pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 86
1.02M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.642711
| 0.642711
|
You Are Old, Father William
A slideshow, using illustrations from the book.
song name You Are Old, Father William
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Almost Alice, Podcast 43
run time 2:33
sung by John Flansburgh
Trivia/Info
This is a musical rendition of a poem of the same name, which appears in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Made for the compilation Almost Alice, which consists of songs inspired by the 2010 film adaptation of the novel.
John Flansburgh:
Like half the people in the world and probably everyone on this album, I grew up deeply involved with the story of Alice in Wonderland, and we [were] always intrigued by the poem Alice recited to the caterpillar. 'You Are Old, Father William' was a brilliant introduction to the world of fantasy and absurdism. When we were approached about the album it was an obvious choice to turn that verse into a song. The only alteration we did was repeat the line 'You are old!' which seemed in keeping with the spirit of the story.[1]
Song Themes
Age, Animals, Body Parts, Colors, Hair, Heads, I Am, Medical, Money, Poetry, Questions, Relatives, TMBG Remakes, Violence
Watch it on
You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today.
You Are Old, Father William is currently ranked #182 out of 910. (18 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.72)
Other Links for “You Are Old, Father William”
Site Format Price Link
AAC $1.29
TMBG Podcast 43 (Starts at 9:07)
MP3 Free
Retrieved from "http://tmbw.net/wiki/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Father_William&oldid=305736"
Songs Released In 2010
Songs On iTunes
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4386
|
__label__wiki
| 0.967597
| 0.967597
|
WDEP Radio Chat Room
Model Of The Day
Help Keep WDEP Radio On Air
WDEP Radio
Bringing You Mixes The Best DJs From Around The World
How The Rockets-Thunder Delay Could Foreshadow Challenges To This NBA Season
December 26, 2020 by WDEP Radio
Updated 3:32 p.m. ET
The start of the NBA 2020-2021 season is already off to a bumpy start with the postponement of the Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder matchup Wednesday because of coronavirus issues.
It was just Day 2 of competition for the fledgling NBA season.
This could foreshadow future issues for the league, which is starting a season during a raging pandemic. It is no longer playing games in the controlled environment of the so-called bubble, as it did earlier this year in Florida to finish out the previous season.
The NBA announced its decision to move the Rockets-Thunder game off its Wednesday schedule just hours before its scheduled tipoff in Houston, saying it was “in accordance with the league’s Heath and Safety Protocols.”
The Rockets were unable to dress the minimum of eight players to proceed with the game.
The league said three Rockets players returned coronavirus tests that were either positive or inconclusive, and four other players were quarantining due to contact tracing protocols.
Additionally, Houstonsuperstar James Harden was barred from playing because he was in violation of the league’s health and safety rules. He was fined $50,000 for attending a private indoor party with more than 15 people earlier in the week.
Video surfaced this week of the former league MVP and three-time scoring champion partying maskless, reportedly at a Christmas party in the Houston area.
For his part, Harden has been unhappy about his situation in Houston and has been pushing for a trade. As several media outlets have reported, including The New York Times, Harden said in a now-deleted Instagram post that he attended an “event” for a friend, refuting reports that the video was taken at a strip club.
There’s no word on when the Rockets-Thunder game will be held. And there are no plans as of Thursday to move Houston’s next game against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Harden is mandated to quarantine for four days and must test negative for the virus through Saturday to play in Oregon Dec. 26, according to a source with direct knowledge of Harden’s status.
“Welcome to the new normal,” Bill Reiter of CBS Sports said. “Even asymptomatic cases — positive tests, even if accompanied by a healthy individual — will have the power to grind the gears of this season, if not to a halt, at least to a lurching and awkward reality.”
All of this presents a unique set of challenges for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who successfully rebooted the NBA season in July with 22 teams playing at a single location in Florida. The league had been shut down since March 11, when the severity and scope of the coronavirus pandemic was just beginning to become clear.
