Czech Republic were your home instead of Ukraine you would...
The life expectancy at birth in Czech Republic is 78.31 while in Ukraine it is 69.14.
make 3.6 times more money
The GDP per capita in Czech Republic is $26,300 while in Ukraine it is $7,400
Per capita public and private health expenditures combined in Czech Republic are $1,431.80 USD while Ukraine spends $292.80 USD
be 17.2% less likely to be unemployed
Czech Republic has an unemployment rate of 7.70% while Ukraine has 9.30%
consume 2.6 times more oil
Ukraine consumes 0.3024 gallons of oil per day per capita while Czech Republic consumes 0.7854
The per capita consumption of electricity in Ukraine is 3,957kWh while in Czech Republic it is 6,629kWh
The number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in Czech Republic is 2.63 while in Ukraine it is 8.10.
0.90 in every 100,000 people are murdered annually in Czech Republic compared to 4.30 in Ukraine
The percentage of adults living with HIV/AIDS in Czech Republic is 0.10% while in Ukraine it is 0.90%. 100 people in Czech Republic and 18,100 people in Ukraine die from AIDS each year.
experience 11.7% less of a class divide
The GINI index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income. In Czech Republic it is 24.90 while in Ukraine it is 28.20.
be 6.09% less likely to be in prison
185 in every 100,000 people are currently imprisoned in Czech Republic compared to 197 in Ukraine
have 4.04% more babies
The annual number of births per 1,000 people in Czech Republic is 9.79 while in Ukraine it is 9.41.
More Information about Czech Republic
With its 10,627,448 people, Czech Republic is the 82nd largest country in the world by population. It is the 116th largest country in the world by area with 78,867 square kilometers.
At the close of World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire merged to form Czechoslovakia. During the interwar years, having rejected a federal system, the new country's predominantly Czech leaders were frequently preoccupied with meeting the increasingly strident demands of other ethnic minorities within the republic, most notably the Slovaks, the Sudeten Germans, and the Ruthenians (Ukrainians). On the eve of World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the territory that today comprises the Czech Republic and Slovakia became an independent state allied with Germany. After the war, a reunited but truncated Czechoslovakia (less Ruthenia) fell within the Soviet sphere of influence. In 1968, an invasion by Warsaw Pact troops ended the efforts of the country's leaders to liberalize communist rule and create "socialism with a human face," ushering in a period of repression known as "normalization." The peaceful "Velvet Revolution" swept the Communist Party from power at the end of 1989 and inaugurated a return to democratic rule and a market economy. On 1 January 1993, the country underwent a nonviolent "velvet divorce" into its two national components, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
Languages spoken: Czech 95.4%, Slovak 1.6%, other 3% (2011 census)
Reading about Czech Republic
Check out the recommended reading list below for great sources of information on Czech Republic
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India Govt. Faces Revolt over 4th Petrol Hike in Year
India's prime minister returned from abroad on Saturday to face a political revolt over a petrol price increase with a key coalition ally threatening to withdraw support unless the hike is reversed.
The regional Trinamool Congress, the second-largest party in the coalition with 19 lawmakers, said it may quit the ruling alliance unless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rolls back the price rise.
"Our withdrawal of support may result in fall of the government," Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee said late on Friday, but added "we will not accept this burden on the poor."
Banerjee, however, said she would wait until she met with the prime minister, who had been in Cannes, France, for the two-day Group of 20 meeting of emerging and wealthy nations before taking any decision.
Banerjee, who is also chief minister of the Trinamool government in the state of West Bengal, made the statements after she held an emergency meeting with the parliamentary wing of the party.
"If it goes on like this we don't want to stay in the government," she said.
It was not immediately known when the political leaders might meet.
The state-run oil firms raised petrol prices on Friday in order to offset losses on sales due to an 11 percent drop in the rupee against the dollar since April and high crude oil prices.
The 1.8 rupee or 4 cent a liter price rise was the fourth since January, pushing the cost of a liter of petrol to around 67 rupees ($1.37).
The southern DMK, the third-largest party in the national coalition with 18 members, also demanded a rollback of the price increase, saying it had added "enormously to the burden of the poor, lower and middle classes."
Singh, however, defended the price hike in a televised statement in Cannes, saying that India "must move in the direction of decontrolling more prices. I have no hesitation in saying that markets must find their own levels."
The latest row comes as Singh's government is already reeling from a series of corruption scandals including the flawed sale of telecom licenses that cost the country up to $39 billion.
Uglies Swimwear (Guest) 30 December 2011, 20:18 00
Hey is this serious?
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Navy News / October 15, 2014
Niobe Day is celebrated by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) on the 21st day of October each year. Niobe Day marks the arrival of His Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Niobe in Halifax on October 21, 1910, the first Canadian warship to enter Canada’s territorial waters and a landmark event in the beginnings of the Naval Service of Canada.
Niobe Day gives RCN personnel a chance to reflect on their collective accomplishments since 1910, what it means to be members of the profession of arms, and what is required of them to ensure the RCN’s continued excellence, both at sea and ashore, in the years to come.
HMCS Niobe
HMCS Niobe, was an 11,000-tonne armoured cruiser purchased by Canada from the Royal Navy (RN). The warship entered into Halifax Harbour on October 21, 1910, having steamed across the Atlantic from Portsmouth, England.
The date of arrival of Niobe was carefully timed to coincide with the 105th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in order to symbolize the transfer to the Naval Service of Canada of the intangible and priceless winning tradition of the parent Royal Navy. It was natural for the new navy to model itself after the preeminent fighting service of the day.
Then Minister of the Naval Service, the Honourable Louis-Philippe Brodeur (father and grandfather of two future admirals of the Naval Service of Canada) welcomed Niobe and her complement with the proclamation:
“This event tells the story of a dawning epoch of self-confidence. It proclaims to the whole [world] that Canada is willing and proud to provide as rapidly as circumstances permit for her local naval defence, and to safeguard her share in the commerce and trade of the empire in whose world-girding belt Canada is the bright and precious buckle.”
Two weeks later would see the arrival of HMCS Rainbow in Esquimalt on November 7, 1910. Rainbow actually was the first ship to be commissioned as one of His or Her Majesty’s Canadian Ships (HMCS) on August 4, 1910. Her arrival in Canada came later as the ship had to sail south of the Americas and around Cape Horn in the era before the Panama Canal.
The arrival of Niobe and Rainbow was the manifestation of the decision of Parliament on May 4, 1910 to establish the Naval Service of Canada. It was a defining moment for the still young dominion.
HMCS Niobe was built by Vickers Limited in Barrow-in-Furness, England and launched on February 20, 1897, entering service in 1898.
Before being sold to Canada, (Her/His Majesty’s Ship) HMS Niobe served with the Royal Navy during the Boer War, being sent to Gibraltar to escort troop transports ferrying reinforcements to the Cape.
On December 4, 1899 HMS Niobe and HMS Doris rescued troops from the SS Ismore, which had run aground. She saw further action in the Boer War, escorting troops to Cape Town. The Queen's South Africa Medal was subsequently awarded to the crew. She returned to the English Channel, but later escorted vessels as far as Colombo in Ceylon.
In March, 1901, HMS Niobe was one of two cruisers to escort HMS Ophir, commissioned as a royal yacht for the world tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George and Queen Mary), from Spithead to Gibraltar, and in September of the same year she again escorted the royal yacht from St. Vincent to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Niobe continued to serve in the RN until 1910, one of eight sisters of the Diadem-class.
Upon transfer to the Naval Service of Canada, HMCS Niobe, along with HMCS Rainbow, became the first two in a long and illustrious line of HMC ships and submarines that have served and continue to serve Canada with excellence at home and abroad.
Niobe was commissioned in the RCN on 6 September 1910 at Devonport and arrived at Halifax on 21 October. Niobe was almost lost during the night of 30-31 July 1911 when she went aground off Cape Sable, necessitating repairs that were not completed until the end of 1912. In the fall of 1914, after the ravages of two years’ disuse had been made good, she joined the RN’s 4th Cruiser Squadron on contraband patrol off New York.
She returned to Halifax on 17 July 1915 and was paid off on 6 September and became a depot ship. Her upper works were wrecked in the Halifax explosion of 6 December 1917, but she continued to serve as a depot ship until 1920.
Commanding Officers of HMCS Niobe
Commander W. B. MacDonald, RN - 6 September 1910 – 20 June 1913
Lieutenant- Commander C. E. Aglionby, RN - 20 June 1913 – 15 August 1914
Captain R. G. Corbett, RN - 15 August 1914 - 1 September 1915
Acting/Commander P. F. Newcombe, RN - 16 October 1916 – 22 December 1917
Commander H. E. Holme, RCN - 22 December 1917 - 1 June 1920
For more information on HMCS Niobe please consult the following publication:
Ken Macpherson & Ron Barrie, The Ships of Canada's Naval Forces, 1910-2002 3rd edition (Vanwell, 2002).
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Stories from Saturday, November 6, 2010
James W. Garrison (Obituary ~ 11/06/10)
James W. Garrison, 69, of Joplin, Mo., died Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010, at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., following a brief illness. James was born on Aug. 26, 1941, to Paul and Mona Garrison of Monett, Mo. James spent his youth in Ulysses, Kan., graduating from Ulysses High School in 1959. ...
William P. Stevens Jr. (Obituary ~ 11/06/10)
William P. Stevens Jr., 86, loving husband, father, grandfather and friend to many, left this life peacefully and went to be with the Lord on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010. William was born Feb. 9, 1924, in St. Louis, Mo. Before moving to Arlington in 2002, he had lived in Prescott, Kan., Olathe, Kan., and Rogers, Ark. ...
Nola J. Hartzfeld (Obituary ~ 11/06/10)
Nola J. Hartzfeld, 69, Nevada, died on Friday, Nov. 5, 2010, at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. Family information and funeral arrangements will be announced by Ferry Funeral Home. View obituary and send condolences on line at www.ferryfuneralhome.com...
Fort Scott to participate in Take Charge Challenge (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
Fort Scott will be among 16 cities in four regions participating in the Take Charge Challenge, an energy efficiency contest coordinated by the Climate and Energy Project and sponsored by the Kansas Energy Office in partnership with communities and utilities across the state...
Council to hold special meeting Monday (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
The Nevada City Council will be holding a special meeting at 5:30 p.m., Monday in the Franklin P. Norman City/County Community Center. The council will be considering a special ordinance approving a $10,000 option for the purchase of four tracts of property in the 300 block of West Cherry from Norma Jean Loving. ...
Radio Springs road closes Monday (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
The access road to Radio Springs Park will be closed to the public starting Monday, Nov. 8. Parks and Recreation Department will be putting Christmas lights up for the lights at the lake. The park will reopen on Nov. 24, after the lighting ceremony and will remain open until Dec. 31, from 5-10 p.m...
National Cemetery main gate re-opens Monday (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
After six months, the main gate of Fort Scott National Cemetery will be re-opened Monday, Cemetery Technician Richard Wheeler said. The main gate closed the week before Memorial Day as part of an overall renovation of the 150-year-old cemetery. About 50 percent of the original limestone rock was cleaned and re-used for the rebuilding project. New stone was obtained from around Redfield, Kan. Decatur Construction of Binford, Texas, did the work...
Fire Marshal, weather service discourage open burning (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
Southwest Missouri -- The Office of the State Fire Marshal and the National Weather Service are urging extra caution with open burning in Missouri due to low moisture conditions, low humidity and high winds that increase the danger of wildland fires...
Bryan, Benton PTOs collecting box tops to fund projects, purchases (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
Nevada, Mo. -- "It's free money. That is what is being offered by General Mills to schools across the country," said Karen Marquardt, PTO member. The Bryan and Benton Elementary PTOs are asking area citizens to collect box tops for their schools, both of which are taking part in the Box Tops for Education program. ...
Students take part in Ag Awareness Day (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
Nevada, Mo. -- Typical of the working hours kept by most farmers and ranchers and their children, the parking lot on the west side of the Nevada Regional Technical Center began filling up with students, tractors, livestock and agricultural exhibits well before daylight on Friday morning Nov. 5...