The format produced wildly entertaining play, culminating in the Los Angeles Lakers winning the NBA championship over the Miami Heat. Perhaps the biggest achievement, as NPR’s Reese Oxner reported, is that the NBA reported zero positive coronavirus cases inside the bubble.
“Is it possible that the season could get postponed?” Silver said during an interview with ESPN on Monday. “Of course. Nobody can predict precisely the trajectory of this virus. It’s been terrible, frankly.”
Other leagues like the NFL and college football have been hard-hit by athletes contracting the virus, leading to games being postponed or rescheduled. Several games at the collegiate level were canceled altogether.
Silver is attempting to hold an entire season of a contact sport that is played indoors. And unlike the bubble format, at least six franchises, including Houston, will welcome some of its fans into arenas.
“Now that we’re trying something new, an indoor sport … [with] different protocols that we haven’t had in place before,” Silver said. “I think we wouldn’t be acting responsibly and I wouldn’t be acting responsibly if I said it’s full steam ahead no matter what.”
The commissioner also noted that “there’s no way we’d ever jump the line” when it comes to NBA athletes receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
Silver said that because the majority of players are young and healthy, “they will not be a high priority” for the vaccine, but he added that some older NBA personnel would be given priority for the vaccine.
Source article: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/24/949994865/how-the-rockets-thunder-delay-could-foreshadow-challenges-to-this-nba-season
Categories NBA Post navigation
Model Of The Day For November 3rd, 2020 – Noelani
The NFL is laughing at everyone by holding a game on Christmas Day
WDEP Radio DJs
DJ Big Tyme
DJ K. Nikki
Jackmaster Nored
© WDEP Radio 2009 - 2021
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4389
|
__label__cc
| 0.534185
| 0.465815
|
An example of a wide receiver's positioning in an offensive formation: Split End (SE), Slot Back (SB), Slot Receiver (SR), and Flanker (FL) position.
A wide receiver is an offensive position in American and Canadian football, and is the key player in most of the passing plays. Wide receivers are among the fastest players on the field. Only players in the backfield or the ends on the line are eligible to catch a forward pass. The two players who begin play at the ends of the offensive line are eligible receivers, as are all players in the backfield. The backs and ends who are relatively near the sidelines are referred to as "wide" receivers. At the start of play, one wide receiver may begin play in the backfield, at least a yard behind the line of scrimmage, as is shown in the diagram at the right. The wide receiver on the right begins play in the backfield. Such positioning allows another player, usually the tight end, to become the eligible receiver on that side of the line. Such positioning defines the strong side of the field. This is the right side of the field in the diagram shown.
The wide receiver (WR) is a position in American and Canadian football that functions as the pass-catching specialist. Wide receivers (also referred to as wideouts or simply receivers) are among the fastest and most agile players in the game, and they are frequent highlight-reel favorites. Examples of modern and retired wide receivers include Don Hutson, Jerry Rice, Steve Largent, Steve Smith, Sr., Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, Antonio Brown, Desean Jackson, Dez Bryant, Brandon Marshall, Andre Johnson, Calvin Johnson, Randall Cobb, A.J. Green, Vincent Jackson, Odell Beckham Jr. Jordan Matthews, Anquan Boldin, Demaryius Thomas, Mike Wallace, Emmanuel Sanders and Victor Cruz.
The wide receiver's principal role is to catch passes from the quarterback. On passing plays, the receiver attempts to avoid, outmaneuver, or simply outrun defenders (typically cornerbacks and/or safeties) in the area of his pass route. If the receiver becomes open, or has an unobstructed path to the destination of a catch, he may then become the quarterback's target. Once a pass is thrown in his direction, the receiver's goal is to first catch the ball and then attempt to run downfield. Some receivers are perceived as a deep threat because of their flat-out speed, while others may be possession receivers known for not dropping passes, running crossing routes across the middle of the field, and generally, converting third down situations. A receiver's height and weight also contribute to his expected role; tall height and light weight are advantages at the receiver position.