'Titanic' production opens Thursday (Local News ~ 11/06/10)
The multitudinous human aspects of one of the worst maritime tragedies in history, the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, will be portrayed in the Nevada High School Drama Department's production of "Titanic: Tragedy and Trial" at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday...
Heather R. and James J. Stromberg (Wedding ~ 11/06/10)
Heather Reneé Compton and James John Stromberg were married Aug. 7, 2010, at the East Chain Lutheran Church, East Chain, Minn. Pastor Robert Roettger performed the ceremony and Kendra Sones provided music. The wedding colors of butter crème and mocha were reflected in the pew decorations and centerpieces of yellow and white lilies, curly willow and natural grasses...
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Formula One Season Trends 2020
The start of the Formula One season is right around the corner. February sees the teams launching their new cars, the new liveries and the new driver line ups. Once the ceremonies are over the cars will finally hit the track during testing in Barcelona.
Then and only then does the real fun of the season kick off before the first race in Australia. This brief prelude to the season has gifted us an insight into what is about to unfold. Some of the teams will have been sandbagging and deliberately going slower than their max. Some teams will have been going all out because they are so far behind their development plans. The worst thing is that there are very few people in the world who will truly know which teams are doing what.
This is where a brave bet can really pay off. It’s the time of the season where a hunch can capitalise on the uncertainty, on the unknown, and on the completely unpredictable. Who could predict the winner of that first race, when the cars haven’t even made it over to Australia yet?
The pre-season bet is where you’ll find the largest odds. If miracles were to happen and Williams showed up with a car to rival the front end of pack, then the 5000/1 odds of George Russell winning the championship really are a player’s delight. The form of the Williams last year was questionable, but nothing stops them from turning up with a championship winning car this year.
Lewis Hamilton ran away with the Championship last season, in truth there was barely a challenge for his title after May. This has only meant that the odds of him retaining it and equalling Michael Schumacher’s record seventh title, are really short. The odds-on favourite is sat around 8/13 and the bookmakers as so confident in his ascension to yet another title, that they are offering championship odds without Hamilton.
Now then, with the season fast approaching and the wild predictions ready to be made into wagers, you’d be misguided just to jump into the normal online bookies to place your normal bet. This time of year, is prime for offers and welcome bonuses. So before you do place your bet, head over to Casinohawks.com and find out how to make you opening bet go even further.
When you’ve claimed your deposit bonus, there’s one bet which has really caught the eye. McLaren to claim the Constructors Championship, without Mercedes. It might be a slightly long shot, but when you look at McLaren’s curve and the noise coming out of Maranello, this could be a two-horse race between Red Bull and McLaren. Having odds of 66/1 in a two-horse race is one of the rarest finds you’ll ever discover.
Whichever way your hunches lead you and whichever teams you decide are going to have a great season, it’s really all about the fun of the chase. A win is great, but we know that it has to stay fun.
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HomeABS-CBNNEWS.COM
SC says Dinagat Islands no longer a province
Friday, February 12, 2010 0
With a vote of 6-9, the Supreme Court on Thursday declared unconstitutional Republic Act 9355, the law creating the province of Dinagat Islands along the Leyte Gulf in the Visayas.
In an interview, SC spokesman Midas Marquez said Dinagat Islands failed to comply with both the population and land area requirements that are necessary to be elevated to province status.
Under Section 461 of Republic Act 7610, otherwise known as the Local Government Code, a province may be created if it has an average income of not less than P20 million and a population of not less than 250,000 inhabitants, or a contiguous territory of at least 2,000 square kilometers.
The Supreme Court, however, said the Dinagat Islands only has a population of 106,951, according to the 2000 census conducted by the National Statistics Office.
“Although the provincial government of Surigao del Norte conducted a special census of population in Dinagat Islands in 2003, which yielded a population count of 371,000, the result was not certified by the NSO as required by the Local Government Code,” the SC said according to a 30-page decision penned by Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta.
Even R.A. 9355, the Court noted, expressly states that the province of Dinagat Islands “contains an approximate land area of 802.12 sq.km,” thus, failing to meet the land area requirement under the LGC.
Concurring with Justice Peralta are Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Senior Justice Antonio Carpio, and Justices Conchita Carpio Morales, Arturo Brion, Mariano Del Castillo, Martin Villarama, Jr., Jose Perez, and Jose Mendoza.
Justice Antonio Eduardo Nachura wrote a dissenting opinion and was joined by Justices Renato Corona, Presbitero Velasco, Jr., Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, Lucas Bersamin, and Roberto Abad.
ABS-CBNNEWS.COM Province of Dinagat Islands Surigao del Norte
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Home » Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures is co-authored by Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield & Crystal Abidin, published in 2020 by Polity Press as part of their Digital Media and Society series. You can read the introduction online here.
We have a companion Twitter account and Instagram account, keeping on top of the latest Instagram research and developments.
Instagram is at the heart of global digital culture, having made selfies, filters and square frames an inescapable part of everyday life since it was launched in 2010.
In the first book-length examination of Instagram, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin trace how this quintessential mobile photography app has developed as a platform and a culture. They consider aspects such as the new visual social media aesthetics, the rise of Influencers and new visual economies, and the complex politics of the platform as well as examining how Instagram’s users change their use of the platform over time and respond to evolving features. The book highlights the different ways Instagram is used by subcultural groups around the world, and how museums,restaurants and public spaces are striving to be ‘Insta-worthy’. Far from just capturing milestones and moments, the authors argue that Instagram has altered the ways people communicate and share, while also creating new approaches to marketing, advertising, politics and the design of spaces and venues.
Rich with grounded examples from across the world, from birth pictures to selfies at funerals, Instagram is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication.
“In this wonderfully thoughtful and entertaining book, three leading scholars have given us a rich account of Instagram’s history, culture and politics, as well as conceptual tools to understand the increasingly visual world of social media.”
– Professor Jean Burgess, QUT
“This book brings together three accomplished scholars of visual internet culture to provide a comprehensive overview of Instagram as a platform, culture and marketplace. This will be an essential reference for internet studies and visual studies.
– Professor Jill Walker Rettberg, University of Bergen
“Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures is a seminal book in a growing field of academia which enables readers to analyse the social, visual and cultural changes in our daily lives conceptually. The choice of platform, Instagram, is valuable as the authors remark that ‘the attention economy is primarily visual today, and Instagram remains synonymous with the visual zeitgeist’ (216). While the book is an academic study that examines a popular culture topic, it is highly descriptive rather than based on critical theory. Students, scholars, social media practitioners and platform users can benefit from the book as a great introduction to how to approach and study social media.”
– Beyza Dogan, LSE Review of Books, April 2020.
“Instagram: Visual social media cultures contributes a wealth of knowledge to social media research, particularly to the hitherto under-researched Instagram. … this book has undoubtedly provided social media researchers with a collection of relevant and updated platform-specific findings that will be instrumental in Instagram studies going forth from this point.”
– Alexandra van Eeden, Mobile Media & Communication, September 2020.
“Instagram: Visual social media cultures provides an important and comprehensive overview of Instagram by examining its history and evolution, how it operates as a platform for visual communication, how different subcultures use Instagram, its commercialization, the rise of influencers, the aesthetics of Instagram, and its place in and infiltration into contemporary society. With examples from around the world, through the authors’ own research, and the presentation of case studies this book succeeds in bringing together a wide variety of topics and debates concerning Instagram, giving the reader an impressive insight into how Instagram has influenced the material world and how we live, behave, communicate, and share today. In conclusion, the book provides an original contribution into how Instagram has evolved into a visual communication platform that has become a part of everyday life.”
– Clare Lushey, Communication, September 2020.
“Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin’s Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures provides an engaging overview of the platform, weaving the history of its development with the way it is used by the individuals that embrace it. They show how the app has been shaped not only by its competition, but also by the communities that it hosts as they navigate the strengths and limitations of the platform against commercial needs, cultural norms, and living for the ‘gram. As the first book-length introduction to the subject, it navigates the tricky balance of clear communication and depth well, but also expands the conversation through a connected Instagram account. A read well-suited to those new to the study of social media, interested parties looking to examine Instagram more deeply, or those already established in the field looking to refresh their knowledge.”
– Kate Stuart, Networking Knowledge, November 2020.
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TRAVELING MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS: SOURCE + SERVICES
The World of Frida
The World of Frida celebrates the culture, style, and persona of visionary painter Frida Kahlo, an artist who continues to inspire with her story of love, adventure, and pain. Featuring 95 national and international artists working in a wide array of media, the exhibition includes Frida Kahlo as the subject, as well as artworks inspired by her life and art, her beautiful garden, Mexican culture and fashion, vibrant colors, surrealism, and more.
Over 100 2D and 3D artworks in a variety of media, including painting, prints, photography, collage, sculpture, mixed media & textile.
Kim Bagwill, Pasadena, CA; Kerstin Bruchhäuser, Hamburg, Germany; Alberto J. Carol, Miami, FL; Denise Carson, Savannah, GA; Lisa Congdon, Portland, OR; Razan Elbaba, Vienna, VA; Carlo Fantin, Oakland, CA; Don & Era Farnsworth, Oakland, CA; Francisco Franco, San Francisco, CA; Rupert Garcia, Oakland, CA; Don Hall, Turlock, CA; Annie Kevans, London, UK; Emilio López-Menchero, Spain; Kalen Meyer, Berkeley, CA; Peter Moen, San Jose, CA; Atsuko Morita, San Francisco, CA; Barbara Johansen Newman, Needham, MA; Laurina Paperina, Trento, Italy; Stikki Peaches, Quebec, Canada; Karen Provost, Townsend, MA; Jennifer Shada, San Francisco, CA; Shannon Taylor, Oakland, CA; Anna Valdez, San Francisco, CA; Carlos Villez, San Jose, CA; Roberto Voorbij, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Angel Wynn, Santa Fe, NM, and many more.
Click on images below for full size viewing.
Space required
3,500 sq. feet (approximately; scalable for smaller venues)
Provided materials
Digital files of wall labels for all artworks, and the Curator’s introductory panel in English & Spanish. Also provided electronically: Visitors’ Exhibition Guide, installation information, and a press guide with links to high resolution images, logos, press coverage and design examples.
Mid-June or early July 2022
Rental fee
Rental fee is extremely reasonable and the deposit fee only $100! Inquire here for additional information.
Carlsbad Museum & Art Center, Carlsbad, NM | Nov. 9, 2019 – Jan. 25, 2020
Museum of Arts & Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL | Feb. 22 - April 26, 2020
Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah, CA | May 23 - Aug. 16, 2020
California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA | Sept. 19 - Nov. 15, 2020
Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL | Dec. 12 - Feb. 27, 2021
International Museum of Art & Science, Daytona Beach, TX | Mar. 27 - Aug. 29, 2021
R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA | Sept. 25 - Nov. 21, 2021
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY | Feb. 3 - May 22, 2022
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3-d Film
Title: 3-d Film
Subject: Polaroid Corporation, Miss Sadie Thompson, Gorilla at Large
For more information on 3D film titles, see List of 3D films.
A 3D or 3-D (three-dimensional) film or S3D (stereoscopic 3D) film[1] is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception. Derived from stereoscopic photography, a regular motion picture camera system is used to record the images as seen from two perspectives (or computer-generated imagery generates the two perspectives in post-production), and special projection hardware and/or eyewear are used to provide the illusion of depth when viewing the film. 3D films are not limited to feature film theatrical releases; television broadcasts and direct-to-video films have also incorporated similar methods, especially since 3D television and Blu-ray 3D.
3D films have existed in some form since 1915, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion picture industry because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3D film, and the lack of a standardized format for all segments of the entertainment business. Nonetheless, 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney themed-venues. 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3D presentations of Avatar in December 2009 and January 2010.
1.1 Early patents and tests
1.2 Early systems of stereoscopic filmmaking (pre-1952)
1.2.1 Introduction of Polaroid
1.3 The "golden era" (1952–1954)
1.4 Revival (1960–1984) in single strip format
1.5 Rebirth of 3D (1985–2003)
1.6 Mainstream resurgence (2003–present)
1.6.1 World 3-D Expositions
1.6.2 Reported audience decline
2 Techniques
2.1 Producing 3D films
2.1.1 Live action
2.1.2 Animation
2.1.3 2D to 3D conversion
2.2 Displaying 3D films
2.2.1 Anaglyph
2.2.2 Polarization systems
2.2.3 Eclipse method
2.2.4 Interference filter technology
2.2.5 Autostereoscopy
3 Health effects
4 Criticism
4.1 Brightness concerns
4.2 Post-conversion
Early patents and tests
The stereoscopic era of motion pictures began in the late 1890s when British film pioneer William Friese-Greene filed a patent for a 3D movie process. In his patent, two films were projected side by side on screen. The viewer looked through a stereoscope to converge the two images. Because of the obtrusive mechanics behind this method, theatrical use was not practical.[2] Frederic Eugene Ives patented his stereo camera rig in 1900. The camera had two lenses coupled together 1 3/4 inches (4.45 centimeters) apart.[3]
On June 10, 1915, Edwin S. Porter and William E. Waddell presented tests to an audience at the Astor Theater in New York City. In red-green anaglyph, the audience was presented three reels of tests, which included rural scenes, test shots of Marie Doro, a segment of John Mason playing a number of passages from Jim the Penman (a film released by Famous Players-Lasky that year, but not in 3D), Oriental dancers, and a reel of footage of Niagara Falls.[4] However, according to Adolph Zukor in his 1953 autobiography The Public Is Never Wrong: My 50 Years in the Motion Picture Industry, nothing was produced in this process after these tests.
Early systems of stereoscopic filmmaking (pre-1952)
The earliest confirmed 3D film shown to an out-of-house audience was The Power of Love, which premiered at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles on 27 September 1922.[5][6][7] The camera rig was a product of the film's producer, Harry K. Fairall, and cinematographer Robert F. Elder.[2] It was projected dual-strip in the red/green anaglyph format, making it both the earliest known film that utilized dual strip projection and the earliest known film in which anaglyph glasses were used.[8] Whether Fairall used colored filters on the projection ports or whether he used tinted prints is unknown. After a preview for exhibitors and press in New York City, the film dropped out of sight, apparently not booked by exhibitors, and is now considered lost.
Early in December 1922, William Van Doren Kelley, inventor of the Prizma color system, cashed in on the growing interest in 3D films started by Fairall's demonstration and shot footage with a camera system of his own design. Kelley then struck a deal with Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel to premiere the first in his series of "Plasticon" shorts entitled Movies of the Future at the Rivoli Theater in New York City .[9]
Also in December 1922, Laurens Hammond (later inventor of the Hammond organ) premiered his Teleview system, which had been shown to the trade and press in October. Teleview was the first alternating-frame 3D system seen by the public. Using left-eye and right-eye prints and two interlocked projectors, left and right frames were alternately projected, each pair being shown three times to suppress flicker. Viewing devices attached to the armrests of the theater seats had rotary shutters that operated synchronously with the projector shutters, producing a clean and clear stereoscopic result. The only theater known to have installed Teleview was the Selwyn Theater in New York City, and only one show was ever presented with it: a group of short films, an exhibition of live 3D shadows, and M.A.R.S., the only Teleview feature. The show ran for several weeks, apparently doing good business as a novelty (M.A.R.S. itself got poor reviews), but Teleview was never seen again.[10]
In 1922, Frederic Eugene Ives and Jacob Leventhal began releasing their first stereoscopic shorts made over a three-year period. The first film, entitled Plastigrams, was distributed nationally by Educational Pictures in the red-and-blue anaglyph format. Ives and Leventhal then went on to produce the following stereoscopic shorts in the "Stereoscopiks Series" released by Pathé Films in 1925: Zowie (April 10), Luna-cy! (May 18), The Run-Away Taxi (December 17) and Ouch (December 17).[11] On 22 September 1924, Luna-cy! was re-released in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film system.[12]
The late 1920s to early 1930s saw little interest in stereoscopic pictures. In Paris, Louis Lumiere shot footage with his stereoscopic camera in September 1933. The following March he exhibited a remake of his 1895 short film L'Arrivée du Train, this time in anaglyphic 3D, at a meeting of the French Academy of Science.[13]
In 1936, Leventhal and John Norling were hired based on their test footage to film MGM's Audioscopiks series. The prints were by Technicolor in the red-and-green anaglyph format, and were narrated by Pete Smith. The first film, Audioscopiks, premiered January 11, 1936 and The New Audioscopiks premiered January 15, 1938. Audioscopiks was nominated for the Academy Award in the category Best Short Subject, Novelty in 1936.
With the success of the two Audioscopiks films, MGM produced one more short in anaglyph 3D, another Pete Smith Specialty called Third Dimensional Murder (1941). Unlike its predecessors, this short was shot with a studio-built camera rig. Prints were by Technicolor in red-and-blue anaglyph. The short is notable for being one of the few live-action appearances of the Frankenstein Monster as conceived by Jack Pierce for Universal Studios outside of their company.
While many of these films were printed by color systems, none of them was actually in color, and the use of the color printing was only to achieve an anaglyph effect.[14]
Introduction of Polaroid
While attending Harvard University, Edwin H. Land conceived the idea of reducing glare by polarizing light. He took a leave of absence from Harvard to set up a lab and by 1929 had invented and patented a polarizing sheet.[15] In 1932, he introduced Polaroid J Sheet as a commercial product.[16] While his original intention was to create a filter for reducing glare from car headlights, Land did not underestimate the utility of his newly dubbed Polaroid filters in stereoscopic presentations.
In January 1936, Land gave the first demonstration of Polaroid filters in conjunction with 3D photography at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The reaction was enthusiastic, and he followed it up with an installation at the New York Museum of Science. It is unknown what film was run for audiences at this exhibition.
Using Polaroid filters meant an entirely new form of projection, however. Two prints, each carrying either the right or left eye view, had to be synced up in projection using an external selsyn motor. Furthermore, polarized light would be largely depolarized by a matte white screen, and only a silver screen or screen made of other reflective material would correctly reflect the separate images.
Later that year, the feature, Nozze Vagabonde appeared in Italy, followed in Germany by Zum Greifen nah (You Can Nearly Touch It), and again in 1939 with Germany's Sechs Mädel rollen ins Wochenend (Six Girls Drive Into the Weekend). The Italian film was made with the Gualtierotti camera; the two German productions with the Zeiss camera and the Vierling shooting system. All of these films were the first exhibited using Polaroid filters. The Zeiss Company in Germany manufactured glasses on a commercial basis commencing in 1936; they were also independently made around the same time in Germany by E. Käsemann and by J. Mahler.[17]
In 1939, John Norling shot In Tune With Tomorrow, the first commercial 3D film using Polaroid in the US. This short premiered at the 1939 New York World's Fair and was created specifically for the Chrysler Motors Pavilion. In it, a full 1939 Chrysler Plymouth is magically put together, set to music. Originally in black and white, the film was so popular that it was re-shot in color for the following year at the fair, under the title New Dimensions. In 1953, it was reissued by RKO as Motor Rhythm.
Another early short that utilized the Polaroid 3D process was 1940's Magic Movies: Thrills For You produced by the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. for the Golden Gate International Exposition . Produced by John Norling, it was filmed by Jacob Leventhal using his own rig. It consisted of shots of various views that could be seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad's trains.
In the 1940s, World War II prioritized military applications of stereoscopic photography and it once again went on the back burner in most producers' minds.
The "golden era" (1952–1954)
What aficionados consider the "golden era" of 3D began in late 1952 with the release of the first color stereoscopic feature, Bwana Devil, produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler. The film was shot in Natural Vision, a process that was co-created and controlled by M. L. Gunzberg. Gunzberg, who built the rig with his brother, Julian, and two other associates, shopped it without success to various studios before Oboler used it for this feature, which went into production with the title, The Lions of Gulu.[18] The film starred Robert Stack, Barbara Britton and Nigel Bruce.
As with practically all of the features made during this boom, Bwana Devil was projected dual-strip, with Polaroid filters. During the 1950s, the familiar disposable anaglyph glasses made of cardboard were mainly used for comic books, two shorts by exploitation specialist Dan Sonney, and three shorts produced by Lippert Productions. However, even the Lippert shorts were available in the dual-strip format alternatively.
Because the features utilized two projectors, a capacity limit of film being loaded onto each projector (about 6,000 feet (1,800 m), or an hour's worth of film) meant that an intermission was necessary for every feature-length film. Quite often, intermission points were written into the script at a major plot point.
During Christmas of 1952, producer Sol Lesser quickly premiered the dual-strip showcase called Stereo Techniques in Chicago.[19] Lesser acquired the rights to five dual-strip shorts. Two of them, Now is the Time (to Put On Your Glasses) and Around is Around, were directed by Norman McLaren in 1951 for the National Film Board of Canada. The other three films were produced in Britain for Festival of Britain in 1951 by Raymond Spottiswoode. These were A Solid Explanation, Royal River, and The Black Swan.
James Mage was also an early pioneer in the 3D craze. Using his 16 mm 3D Bolex system, he premiered his Triorama program on February 10, 1953 with his four shorts: Sunday In Stereo, Indian Summer, American Life, and This is Bolex Stereo.[20] This show is considered lost.
Another early 3D film during the boom was the Lippert Productions short, A Day in the Country, narrated by Joe Besser and composed mostly of test footage. Unlike all of the other Lippert shorts, which were available in both dual-strip and anaglyph, this production was released in anaglyph only.
April 1953 saw two groundbreaking features in 3D: Columbia's Man in the Dark and Warner Bros. House of Wax, the first 3D feature with stereophonic sound. House of Wax, outside of Cinerama, was the first time many American audiences heard recorded stereophonic sound. It was also the film that typecast Vincent Price as a horror star as well as the "King of 3-D" after he became the actor to star in the most 3D features (the others were The Mad Magician, Dangerous Mission, and Son of Sinbad). The success of these two films proved that major studios now had a method of getting moviegoers back into theaters and away from television sets, which were causing a steady decline in attendance.
The Walt Disney Studios waded into 3D with its May 28, 1953 release of Melody, which accompanied the first 3D western, Columbia's Fort Ti at its Los Angeles opening. It was later shown at Disneyland's Fantasyland Theater in 1957 as part of a program with Disney's other short Working for Peanuts, entitled, 3-D Jamboree. The show was hosted by the Mousketeers and was in color.
Universal-International released their first 3D feature on May 27, 1953, It Came from Outer Space, with stereophonic sound. Following that was Paramount's first feature, Sangaree with Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.
Columbia released several 3D westerns produced by Sam Katzman and directed by William Castle. Castle would later specialize in various technical in-theater gimmicks for such Columbia and Allied Artists features as 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, and The Tingler. Columbia also produced the only slapstick comedies conceived for 3D. The Three Stooges starred in Spooks and Pardon My Backfire; dialect comic Harry Mimmo starred in Down the Hatch. Producer Jules White was optimistic about the possibilities of 3D as applied to slapstick (with pies and other projectiles aimed at the audience), but only two of his stereoscopic shorts were shown in 3D. Down the Hatch was released as a conventional, "flat" motion picture. (Columbia has since printed Down the Hatch in 3D for film festivals.)
John Ireland, Joanne Dru and Macdonald Carey starred in the Jack Broder color production Hannah Lee, which premiered June 19, 1953. The film was directed by Ireland, who sued Broder for his salary. Broder counter-sued, claiming that Ireland went over production costs with the film.