Wide receivers, and the passing game generally, are particularly important when a team uses a hurry-up offense. Receivers are able to position themselves near the sideline to run out of bounds, stopping the clock at the end of the play (the last two minutes of each half in the NFL, and the last three minutes of each half in the CFL). (A failed, "incomplete", pass attempt will also stop the clock.)
A wide receiver has two potential roles during running plays. Particularly in the case of draw plays and other trick plays, he may run a pass route with the intent of drawing off defenders. Alternatively, he may block normally for the running back. Well-rounded receivers are noted for blocking defensive backs in support of teammates in addition to their pass-catching abilities.
Sometimes wide receivers are used to run the ball, usually in some form of end-around or reverse. This can be effective because the defense usually does not expect them to be the ball carrier on running plays. Although receivers are rarely used as ball carriers, running the ball with a receiver can be extremely successful. For example, in addition to holding nearly every National Football League receiving record, wide receiver Jerry Rice also rushed the ball 87 times for 645 yards and 10 touchdowns in his 20 NFL seasons.[1]
In even rarer cases, receivers may pass the ball as part of a trick play. Despite the infrequency of these plays, some receivers have proven to be capable passers, particularly those with prior experience as a quarterback. A remarkable example where wide receiver and quarterback even swapped roles was Kansas City Chiefs' WR Mark Bradley's 37-yard touchdown pass to QB Tyler Thigpen against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on 2 November 2008.[2]
Wide receivers also serve on special teams as return men on kickoffs and punts, or as part of the hands team during onside kicks.[3][4] Backup receivers could also serve as gunners on special teams
Finally, on errant passes, receivers must frequently play a defensive role by attempting to prevent an interception. If a pass is intercepted, receivers must use their speed to chase down and tackle the ball carrier to prevent him from returning the ball for a long gain or a touchdown.
In the NFL, wide receivers can use the numbers 10–19 and 80–89.
While the general fan base and most commentators use the generic term wide receiver for all such players, specific names exist for most receiver positions:
Split end (X or SE): A receiver on the line of scrimmage, necessary to meet the rule requiring seven such players at snap. Where applicable, this receiver is on the opposite side of the tight end. The split end is farthest from center on his side of the field.[5]
Flanker (Z or FL or 6 back): A receiver lining up behind the line of scrimmage. Frequently the team's featured receiver, the flanker uses the initial buffer between himself and a defender to avoid jamming, legal contact within five yards of the line of scrimmage. The flanker is generally on the same side of the formation as a tight end. As with the split end, this receiver is the farthest player from the center on his side of the field. The flanker is probably lined up just like a split end except that he is just behind the line of scrimmage, being in the backfield and not on the line.[6]
Slot receiver (Y or SL): A less-formal name given to receivers in addition to split ends and flankers (for example, tight ends who line up wide). These receivers line up between the split end/flanker and the linemen. If aligned with a flanker, the slot receiver is usually on the line of scrimmage, and if with a split end, off the line of scrimmage. As with the flanker position, a featured receiver often takes a slot position with a split end to avoid jamming.[6]
Slot back: A receiver lining up in the offensive back field. Canadian and arena football allow them to take a running start at the line. They are usually larger players as they need to make catches over the middle. In American football slot backs are typically used in flexbone or other triple option offenses while Canadian football uses them in almost all formations.
^ Jerry Rice career statistics at SI.com
^ Tyler Thigpen touchdown reception at NFL.com
^ Peter Warrick career stats, receiving and punt returns at NFL.com
^ Receiver Randal Williams returns onside kick for touchdown at NFL.com
^ Wide receiver terminology at phillyburbs.com
^ a b Wide receiver terminology at phillyburbs.com
an offensive player who is positioned at a distance from the end and is used primarily as a pass receiver.