Another famous entry in the golden era of 3D was the 3 Dimensional Pictures production of Robot Monster. The film was allegedly scribed in an hour by screenwriter Wyott Ordung and filmed in a period of two weeks on a shoestring budget. Despite these shortcomings and the fact that the crew had no previous experience with the newly built camera rig, luck was on the cinematographer's side, as many find the 3D photography in the film is well shot and aligned. Robot Monster also has a notable score by then up-and-coming composer Elmer Bernstein. The film was released June 24, 1953 and went out with the short Stardust in Your Eyes, which starred nightclub comedian, Slick Slavin.
CinemaScope.
The first decline in the theatrical 3D craze started in August and September 1953. The factors causing this decline were:
Two prints had to be projected simultaneously.
The prints had to remain exactly alike after repair, or synchronization would be lost.
It sometimes required two projectionists to keep sync working properly.
When either prints or shutters became out of sync, the picture became virtually unwatchable and accounted for headaches and eyestrain.
The necessary silver projection screen was very directional and caused sideline seating to be unusable with both 3D and regular films, due to the angular darkening of these screens. Later films that opened in wider-seated venues often premiered flat for that reason (such as Kiss Me Kate at the Radio City Music Hall).
The few cartoons made in 3D had a "cardboard cutout" effect, where flat objects appeared on different planes.
Because projection booth operators were at many times careless, even at preview screenings of 3D films, trade and newspaper critics claimed that certain films were "hard on the eyes."
Sol Lesser attempted to follow up Stereo Techniques with a new showcase, this time five shorts that he himself produced. The project was to be called The 3-D Follies and was to be distributed by RKO. Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties and the growing disinterest in 3D, Lesser canceled the project during the summer of 1953, making it the first 3D film to be aborted in production. Two of the three shorts were shot: Carmenesque, a burlesque number starring exotic dancer Lili St. Cyr. and Fun in the Sun, a sports short directed by famed set designer/director William Cameron Menzies, who also directed the 3D feature The Maze for Allied Artists.
Although it was more expensive to install, the major competing realism process was anamorphic, first utilized by Fox with Cinemascope and its September premiere in The Robe. Anamorphic features needed only a single print, so synchronization was not an issue. Cinerama was also a competitor from the start and had better quality control than 3D because it was owned by one company that focused on quality control. However, most of the 3D features past the summer of 1953 were released in the flat widescreen formats ranging from 1.66:1 to 1.85:1. In early studio advertisements and articles about widescreen and 3D formats, widescreen systems were referred to as "3D", causing some confusion among scholars.
There was no single instance of combining Cinemascope with 3D until 1960, with a film called September Storm, and even then, that was a blow-up from a non-anamorphic negative. September Storm also went out with the last dual-strip short, Space Attack, which was actually shot in 1954 under the title The Adventures of Sam Space.
In December 1953, 3D made a comeback with the release of several important 3D films, including MGM's musical Kiss Me, Kate. Kate was the hill over which 3D had to pass to survive. MGM tested it in six theaters: three in 3D and three flat. According to trade ads of the time, the 3D version was so well-received that the film quickly went into a wide stereoscopic release. However, most publications, including Kenneth Macgowan's classic film reference book Behind the Screen, state that the film did much better as a "regular" release. The film, adapted from the popular Cole Porter Broadway musical, starred the MGM songbird team of Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson as the leads, supported by Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bobby Van, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar and Tommy Rall. The film also prominently promoted its use of stereophonic sound.
Several other features that helped put 3D back on the map that month were the John Wayne feature Hondo (distributed by Warner Bros.), Columbia's Miss Sadie Thompson with Rita Hayworth, and Paramount's Money From Home with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Paramount also released the cartoon shorts Boo Moon with Casper, the Friendly Ghost and Popeye, Ace of Space with Popeye the Sailor. Paramount Pictures released a 3D Korean War film Cease Fire filmed on actual Korean locations in 1953.
Top Banana, based on the popular stage musical with Phil Silvers, was brought to the screen with the original cast. Although it was merely a filmed stage production, the idea was that every audience member would feel they would have the best seat in the house through color photography and 3D. Although the film was shot and edited in 3D, United Artists, the distributor, felt the production was uneconomical in stereoscopic form and released the film flat on January 27, 1954. It remains one of two "Golden era" 3- D features, along with another United Artists feature, Southwest Passage (with John Ireland and Joanne Dru), that are currently considered lost (although flat versions survive).
A string of successful 3D movies followed the second wave. Some highlights are:
The French Line, starring Jane Russell and Gilbert Roland, a Howard Hughes/RKO production. The film became notorious for being released without an MPAA seal of approval, after several suggestive lyrics were included, as well as one of Ms. Russell's particularly revealing costumes. Playing up her sex appeal, one tagline for the film was, "It'll knock both of your eyes out!" The film was later cut and approved by the MPAA for a general flat release, despite having a wide and profitable 3D release.
Taza, Son of Cochise, a sequel to 1950s Broken Arrow, which starred Rock Hudson in the title role, Barbara Rush as the love interest, and Rex Reason (billed as Bart Roberts) as his renegade brother, released through Universal-International. It was directed by the great stylist Douglas Sirk, and his striking visual sense made the film a huge success when it was "re-premiered" in 2006 at the Second 3D Expo in Hollywood.
Two ape films: Phantom of the Rue Morgue, featuring Karl Malden and Patricia Medina, and produced by Warner Bros. and based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and Gorilla At Large, a Panoramic Production starring Cameron Mitchell, distributed through Fox.
Creature from the Black Lagoon, starring Richard Carlson and Julie Adams, directed by Jack Arnold. Arguably the most famous 3D movie, and the only 3D feature that spawned a sequel, Revenge of the Creature in 3D (followed by another sequel, The Creature Walks Among Us, shot flat).
Cat-Women of the Moon, an Astor Picture starring Victor Jory and Marie Windsor. Elmer Bernstein composed the score.
Dial M for Murder, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, and Grace Kelly, is considered by aficionados of 3D to be one of the best examples of the process. Although available in 3D in 1954, there are no known playdates in 3D, since Warner Bros. had just instated a simultaneous 3D/2D release policy. The film's screening in 3D in February 1980 at the York Theater in San Francisco did so well that Warner Bros. re-released the film in 3D in February 1982.
Gog, an Ivan Tors production, dealing with realistic science fiction. The second film in Tors' "Office of Scientific Investigation" trilogy of film, which included, The Magnetic Monster and Riders to the Stars.
The Diamond Wizard, the only stereoscopic feature shot in Britain, released flat in both the UK and US. It starred and was directed by Dennis O'Keefe.
Irwin Allen's Dangerous Mission released by RKO in 1954 featuring Allen's trademarks of an all star cast facing a disaster (a forest fire).
Son of Sinbad, another RKO/Howard Hughes production, starring Dale Robertson, Lili St. Cyr, and Vincent Price. The film was shelved after Hughes ran into difficulty with The French Line, and wasn't released until 1955, at which time it went out flat, converted to the SuperScope process.
3D's final decline was in the late spring of 1954, for the same reasons as the previous lull, as well as the further success of widescreen formats with theater operators. Even though Polaroid had created a well-designed "Tell-Tale Filter Kit" for the purpose of recognizing and adjusting out of sync and phase 3D, exhibitors still felt uncomfortable with the system and turned their focus instead to processes such as CinemaScope. The last 3D feature to be released in that format during the "Golden era" was Revenge of the Creature, on February 23, 1955. Ironically, the film had a wide release in 3D and was well received at the box office.[21]
Revival (1960–1984) in single strip format
Stereoscopic films largely remained dormant for the first part of the 1960s, with those that were released usually being anaglyph exploitation films. One film of notoriety was the Beaver-Champion/Warner Bros. production, The Mask (1961). The film was shot in 2-D, but to enhance the bizarre qualities of the dream-world that is induced when the main character puts on a cursed tribal mask, these scenes went to anaglyph 3D. These scenes were printed by Technicolor on their first run in red/green anaglyph.
Although 3D films appeared sparsely during the early 1960s, the true second wave of 3D cinema was set into motion by Arch Oboler, the same producer who started the craze of the 1950s. Using a new technology called Space-Vision 3D, stereoscopic films were printed with two images, one above the other, in a single academy ratio frame, on a single strip, and needed only one projector fitted with a special lens. This so-called "over and under" technique eliminated the need for dual projector set-ups, and produced widescreen, but darker, less vivid, polarized 3D images. Unlike earlier dual system, it could stay in perfect synchronization, unless improperly spliced in repair.
Arch Oboler once again had the vision for the system that no one else would touch, and put it to use on his film entitled The Bubble, which starred Michael Cole, Deborah Walley, and Johnny Desmond. As with Bwana Devil, the critics panned The Bubble, but audiences flocked to see it, and it became financially sound enough to promote the use of the system to other studios, particularly independents, who did not have the money for expensive dual-strip prints of their productions.
In 1970, Stereovision, a new entity founded by director/inventor Allan Silliphant and optical designer Chris Condon, developed a different 35 mm single-strip format, which printed two images squeezed side-by-side and used an anamorphic lens to widen the pictures through Polaroid filters. Louis K. Sher (Sherpix) and Stereovision released the softcore sex comedy The Stewardesses (self-rated X, but later re-rated R by the MPAA). The film cost $100,000 USD to produce, and ran for months in several markets. eventually earning $27 million in North America, alone ($140 million in constant-2010 dollars) in fewer than 800 theaters, becoming the most profitable 3-Dimensional film to date, and in purely relative terms, one of the most profitable films ever. It was later released in 70 mm 3D. Some 36 films worldwide were made with Stereovision over 25 years, using either a widescreen (above-below), anamorphic (side by side) or 70 mm 3D formats. In 2009 The Stewardesses was remastered by Chris Condon and director Ed Meyer, releasing it in XpanD 3D, RealD Cinema and Dolby 3D.
The quality of the 1970s 3D films was not much more inventive, as many were either softcore and even hardcore adult films, horror films, or a combination of both. Paul Morrisey's Flesh For Frankenstein (aka Andy Warhol's Frankenstein) was a superlative example of such a combination.
Between 1981 and 1983 there was a new Hollywood 3D craze started by the spaghetti western Comin' at Ya!. When Parasite was released it was billed as the first horror film to come out in 3D in over 20 years. Horror movies and reissues of 1950s 3D classics (such as Hitchcock's Dial ´M´ for Murder) dominated the 3D releases that followed. The second sequel in the Friday the 13th series, Friday the 13th Part III, was released very successfully. Apparently saying "part 3 in 3D" was considered too cumbersome so it was shortened in the titles of Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D, which emphasized off the screen effects to the point of being annoying at times, especially when flashlights were shone into the eyes of the audience.
The science fiction film Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone was the most expensive 3D movie made up to that point with production costs about the same as Star Wars but not nearly the same box office success, causing the craze to fade quickly through spring 1983. Other sci-fi/fantasy films were released as well including Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and Treasure of the Four Crowns, which was widely criticized for poor editing and plot holes, but did feature some truly spectacular closeups.
3D releases after the second craze included The Man Who Wasn't There (1983), Silent Madness and the 1985 animated film Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, whose plot seemed to borrow heavily from Star Wars.
Only Comin' At Ya!, Parasite, and Friday the 13th Part III have been officially released on VHS and/or DVD in 3D in the United States (although Amityville 3D has seen a 3D DVD release in the United Kingdom). Most of the 1980s 3D movies and some of the classic 1950s movies such as House of Wax were released on the now defunct Video Disc (VHD) format in Japan as part of a system that used shutter glasses. Most of these have been unofficially transferred to DVD and are available on the grey market through sites such as eBay.
Rebirth of 3D (1985–2003)
In the mid-1980s, IMAX began producing non-fiction films for its nascent 3D business, starting with We Are Born of Stars (Roman Kroitor, 1985). A key point was that this production, as with all subsequent IMAX productions, emphasized mathematical correctness of the 3D rendition and thus largely eliminated the eye fatigue and pain that resulted from the approximate geometries of previous 3D incarnations. In addition, and in contrast to previous 35mm based 3D presentations, the very large field of view provided by IMAX allowed a much broader 3D "stage", arguably as important in 3D film as it is theatre.