American football positions
National Football League, American Football League, Super Bowl, Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots
Oakland Raiders, Super Bowl XXXVII, Chicago Bears, National Football League, Green Bay Packers
Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, Big 12 Conference, Big Ten Conference
Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, Big 12 Conference
Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference
Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, Big Ten Conference, Cornerback
Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Pacific-12 Conference
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4391
|
__label__wiki
| 0.515103
| 0.515103
|
An online publication from the students of Cathedral Prep
2020-21 Rambler Staff
Prep sophomore Anthony Lupo kicks game-winner to defeat Trojans
The Prep vs. McDowell football game is always one of the most heated high school football games of the year. The past three years, however, the score of game on the field has not lived up to the hype of the rivalry. The past three years, Prep has dominated the Trojans, with the closest margin being a comfortable two touchdown win last year 24-10.
That’s why last Friday, Sept. 18, Prep players and fans found themselves in an unfamiliar situation, trailing McDowell 7-6 late in the fourth quarter. The Ramblers had been struggling on offense all game, failing to reach the end zone all game. Two field goals were all that the Ramblers had showing on the scoreboard.
Quarterback Timmy Beveridge was able to complete a clutch pass to Adam Valerio with less than a minute left, putting the Ramblers inside the 10 yard line. The Ramblers were able to get it to the one yard line and take a timeout with two seconds left. The hearts of all of the Prep fans rested in the hands—or, perhaps more accurately, on the foot—of sophomore kicker Anthony Lupo. McDowell attempted to ice him by calling timeout twice before the kick, but Anthony stayed composed and drove the ball through the uprights, giving Prep the win and continuing their recent dominance over McDowell.
It not every day a sophomore gets to be the hero of a rivalry like Prep vs. McDowell. Anthony played grade school football at St. George before coming to prep for his freshman year. He has grown increasingly close to his teammates the past two years and says it’s a brotherhood like no other.
Anthony won the starting kicker job at camp and hasn’t looked back since. He was stellar against McDowell, hitting field goals of 32, 29, and 19 yards. Along with the rest of the team, he had been nervous, especially after being down after half. His last kick was easily the biggest of his career to date, either winning the game for the Ramblers as time expired or falling one point short.
“Obviously I was a little nervous with the whole game in my hands, but it’s I kick I practice all the time and knew I could make it,” said Lupo of his game-winning kick. “I knew I would be the hero or the zero, so I just gave it all I had. The rest after [kicking it] is just a blur.” The Prep Twitter community exploded post game, tweeting high praise of the sophomore kicker. Although he didn’t have a Twitter account himself, Anthony said he heard about the support secondhand and was just in awe of the whole experience.
The first thing people typically notice about Lupo standing on the sidelines is his height. Although he stands no more then 5’3″ he has never really had a problem with his height. “I’ve dealt with playing against bigger people my whole life, and I know that I can easily hang with the rest of them,” he said.
The 2015 Prep vs. McDowell football game will be one that he remembers for the rest of his life, but as a sophomore he’s sure to have plenty more game-winners in his career. Hopefully he can help Prep continue the winning trend in the future.