In 1986, The Walt Disney Company began more prominent use of 3D films in special venues to impress audiences, Captain EO (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986) starring Michael Jackson, being a very notable example. In the same year, the National Film Board of Canada production Transitions (Colin Low), created for Expo 86 in Vancouver, was the first IMAX presentation using polarized glasses. Echoes of the Sun (Roman Kroitor, 1990) was the first IMAX film to be presented using alternate-eye shutterglass technology, a development required because the dome screen precluded the use of polarized technology.
From 1990 onward, numerous films were produced by all three parties to satisfy the demands of their various high-profile special attractions and IMAX's expanding 3D network. Films of special note during this period include the extremely successful Into the Deep (Graeme Ferguson, 1995) and the first IMAX 3D fiction film Wings of Courage (1996), by director Jean-Jacques Annaud, about the pilot Henri Guillaumet.
Other stereoscopic films produced in this period include:
The Last Buffalo (Stephen Low, 1990)
Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D (Jim Henson, 1991)
Imagine (John Weiley, 1993)
Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (Daniel Rustuccio, 1994)
Into the Deep (Graeme Ferguson, 1995)
Across the Sea of Time (Stephen Low, 1995)
Wings of Courage (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1996)
L5, First City in Space (Graeme Ferguson, 1996)
T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (James Cameron, 1996)
Paint Misbehavin (Roman Kroitor and Peter Stephenson, 1997)
IMAX Nutcracker (1997)
The Hidden Dimension (1997)
T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (Brett Leonard, 1998)
Mark Twain's America (Stephen Low, 1998)
Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box (Brett Leonard, 1999)
Galapagos (Al Giddings and David Clark, 1999)
Encounter in the Third Dimension (Ben Stassen, 1999)
Alien Adventure (Ben Stassen, 1999)
Ultimate G's (2000)
Cyberworld (Hugh Murray, 2000)
Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man (Keith Melton, 2000)
Haunted Castle (Ben Stassen, 2001)
Space Station 3D (Toni Myers, 2002)
SOS Planet (Ben Stassen, 2002)
Ocean Wonderland (2003)
Falling in Love Again (Munro Ferguson, 2003)
Misadventures in 3D (Ben Stassen, 2003)
By 2004, 54% of IMAX theaters (133 of 248) were capable of showing 3D films.[22]
Shortly thereafter, higher quality computer animation, competition from DVDs and other media, digital projection, digital video capture, and the use of sophisticated IMAX 70mm film projectors, created an opportunity for another wave of 3D films.[23][24]
Mainstream resurgence (2003–present)
In 2003, Ghosts of the Abyss by James Cameron was released as the first full-length 3D IMAX feature filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron by Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003), Aliens of the Deep IMAX (2005), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005).
In 2004, Las Vegas Hilton released Star Trek: The Experience which included two films. One of the films, Borg Invasion 4-D (Ty Granoroli), was in 3D. In August of the same year, rap group Insane Clown Posse released their ninth studio album Hell's Pit. One of two versions of the album contained a DVD featuring a 3D short film for the track "Bowling Balls", shot in high-definition video.[25]
In November 2004, The Polar Express was released as IMAX's first full-length, animated 3D feature. It was released in 3,584 theaters in 2D, and only 66 IMAX locations. The return from those few 3D theaters was about 25% of the total. The 3D version earned about 14 times as much per screen as the 2D version. This pattern continued and prompted a greatly intensified interest in 3D and 3D presentation of animated films.
In June 2005, the Mann's Chinese 6 theatre in Hollywood became the first commercial movie theatre to be equipped with the Digital 3D format. Both Singin' in the Rain and The Polar Express were tested in the Digital 3D format over the course of several months. In November 2005, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment released Chicken Little in digital 3D format.
The Butler's in Love, a short film directed by Anders Laursen and starring Elizabeth Berkley and Thomas Jane[27] was released on June 23, 2008. The film was shot at the former Industrial Light & Magic studios using KernerFX's prototype Kernercam stereoscopic camera rig.
Ben Walters suggests that both filmmakers and film exhibitors regain interest in 3D film. There is now more 3D exhibition equipment, and more dramatic films being shot in 3D format. One incentive is that the technology is more mature. Shooting in 3D format is less limited, and the result is more stable. Another incentive is the fact that while 2D ticket sales are in an overall state of decline, revenues from 3D tickets continue to grow.[28]
Through the entire history of 3D presentations, techniques to convert existing 2D images for 3D presentation have existed. Few have been effective or survived. The combination of digital and digitized source material with relatively cost-effective digital post-processing has spawned a new wave of conversion products. In June 2006, IMAX and Warner Bros. released Superman Returns including 20 minutes of 3D images converted from the 2D original digital footage. George Lucas has announced that he will re-release his Star Wars films in 3D based on a conversion process from the company In-Three. Later on in 2011, it was announced that Lucas was working with the company Prime Focus on this conversion.[29]
In late 2005, Steven Spielberg told the press he was involved in patenting a 3D cinema system that does not need glasses, and which is based on plasma screens. A computer splits each film-frame, and then projects the two split images onto the screen at differing angles, to be picked up by tiny angled ridges on the screen.
Animated films Open Season, and The Ant Bully, were released in analog 3D in 2006. Monster House and The Nightmare Before Christmas were released on XpanD 3D, RealD and Dolby 3D systems in 2006.
On May 19, 2007 Scar3D opened at the Cannes Film Market. It was the first US-produced 3D full-length feature film to be completed in Real D 3D. It has been the #1 film at the box office in several countries around the world, including Russia where it opened in 3D on 295 screens.
On January 19, 2008 was released U2 3D; it was the first live-action digital 3D film. In the same year others 3D films included Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt.
On January 16, 2009, Lionsgate released My Bloody Valentine 3D, the first horror film and first R-rated film to be projected in Real D 3D.[30] It was released to 1,033 3D screens, the most ever for this format, and 1,501 regular screens. Another R-Rated film, The Final Destination, was released later that year (August 28) to even more screens. It was the first of its series to be released in HD 3D.
On May 7, 2009 the British Film Institute commissioned a 3D film installation. The film Radio Mania: An Abandoned Work consists of two screens of stereoscopic 3D film with 3D Ambisonic sound. It stars Kevin Eldon and is by British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.
The first 3D webisode series was Horrorween starting September 1, 2009.
Major 3D films in 2009 included Coraline, Monsters vs. Aliens, Up, X Games 3D: The Movie, The Final Destination, and Avatar.[31] Avatar has gone on to be one of the most expensive films of all time, with a budget at $237 million; it is also the highest-grossing film of all time. The main technologies used to exhibit these films, and many others released around the time and up to the present, are Real D 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, MasterImage 3D, and IMAX 3D.
March and April 2010 saw three major 3D releases clustered together, with Alice in Wonderland hitting US theaters on March 5, 2010, How to Train Your Dragon on March 26, 2010 and Clash of the Titans on April 2, 2010. On May 13 of the same year, China's first IMAX 3D film started shooting.[32] The pre-production of the first 3D film shot in France, Derrière les murs, began in May 2010, and it will be released in mid-2011.
On October 1, 2010 Scar3D was the first-ever stereoscopic 3D Video-on-demand film released through major cable broadcasters for 3D televisions in the United States. Released in the United States on May 21, 2010, Shrek Forever After by DreamWorks Animation (Paramount Pictures) used the Real D 3D system, also released in IMAX 3D.
World 3-D Expositions
In September 2003, Sabucat Productions organized the first World 3-D Exposition, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the original craze. The Expo was held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre. During the two-week festival, over 30 of the 50 "golden era" stereoscopic features (as well as shorts) were screened, many coming from the collection of film historian and archivist Robert Furmanek, who had spent the previous 15 years painstakingly tracking down and preserving each film to its original glory. In attendance were many stars from each film, respectively, and some were moved to tears by the sold-out seating with audiences of film buffs from all over the world who came to remember their previous glories.
In May 2006, the second World 3-D Exposition was announced for September of that year, presented by the 3-D Film Preservation Fund. Along with the favorites of the previous exposition were newly discovered features and shorts, and like the previous Expo, guests from each film. Expo II was announced as being the locale for the world premiere of several films never before seen in 3D, including The Diamond Wizard and the Universal short, Hawaiian Nights with Mamie Van Doren and Pinky Lee. Other "re-premieres" of films not seen since their original release in stereoscopic form included Cease Fire!, Taza, Son of Cochise, Wings of the Hawk, and Those Redheads From Seattle. Also shown were the long-lost shorts Carmenesque and A Day in the Country (both 1953) and William Van Doren Kelley's two Plasticon shorts (1922 and 1923).
Reported audience decline
In the wake of its initial popularity and corresponding increase in the number of screens, more films are being released in the 3D format. However, industry observers have noted that 2011 showed a considerable decline in audience interest. For instance, only 45% of the premiere weekend box office earnings of Kung Fu Panda 2 came from 3D screenings as opposed to 60% for Shrek Forever After in 2010.[33] In addition, the premiere of Cars 2 opening weekend gross consisted of only 37% from 3D theatres.[34] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger were major releases that achieved similar percentages: 43% and 40% respectively.[35] In view of this trend, there has been box office analysis concluding the implementation of 3D presentation is apparently backfiring by discouraging people from going to movie theatres at all. As Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo notes, "In each case, 3D's more-money-from-fewer-people approach has simply led to less money from even fewer people."[36]
According to the Motion Picture Association of America, despite a record total of 47 3D movies being released in 2011, the overall domestic box office receipts were down 18% to $1.8 billion from $2.2 billion in 2010.[37] Although revenues as a whole increased during 2012, the bulk has so far come from 2D presentations as exemplified by little over 50% of moviegoers opting to see the likes of The Avengers and 32% choosing Brave in their 3D versions. Conflicting reasons are respectively offered by studios and exhibitors: whereas the former blame more expensive 3D ticket prices, the latter argue that the quality of movies in general is at fault. However, despite the perceived decline of 3D in the U.S. market, studio chiefs are optimistic of better receipts internationally, where there still appears to be a strong appetite for the format.[38][39]
Studios are also using 3D to generate additional income from films that are already commercially successful. Such re-releases usually involve a conversion from 2D. For example, Disney has reissued both The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, with plans to add some of its other well-known titles.[40] Titanic has also been modified for 3D,[41] and there are also plans to similarly present all six Star Wars films.[42]
Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the leading proponents of 3D film and the producer of some of the most critically acclaimed films in this format, such as How to Train Your Dragon (RT 98%[43]) and Kung Fu Panda 2 (RT 82%[44]), blames oversaturation of the market with inferior films, especially ones photographed conventionally and then digitally processed in post-production. Examples include The Last Airbender (RT 6%[45]) and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (RT 13%[46]), which have led audiences to conclude that the format is not worth the additional expense to see.[47] Daniel Engber, a columnist for Slate, comes to a similar conclusion: "What happened to 3-D? It may have died from a case of acute septicemia—too much crap in the system."[48] However, at the global box office there are six films whose combined 2D and 3D versions achieved grosses of over $1 billion each: three in 2011, two in 2010 and one in 2009.
Film critic Mark Kermode, a noted detractor of 3D, has surmised that there is an emerging policy of distributors to limit the availability of 2D versions, thus "railroading" the 3D format into cinemas whether the paying moviegoer likes it or not. This was especially prevalent during the release of Prometheus in 2012, where only 30% of prints for theatrical exhibition (at least in the UK) were in 2D.[49] His suspicions were later reinforced by a substantial number of complaints about Dredd from those who wished to see it in 2D but were denied the opportunity.[50]
Stereoscopic motion pictures can be produced through a variety of different methods. Over the years the popularity of systems being widely employed in movie theaters has waxed and waned. Though anaglyph was sometimes used prior to 1948, during the early "Golden Era" of 3D cinematography of the 1950s the polarization system was used for every single feature length movie in the United States, and all but one short film.[51] In the 21st century, polarization 3D systems have continued to dominate the scene, though during the 1960s and 1970s some classic films which were converted to anaglyph for theaters not equipped for polarization, and were even shown in 3D on television.[52] In the years following the mid-1980s, some movies were made with short segments in anaglyph 3D. The following are some of the technical details and methodologies employed in some of the more notable 3D movie systems that have been developed.
Producing 3D films
Further information: Stereoscopy#Stereo photography techniques
The standard for shooting live-action films in 3D involves using two cameras mounted so that their lenses are about as far apart from each other as the average pair of human eyes, recording two separate images for both the left eye and the right eye. In principle, two normal 2D cameras could be put side-to-side but this is problematic in many ways. The only real option is to invest in new stereoscopic cameras. Moreover, some cinematographic tricks that are simple with a 2D camera become impossible when filming in 3D. This means those otherwise cheap tricks need to be replaced by expensive CGI.[53]
In 2008, Journey to the Center of the Earth became the first live-action feature film to be shot with the earliest Fusion Camera System released in Digital 3D and was later followed by several others. Avatar (2009) was shot in a 3D process that is based on how the human eye looks at an image. It was an improvement to the existing 3D camera system. Many 3D camera rigs still in use simply pair two cameras side by side, while newer rigs are paired with a beam splitter or both camera lenses built into one unit. While Digital Cinema cameras are not a requirement for 3D they are the predominant medium for most of what is photographed. Film options include IMAX 3D and Cine 160.
In 1930's and 1940's Fleischer Studio made several cartoons with extensive stereoscopic 3D backgrounds, including several Popeye cartoons, Betty Boops, and Superman.
In early to mid-1950s, only half of the major Animation film studios operation experimented with creating traditional 3D animated short subjects. Walt Disney Studio produced two traditional animation short for stereoscopic 3D, for cinemas. Adventures in Music: Melody (1952), and the Donald Duck cartoon Working for Peanuts (1953). Warner Brothers only produced a single cartoon in 3D. Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1953) starring Bugs Bunny. Famous Studio produced two cartoons in 3D, the Popeye cartoon Popeye, the Ace of Space (1953), and the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon Boo Moon (1954). Walter Lantz Studio produced the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Hypnotic Hick (1953), which was distributed by Universal.
From late 1950s until mid-2000s almost no animation was produced for 3D display in theaters. Although several films used 3D backgrounds. One exception is Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.
CGI animated films can be rendered as stereoscopic 3D version by using two virtual cameras. Stop-motion animated 3D films are photographed with two cameras similar to live action 3D films.
In 2004 The Polar Express was the first stereoscopic 3D computer-animated feature film. In November 2005, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment released Chicken Little in digital 3D format, being Disney's first CGI-animated film in 3D. The first 3D feature by DreamWorks Animation, Monsters vs Aliens, followed in 2009 and used a new digital rendering process called InTru3D, which was developed by Intel to create more realistic animated 3D images. InTru3D is not used to exhibit 3D films in theaters; they are shown in either RealD 3D or IMAX 3D.
2D to 3D conversion
Main article: 2D to 3D conversion
In the case of 2D CGI animated films that were generated from 3D models, it is possible to return to the models to generate a 3D version.
For all other 2D films, different techniques must be employed. For example, for the 3D re-release of the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney Pictures scanned each original frame and manipulated them to produce left-eye and right-eye versions. Dozens of films have now been converted from 2D to 3D. There are several approaches used for 2D to 3D conversion, most notably depth-based methods.[54]
However, conversion to 3D has problems. Information is unavailable as 2D doesn't have information for a perspective view. Some TVs have a 3D engine to convert 2D content to 3D. Usually, on high frame rate content(and on some slower processors even normal frame rate) the processor isn't fast enough and lag is possible. This can lead to strange visual effects.[55]
Displaying 3D films
Anaglyph
Main article: Anaglyph 3D
Anaglyph images were the earliest method of presenting theatrical 3D, and the one most commonly associated with stereoscopy by the public at large, mostly because of non-theatrical 3D media such as comic books and 3D television broadcasts, where polarization is not practical. They were made popular because of the ease of their production and exhibition. The first anaglyph movie was invented in 1915 by Edwin S Porter. Though the earliest theatrical presentations were done with this system, most 3D movies from the 1950s and 1980s were originally shown polarized.[56]
In an anaglyph, the two images are superimposed in an additive light setting through two filters, one red and one cyan. In a subtractive light setting, the two images are printed in the same complementary colors on white paper. Glasses with colored filters in each eye separate the appropriate images by canceling the filter color out and rendering the complementary color black.
Anaglyph images are much easier to view than either parallel sighting or crossed eye stereograms, although the latter types offer bright and accurate color rendering, particularly in the red component, which is muted, or desaturated with even the best color anaglyphs. A compensating technique, commonly known as Anachrome, uses a slightly more transparent cyan filter in the patented glasses associated with the technique. Process reconfigures the typical anaglyph image to have less parallax.
An alternative to the usual red and cyan filter system of anaglyph is ColorCode 3-D, a patented anaglyph system which was invented in order to present an anaglyph image in conjunction with the NTSC television standard, in which the red channel is often compromised. ColorCode uses the complementary colors of yellow and dark blue on-screen, and the colors of the glasses' lenses are amber and dark blue.
The polarization 3D system has been the standard for theatrical presentations since it was used for Bwana Devil in 1952,[56] though early Imax presentations were done using the eclipse system and in the 1960s and 1970s classic 3D movies were sometimes converted to anaglyph for special presentations. The polarization system has better color fidelity and less ghosting than the anaglyph system. In the post-'50s era, anaglyph has been used instead of polarization in feature presentations where only part of the movie is in 3D such as in the 3D segment of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and the 3D segments of Spy Kids 3D.
Anaglyph is also used in printed materials and in 3D television broadcasts where polarization is not practical. 3D polarized televisions and other displays only became available from several manufacturers in 2008; these generate polarization on the receiving end.
Polarization systems
Main article: Polarized 3D system
To present a stereoscopic motion picture, two images are projected superimposed onto the same screen through different polarizing filters. The viewer wears low-cost eyeglasses which also contain a pair of polarizing filters oriented differently (clockwise/counterclockwise with circular polarization or at 90 degree angles, usually 45 and 135 degrees,[57] with linear polarization). As each filter passes only that light which is similarly polarized and blocks the light polarized differently, each eye sees a different image. This is used to produce a three-dimensional effect by projecting the same scene into both eyes, but depicted from slightly different perspectives. Since no head tracking is involved, the entire audience can view the stereoscopic images at the same time. Additionally, since both lenses have the same color, people with one dominant eye (amblyopia), where one eye is used more, are able to see the 3D effect, previously negated by the separation of the two colors.
Circular polarization has an advantage over linear polarization, in that the viewer does not need to have their head upright and aligned with the screen for the polarization to work properly. With linear polarization, turning the glasses sideways causes the filters to go out of alignment with the screen filters causing the image to fade and for each eye to see the opposite frame more easily. For circular polarization, the polarizing effect works regardless of how the viewer's head is aligned with the screen such as tilted sideways, or even upside down. The left eye will still only see the image intended for it, and vice versa, without fading or crosstalk.
In the case of RealD a circularly polarizing liquid crystal filter which can switch polarity 144 times per second is placed in front of the projector lens. Only one projector is needed, as the left and right eye images are displayed alternately. Sony features a new system called RealD XLS, which shows both circular polarized images simultaneously: A single 4K projector (4096×2160 resolution) displays both 2K images (2048×1080 resolution) on top of each other at the same time, a special lens attachment polarizes and projects the images.[58]
Optical attachments can be added to traditional 35mm projectors to adapt them for projecting film in the "over-and-under" format, in which each pair of images is stacked within one frame of film. The two images are projected through different polarizers and superimposed on the screen. This is a very cost-effective way to convert a theater for 3-D as all that is needed are the attachments and a non-depolarizing screen surface, rather than a conversion to digital 3-D projection. Thomson Technicolor currently produces an adapter of this type.[59] A metallic screen is necessary for these systems as reflection from non-metallic surfaces destroys the polarization of the light.
Polarized stereoscopic pictures have been around since 1936, when Edwin H. Land first applied it to motion pictures. The so-called "3-D movie craze" in the years 1952 through 1955 was almost entirely offered in theaters using linear polarizing projection and glasses. Only a minute amount of the total 3D films shown in the period used the anaglyph color filter method. Linear polarization was likewise used with consumer level stereo projectors. Polarization was also used during the 3D revival of the 1980s.
In the 2000s, computer animation, competition from DVDs and other media, digital projection, and the use of sophisticated IMAX 70mm film projectors, have created an opportunity for a new wave of polarized 3D films.[23][24]
All types of polarization will result in a darkening of the displayed image and poorer contrast compared to non-3D images. Light from lamps is normally emitted as a random collection of polarizations, while a polarization filter only passes a fraction of the light. As a result the screen image is darker. This darkening can be compensated by increasing the brightness of the projector light source. If the initial polarization filter is inserted between the lamp and the image generation element, the light intensity striking the image element is not any higher than normal without the polarizing filter, and overall image contrast transmitted to the screen is not affected.
Eclipse method
Main article: Active shutter 3D system
With the eclipse method, a shutter blocks light from each appropriate eye when the converse eye's image is projected on the screen. The projector alternates between left and right images, and opens and closes the shutters in the glasses or viewer in synchronization with the images on the screen. This was the basis of the Teleview system which was used briefly in 1922.[10][60]
A variation on the eclipse method is used in LCD shutter glasses. Glasses containing liquid crystal that will let light through in synchronization with the images on the cinema, television or computer screen, using the concept of alternate-frame sequencing. This is the method used by nVidia, XpanD 3D, and earlier IMAX systems. A drawback of this method is the need for each person viewing to wear expensive, electronic glasses that must be synchronized with the display system using a wireless signal or attached wire. The shutter-glasses are heavier than most polarized glasses, though lighter models are no heavier than some sunglasses or deluxe polarized glasses.[61] However these systems do not require a silver screen for projected images.
Liquid crystal light valves work by rotating light between two polarizing filters. Due to these internal polarizers, LCD shutter-glasses darken the display image of any LCD, plasma, or projector image source, which has the result that images appear dimmer and contrast is lower than for normal non-3D viewing. This is not necessarily a usage problem; for some types of displays which are already very bright with poor grayish black levels, LCD shutter glasses may actually improve the image quality.
Interference filter technology
Main article: Anaglyph 3D § Interference filter systems
Dolby 3D uses specific wavelengths of red, green, and blue for the right eye, and different wavelengths of red, green, and blue for the left eye. Eyeglasses which filter out the very specific wavelengths allow the wearer to see a 3D image. This technology eliminates the expensive silver screens required for polarized systems such as RealD, which is the most common 3D display system in theaters. It does, however, require much more expensive glasses than the polarized systems. It is also known as spectral comb filtering or wavelength multiplex visualization
The recently introduced Omega 3D/Panavision 3D system also uses this technology, though with a wider spectrum and more "teeth" to the "comb" (5 for each eye in the Omega/Panavision system). The use of more spectral bands per eye eliminates the need to color process the image, required by the Dolby system. Evenly dividing the visible spectrum between the eyes gives the viewer a more relaxed "feel" as the light energy and color balance is nearly 50-50. Like the Dolby system, the Omega system can be used with white or silver screens. But it can be used with either film or digital projectors, unlike the Dolby filters that are only used on a digital system with a color correcting processor provided by Dolby. The Omega/Panavision system also claims that their glasses are cheaper to manufacture than those used by Dolby.[62] In June 2012 the Omega 3D/Panavision 3D system was discontinued by DPVO Theatrical, who marketed it on behalf of Panavision, citing "challenging global economic and 3D market conditions".[63] Although DPVO dissolved its business operations, Omega Optical continues promoting and selling 3D systems to non-theatrical markets. Omega Optical’s 3D system contains projection filters and 3D glasses. In addition to the passive stereoscopic 3D system, Omega Optical has produced enhanced anaglyph 3D glasses. The Omega’s red/cyan anaglyph glasses use complex metal oxide thin film coatings and high quality annealed glass optics.
Main article: Autostereoscopy
In this method, glasses are not necessary to see the stereoscopic image. Lenticular lens and parallax barrier technologies involve imposing two (or more) images on the same sheet, in narrow, alternating strips, and using a screen that either blocks one of the two images' strips (in the case of parallax barriers) or uses equally narrow lenses to bend the strips of image and make it appear to fill the entire image (in the case of lenticular prints). To produce the stereoscopic effect, the person must be positioned so that one eye sees one of the two images and the other sees the other.
Both images are projected onto a high-gain, corrugated screen which reflects light at acute angles. In order to see the stereoscopic image, the viewer must sit within a very narrow angle that is nearly perpendicular to the screen, limiting the size of the audience. Lenticular was used for theatrical presentation of numerous shorts in Russia from 1940–1948[52] and in 1946 for the feature length film Robinzon Kruzo[64]
Though its use in theatrical presentations has been rather limited, lenticular has been widely used for a variety of novelty items and has even been used in amateur 3D photography.[65][66] Recent use includes the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D with an autostereoscopic display that was released in 2009. Other examples for this technology include autostereoscopic LCD displays on monitors, notebooks, TVs, mobile phones and gaming devices, such as the Nintendo 3DS.
Health effects
Some viewers have complained of headaches and eyestrain after watching 3D films.[67] Motion sickness, in addition to other health concerns,[68] are more easily induced by 3D presentations.
There are two primary effects of 3D film that are unnatural for human vision: crosstalk between the eyes, caused by imperfect image separation, and the mismatch between convergence and accommodation, caused by the difference between an object's perceived position in front of or behind the screen and the real origin of that light on the screen.
It is believed that approximately 12% of people are unable to properly see 3D images, due to a variety of medical conditions.[69][70] According to another experiment up to 30% of people have very weak stereoscopic vision preventing them from depth perception based on stereo disparity. This nullifies or greatly decreases immersion effects of digital stereo to them.[71]
It has recently been discovered that each of the rods and cones in animal eyes can measure the distance to the point on the object that is in focus at the particular rod or cone. Each rod or cone can act as a passive LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging). The lens selects the point on the object for each pixel to which the distance is measured. That is we can see in 3D separately with each eye.[72] If the brain uses this ability in addition to the stereoscopic effect and other clues no stereoscopic system can present a true 3D picture to the brain.
The concerns affected such a large portion of audiences that, in 2010, online entrepreneur Hank Green created "2D Glasses", a product designed to combat adverse effects by reversing three-dimensional cinema images into ordinary two-dimensional ones, selling his creation through online retailers.[73][74]
“ After Toy Story, there were 10 really bad CG movies because everybody thought the success of that film was CG and not great characters that were beautifully designed and heartwarming. Now, you've got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D, which is not what we did. They're expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they'll be putting out an inferior product. ”
— Avatar director James Cameron[75]
Most of the cues required to provide humans with relative depth information are already present in traditional 2D films. For example, closer objects occlude further ones, distant objects are desaturated and hazy relative to near ones, and the brain subconsciously "knows" the distance of many objects when the height is known (e.g. a human figure subtending only a small amount of the screen is more likely to be 2 m tall and far away than 10 cm tall and close). In fact, only two of these depth cues are not already present in 2D films: stereopsis (or parallax) and the focus of the eyeball (accommodation).
3D film-making addresses accurate presentation of stereopsis but not of accommodation, and therefore is insufficient in providing a complete 3D illusion. However, promising results from research aimed at overcoming this shortcoming were presented at the 2010 Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference in San Jose, U.S.[76]
Film critic Mark Kermode[77] argued that 3D adds "not that much" value to a film, and said that, while he liked Avatar, the many impressive things he saw in the movie had nothing to do with 3D. Kermode has been an outspoken critic of 3D film describing the effect as a "nonsense" and recommends using two right or left lenses from the 3D glasses to cut out the "pointy, pointy 3D stereoscopic vision", although this technique still does not improve the huge brightness loss from a 3D film.[78] Versions of these "2-D glasses" are being marketed.[79]
As pointed out in the article "Virtual Space - the movies of the future" [80] in real life the 3D effect, or stereoscopic vision, depends on the distance between the eyes, which is only about 2 1/2 inches. The depth perception this affords is only noticeable near to the head - at about arms length. It is only useful for such tasks as threading a needle. It follows that in films portraying real life the 3D effect is barely noticeable and is soon forgotten as the film proceeds.
Director Christopher Nolan has criticised the notion that traditional film does not allow depth perception, saying "I think it's a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it's three dimensional... You know 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a '2D movie' is a little misleading."[81] Nolan also criticised that shooting on the required digital video does not offer a high enough quality image[82] and that 3D cameras cannot be equipped with prime (fixed focus) lenses.[81]
Late film critic Roger Ebert repeatedly criticized 3D film as being "too dim", sometimes distracting or even nausea-inducing, and argued that it is an expensive technology that adds nothing of value to the movie-going experience (since 2-D movies already provide a sufficient illusion of 3D).[83] While Ebert was "not opposed to 3-D as an option", he opposed it as a replacement for traditional film, and preferred 2-D technologies such as MaxiVision48 that improve image area/resolution and frames per second.[83]
Brightness concerns
Any 3D system will cut down the brightness of the picture considerably – the light loss can be as high as 88%. Some of this loss may be compensated by running the projector’s bulb at higher power or using more powerful bulbs.[84]
The 2D brightness cinema standard is 14 foot-lamberts (48 candela per square metre), as set by the SMPTE standard 196M. As of 2012[update], there is no official standard for 3D brightness. According to the industry de-facto standard, however, the "acceptable brightness range" goes as low as 3.5 fL (12 cd/m2) – just 25% of the standard 2D brightness.[85]
Among others, Christopher Nolan has criticized the huge brightness loss: "You're not that aware of it because once you're 'in that world,' your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters up to the proper brightness, we're not sticking polarized filters in everything."[86]
In September 2012, the [4]
Post-conversion
Another major criticism is that many of the movies in the 21st century to date were not filmed in 3D, but converted into 3-D after filming. Filmmakers who have criticized the quality of this process include James Cameron, whose film Avatar was created in 3D from the ground up and is largely credited with the revival of 3D, and Michael Bay.[75] Despite this, a significant portion of Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon was post-converted to 3D, and the results were still acclaimed.[87]
List of 3D films
3D television
4D film
Volumetric display
List of Blu-ray 3D releases
Digital 3D
RealD Cinema
Dolby 3D
XpanD 3D
MasterImage 3D
3-D Film Preservation Fund
Disney Digital 3-D
, April 1953, Popular Science early article on the technology then of 3D movies
Aspect Ratio - October 2012 [November 4, 2012] Television interview between John Morrison and independent filmmaker Robert Bloomberg about 3D films in general
Binocular rivalry
Correspondence problem
Epipolar geometry
Stereoblindness
Stereopsis recovery
Stereoscopic acuity
Stereo display
Anaglyph 3D
Autostereogram
Active shutter 3D system
Head-mounted display
Integral imaging
Lenticular lens
Multiscopy
Parallax barrier
Stereogram
Polarized 3D system
Virtual retinal display
2D-plus-depth
2D plus Delta
Multiview Video Coding
Stereoscopic Depth Rendition
Computer stereo vision
Stereoscopic Video Coding
Stereoscopic rangefinders
Pseudoscope
Stereoscopic spectroscopy
3D-enabled mobile phones
Stereoscopic video game
3D camcorder
Notable products
Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D
Nintendo 3DS (XL)
Nvidia 3D Vision
International Stereoscopic Union
Stereoscopic Displays and Applications
Polaroid Corporation
Lady Gaga, Bankruptcy, Nascar, Netherlands, Apple Inc.
Miss Sadie Thompson
W. Somerset Maugham, Rita Hayworth, José Ferrer, Columbia Pictures, Curtis Bernhardt
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Giallo Pudding: DARK BAR (1988)
Scribbled by Thomas T. Sueyres
Saturday, April 07, 2012 Thrillers No comments
Just when I think that if it's Italian, from the '80s, if I haven't seen it, I've at least heard of it, I stumble across something that I never knew existed. Most Italian genre films from the '80s were made for export and because of that they were shot either in English or mostly in English, then looped in post. This means, that unlike say, Russian genre product that is shot in Russian and distributed in Russia for Russian audiences, kiss my ass yankee, the Italian stuff got around. Even if it never saw the light of day in US theaters or on US video, most likely some country has a copy, and you would have at least heard of it via old school scribblers like Chris Poggiali, Steve Puchalski or hell, even Fangoria. So if you've heard of it, you're cool. I was freakin' clueless.
Starting with an incredibly cryptic plot, an apparently desperate Elizabeth (Barbara Cupisti) has some debts that are owed, a book to hide and some frantic phone calls to make. Her estranged sister Anna (Marina Suma) gets a phone call about a meeting at the Dark Bar at midnight, as does her seemingly partially estranged boyfriend Marco (Richard Hatch). While Anna blows it off, in order to blow her trombone at another club, Marco makes the appointment only to discover that Elizabeth is nowhere to be found. At the same time a man inconspicuously dressed in a black fedora and trench coat walks into the ladies room and shoots Elizabeth dead. Anna eventually finds out that her sister was murdered and hooks up with Marco in order to figure out who killed her. It doesn't take them very long as the killer has friends and they are hunting the hunters.
DARK BAR is the one and only feature film directed by Stelio Fiorenza, who cut his teeth as assistant director on a few obscure sleaze flicks (the most notable being Mario Gariazzo's '79 sex giallo PLAY MOTEL). For a first time writer-director, I really like where Fiorenza is going, but the road he travels is filled with pot-holes. Granted some of his issues can be chalked up to budgetary issues, but at the same time he seems like he has ADD and is off on tangents at the drop of a fedora.
Fiorenza creates an atmosphere that feels like it should be an off kilter, underground film with some amazingly cool shots, hand-held cameras and interesting locations and costumes. During the beginning of the film when Elizabeth is spending the last few hours of her life, there are some great details; a telephone shaped like a stilletto-heeled shoe, a black dress covered in eyes, the black dress on a white bathroom stall with red blood. Oblique, stylish angles combined with an almost cinema verite style makes the movie feel like it should be pushing the envelope with something. When Anna first meets up with Marco, she arrives at his presumed work, a small, remote and deserted screening room where he is setting up a projector. When Marco asks Anna to go down to the auditorium to check the sound, he finds out that the intercom has been cut and realizes that something is about to go wrong. It does, but Fiorenza doesn't really play the suspense out like he could have, nor does he go for a string of bloody murders as you'd expect. Then we are left with the dialogue that runs like this:
Marco: "What was your sister like?"
Anna: "I don't even know what I'm like!"
Fiorenza also feels like he is lifting a page from Alex Cox's REPO MAN (1984) with an almost surreal punk/new wave motif for the Dark Bar itself, which is really interesting, but completely undeveloped. Fiorenza decides he's also going to try to throw in a film noir angle as well. The villains are clad in black trench coats and fedoras and are working with a blind woman who is obsessed with listening to sea shells and is taken care of by a tarot-reading girl. This is yet another weird, but cool idea that he really doesn't completely follow through on. Once you discover what exactly is going on (there is no spoon-feeding of the plot here), it's rather banal. Worse still, Fiorenza doesn't or can't consistently create the lighting to reinforce that feeling of noir. Film noir requires the use of light to create deep shadows that lend immeasurable texture to the visuals, here we get an occasional scene, but mostly flood fills that chase away every shadow and kill the atmosphere almost completely. The juxtaposition between the punk, giallo and noir is really interesting, but it ends up being a collection of really interesting ideas rather than a great film. For instance, at the Dark Bar, there is a long sequence where a bartender slowly and deliberately uses a pair of ice tongs to place an eyeball in a very dirty martini. The drink is delivered, the recipient holds it while in conversation... and that is it. We move along and the sequence is completely forgotten about. Maybe it's Fiorenza tipping his hat to The Misfits, but who knows?
The saddest thing of all is that Fiorenza never got the opportunity to make another film. As far as I know, the only thing he has done is a short film in 1998 titled A STRANGE ENCOUNTER. With DARK BAR, it feels like he has a sack of great ingredients, but isn't quite a skilled enough as a cook to bring them together into a perfect dish. But just like cooks, filmmakers get better with practice (yeah, ok, Jess Franco did exactly the opposite) and I would have really liked to see him evolve. As it is, it's still worth checking out for the die-hard Italo-philes like... well, us.
Prison Prescription: PENITENTIARY II (1982) & PENI...
The XXX-Factor: CABARET SIN (1987)
Cine M.I.A. #3: SON OF DRACULA (1974)
Cine M.I.A.#2: SAVAGE HARVEST (1981)
Listomania!: Thomas' March 2012 Viewings
Cine M.I.A.#1: THE BOY WHO CRIED BITCH (1991)
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Tagged: Norman Gimbel
1960s, Latin
So Nice (Summer Samba)
First recorded (as “Samba De Verão”) by Eumir Deodato (1964).
First vocal recording (as “Samba De Verão”) by Marcos Valle (1965).
Hit versions (in English) by The Walter Wanderley Trio (US #26/MOR #3 1966), Johnny Mathis (MOR #17 1966), Connie Francis (MOR #17 1966), Vicki Carr (MOR #32 1966).
From the wiki: “‘Summer Samba’ (also known as ‘So Nice’ or its original Portuguese title, ‘Samba de Verão’) is a 1964 Bossa nova song by Brazilian composer Marcos Valle
“Brazilian musician, arranger and producer Eumir Deodato, a musical autodidact, starting with the accordion at age 12, first recorded the song in 1964 as an instrumental. Co-writer Valle recorded the first vocal version of ‘Samba De Verão’ in 1965, with the original Portuguese lyrics coming from Paulo Sérgio Valle, Marcos’ brother.
First released (as “Garota de Ipanema”) by Pery Ribeiro (1962).
Hit versions by Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto (US #5/MOR #1/UK #29 1964), Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto (MOR #1 1964).
Also recorded by Ella Fitzgerald (as “Boy from Ipanema”, 1965), Amy Winehouse (2002).
From the wiki: “‘Garota de Ipanema’ (‘The Girl from Ipanema’) was the worldwide Bossa nova hit song that won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel (‘So Nice‘, ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song‘). The first commercial recording was in 1962, by Pery Ribeiro. The 1964 single, performed by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz and shortened from the album version recorded in 1963 by Getz and Joao Gilberto, became the international hit. The original choice as vocalist was Sarah Vaughan, but when Gilberto heard the English translation, he decided that Astrud – Joao’s wife – should sing it. Her subtle vocal added a nuance to the song.
“Numerous recordings have been used in films, sometimes as an elevator music cliché, and the song has been covered by other singers innumerable times (including a gender-turning version. titled ‘Boy from Ipanema’, sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee). ‘Girl from Ipanema’ is believed to be the second most recorded pop song in history, after ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles.
1970s, Pop
First recorded by Lori Lieberman (1971).
Hit versions by Roberta Flack (US #1/R&B #2/UK #6/CAN #1 1973), The Fugees (US #2/UK #1 1996).
http://youtu.be/WxY47jh9owA
From the wiki: “According to Lori Lieberman, the artist who performed the original recording in 1972, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the song ‘Empty Chairs,’ written, composed, and recorded by Don McLean. However, Charlie Fox has specifically repudiated Lieberman’s having input into the song’s creation, saying: ‘We [ie. lyricist Norman Gimbel (‘Girl from Ipanema‘, ‘So Nice (Summer Samba)‘) and composer Fox] wrote the song and [Lieberman] heard it and said it reminded her of how she felt at [a Don McLean] concert. Don McLean didn’t inspire Norman [Gimbel] or me to write the song but even Don McLean thinks he’s the inspiration for the song according to his official website!’ Instead, the song has its origin in a novel.
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Video Concert Reviews
Soulwax DVD Review / BUSY P Shoe Launch / Justice DVD Screening info
Oct 30th, 2008 | By Bryan
Lorn and Bryan catch a special screening of the Soulwax documentary Part of the Weekend Never Dies in Los Angeles, CA
Busy P will be in LA with Justice to launch his new AIR Force 1s. There are only 100 pairs available!
Justice will be screening the west coast premier of their new documentary!
6pm: Doors Open
7pm: JUSTICE ACROSS THE UNIVERSE INTRODUCED BY BUSY P AND JUSTICE
8pm: Busy P x Nike Air Force 1 Launch
YTC on Twitter
Call or Text Us Your Review to 530-YOU-TELL (530-968-8355)!
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YouTellConcerts.com discourages its readers from downloading files under copyright without paying for them legally. If you find any content that is violating the copyright law and would like it removed, please send an email to: youtell[at]youtellconcerts.com
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Get FREE Tickets to JAY-Z & Beyoncé's On the Run II Tour
And you can feel really, really good about yourself too!
Kyle McCann
USA Today / SIPA USA
One of the hottest tickets this summer may just be Beyoncé and JAY-Z's On the Run II tour... because, well, Jay & Bey, together, on one stage.
RELATED: Beyoncé and JAY-Z's Announce On the Run II
Of course, there is one way you can score FREE tickets to the show's European leg while feeling pretty good about yourself. Mr. & Mrs. Carter have announced that they'll offer free tickets to fans who contribute to charity.
The musical power couple has partnered with both The Prince's Trust and Global Citizen, with both nonprofits set to raffle off tickets for fans who donate or sign up to volunteer. It's not known yet if the two will offer the same opportunity in the states when the tour kicks off in late July.
Speaking of the North American leg of the tour, DJ Khaled has officially been tapped to join them this summer.
On the Run II
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Exclusive: Los Angeles sheriff's deputies say they were beaten by fellow deputies
By Miriam Hernandez
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Two Los Angeles County deputies who say they were beaten and strangled to the point they believed they might die spoke exclusively to Eyewitness News.
"I knew I was losing consciousness. I knew that at the moment I was being overpowered. So I did feel like I was being killed," says one of the injured deputies.
In all, eight deputies are demanding $60 million in a new lawsuit against Los Angeles County and four fellow deputies they say are members of the "Banditos" deputy gang.
"We're hoping that the county and the Sheriff's Department finally changes, finally fixes what they admit has been a problem for 50 years," says their attorney Vincent Miller. "It's unbelievable to anyone on the outside that you'd have gang-member cops."
According to the lawsuit, the attack took place after a party at Kennedy Hall last September that was sanctioned by the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station.
The deputies say the deputy clique or gang ran the East Los Angeles station like a criminal enterprise - controlling schedules, demanding donations and pressuring recruits to make arrests even if they were bad ones.
Deputies say the gang strictly enforces a code of silence.
"People see what's going on with us - how we are now being treated - and they are afraid to talk," says a deputy plaintiff who did not want to be identified.
County officials vow to get to the bottom of this issue once and for all, but previous attempts have gone nowhere. An outright ban on deputy cliques or secret societies raises First Amendment issues.
"I do think that Sheriff McDonnell wanted to address this issue and that past boards have not always had the appetites to take this issue on," says former federal prosecutor Miriam Krinsky who worked with McDonnell on jail reform.
On Tuesday, researchers with the nonprofit RAND corporation unveiled their plans for a year-long study of deputy subgroups in the LASD at a meeting of the Civilian Oversight Commission. Researchers expect to conduct interviews with LASD leaders, community members and anonymously survey all 10,000 sworn members of the department.
Meanwhile, the LASD's chief watchdog, Inspector General Max Huntsman, told commissioners he's ready to conduct a separate investigation, but needs subpoena power to get at the truth.
"I'm not backing down, I'm not slowing down," Huntsman told the commissioners. "I think it's crazy that we have an elected sheriff stating publicly that there are no secret societies, only station tattoos. Given what we all know publicly, given what happened with the Banditos that is common knowledge."
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is exploring how they can expand the Inspector General's authority to include subpoena power, which would give him the ability to force witnesses to talk.
Alarm among county leaders has been fueled by the millions in taxpayer dollars they've doled out to settle claims over the decades.
"For 50 years, the Sheriff's Department has not addressed this problem," said Huntsman. "And management has actually supported them by enforcing a code of silence. That is a 50-year problem -- it didn't just arise with our new sheriff."
With public outcry rising, county supervisors passed a motion earlier this year that blasts all past sheriffs for failing to root out the gangs. The board is demanding a full account of past gang or clique-related incidents and how much they cost the county.
Sheriff Villanueva has acknowledged the role of the "Banditos" and earlier this year told Eyewitness News he removed key members of the clique and the station's former captain.
"Pretty much they were calling the shots, they were dictating the decisions of the station and that has had a very bad outcome obviously," said Villanueva said in June.
Attorney Vincent Miller says Villanueva's claim to have transferred 36 people out of the East Los Angeles station was contradicted by the current East Los Angeles Captain Ernie Chavez.
"The reality is there were only a few Banditos that were actually transferred out of the station," says Miller.
Villanueva presented a draft policy months ago that prohibits deputies from joining "any group which promotes conduct that violates the rights of employees or members of the public."
Eyewitness News asked the LASD for an update on the draft policy, but did not receive an answer.
"It is embarrassing to know that the agency I work for hasn't done anything to fix the problem," says a plaintiff.
One of the alleged Banditos accused in the lawsuit is Deputy Gregory Rodriquez. He was previously fired for allegedly falsifying a police report. He was prosecuted, but at trial the jury deadlocked and the case was later dismissed. The man who was jailed based on that report sued the department and won a $549,000 settlement.
Rodriguez got his job back and returned to the East Los Angeles Station just months before the Kennedy Hall attack in September 2018. The other defendants named in the lawsuit are Deputy Rafael "Rene" Munoz, Deputy David Silverio and Sgt. Mike Hernandez. The LASD says all four are on paid administrative leave.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office says the criminal case involving those deputies and the attack at Kennedy Hall is still under review.
los angeles countylos angeles county sheriff's departmentassaultviolencegang
Rams' season over after 32-18 playoff loss to Packers
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HomePalindromic names for cricketers
Palindromic names for cricketers
September 30, 2017 March 15, 2020 abn397 Aiden Markram, Cricket, Palindrome, Palindromic surname, Rangy Nanan, Test Cricket"Test Cricket", Aiden Markram, Arun Lal, Cricket, Palindrome, Palindromic surname, Rangy Nanan
Aiden Markram started his Test career with 97 against Bangladesh in 2017-18. His surname appears to be the longest example of a palindromic name among Test players.
The previous record (if one may call it that) was by Rangy Nanan who played one Test for the West Indies in 1980-81. There are 3-letters palindromic surnames like that of Arun Lal. The player generally known as S. Madan Lal actually had the surname Sharma.
More about another odd record by Markram: https://abn397.wordpress.com/2019/12/14/aiden-markram-is-back/
Moving away from cricket, there was the Cambodian leader Lon Nol (who was overthrown by the non-palindromic Pol Pot) and Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala state. This state has produced relatively few international cricketers, examples being S. Sreesanth and Sanju Samson. There is also Karun Nair, though he has not spent much time in that state.
More about palindromes and palindromic surnames here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome .
The longest palindrome generally known is “Able was I ere I saw Elba”, allegedly declared by Napoleon. Another well-known one is “A man, a plan, a canal-Panama!”
A Canadian specialty is “He peed deep, eh?”, allegedly said by one Mountie to another while examining a yellow stain in the snow.
Tail piece: Along the way I discovered the Quetta-born cricketer Arun Lal, who was one of Baluchistan’s leading first class players in his time: http://www.espncricinfo.com/pakistan/content/player/39834.html
← More about the honors boards at Lord’s-3
Station signs then and now (Bangladesh and Pakistan) →
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