Previewing NBA 2K16: Be The Story
Nick’s Netflix Pick of the Week: Breaking Bad
Athlete of the Month: October
Rivals unite in support of Johnny Heubel
Athlete of the Month: September
2020 Cathedral Prep Football Preview
Basketball team competes, falls short in first matchup against rival
Rambler wrestling team defeats Trojans
Rambler Rants Podcast
Archives Select Month January 2021 (6) December 2020 (20) November 2020 (7) October 2020 (29) September 2020 (7) May 2020 (20) April 2020 (14) March 2020 (17) February 2020 (14) January 2020 (17) December 2019 (6) November 2019 (14) October 2019 (30) September 2019 (15) May 2019 (28) April 2019 (20) March 2019 (27) February 2019 (21) January 2019 (20) December 2018 (30) November 2018 (22) October 2018 (25) September 2018 (27) June 2018 (3) May 2018 (7) April 2018 (9) March 2018 (17) February 2018 (9) January 2018 (15) December 2017 (15) November 2017 (14) October 2017 (7) September 2017 (16) June 2017 (2) May 2017 (21) April 2017 (10) March 2017 (19) February 2017 (11) January 2017 (29) December 2016 (19) November 2016 (20) October 2016 (21) September 2016 (23) June 2016 (5) May 2016 (34) April 2016 (29) March 2016 (28) February 2016 (28) January 2016 (42) December 2015 (21) November 2015 (34) October 2015 (38) September 2015 (26) June 2015 (1) May 2015 (25) April 2015 (21) March 2015 (24) February 2015 (17) January 2015 (34) December 2014 (18) November 2014 (21) October 2014 (24) September 2014 (29) June 2014 (3) May 2014 (27) April 2014 (16) March 2014 (19) February 2014 (21) January 2014 (24) December 2013 (14) November 2013 (27) October 2013 (18) September 2013 (29)
Edinboro University & Northwestern Pennsylvania High School Journalism Competition: First Place (Daniel Anthony, Opinion Category); Fifth Place (Brendan Jubulis, Sports)
Edinboro University & Northwestern Pennsylvania High School Journalism Competition: Third Place (Website)
Student Keystone Press Awards Honorable Mention (Website)
Copyright © 2018 TheRamblerNews.com
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4402
|
__label__wiki
| 0.68539
| 0.68539
|
album 55: Giants, Nefilim & Anunnakies
Nabu, Son of Marduk352 viewsevidence for giants nephilim rephaim anunakki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N63lhtx2q8o&NR=1
Nabu is the Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, worshipped by Babylonians as the son of Marduk and his consort, Sarpanitum, and as the grandson of Ea. Nabu's consort was Tashmetum.
Nabu is mentioned in the Bible as Nebo in Isaiah 46:1 and Jeremiah 48:1.
A statue of Nabu from Calah, erected during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III is on display in the British Museum.
Hermes, Thoth - 2nd Son of Zeus (alias Enki {EA} in Ancient Sumer) is called Ningishzidda in Sumer (now Iraq), Master of Genetics and other sciences; called Tehuti (THOTH) in ancient Egypt; went with followers to the meso-Americas (Aug 13, 3113 BC) 353 viewsThe mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes (greek γίγαντες) of Greek mythology.
In various Indo-European mythologies, gigantic peoples are featured as primeval creatures associated with chaos and the wild nature, and they are frequently in conflict with the gods, be they Olympian, Hindu or Norse.
There are also other stories featuring giants in the Old Testament, perhaps most famously Goliath. Attributed to them are superhuman strength and physical proportions, a long lifespan, and thus a great deal of knowledge as well.
Fairy tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk have formed our modern perception of giants as stupid and violent monsters, frequently said to eat humans, and especially children. However, in some more recent portrayals, like those of Roald Dahl, some giants are both intelligent and friendly. The Epic of Gilgamesh: What is claimed as the oldest surviving epic-story in the world; 'The epic of Gilgamesh' also includes a references to giants. Gilgamesh and Enkidu go together to fight the evil Humbaba at the cedar mountains. The evil giants face was like a lion, a roar like a flood, a mouth of flames, breath that burns trees, and teeth like a dragons. In the end they cut off his head.
(Ref: Ch 2, 3 and 4: The Epic of Gilgamesh)
Herodotus in Book 1, Chapter 68: Describes how the Spartans uncovered in Tegea the body of Orestes which was seven cubits long -- around 10 feet. In his book, The Comparison of Romulus with Theseus Plutarch describes how the Athenians uncovered the body of Theseus, which was of more than ordinary size. The kneecaps of Ajax were exactly the size of a discus for the boy's pentathlon, wrote Pausanias. A boy's discus was about twelve centimetres in diameter, while a normal adult patella is around five centimetres, suggesting Ajax may have been around 14 feet tall. In Greek mythology the gigantes (γίγαντες) were (according to the poet Hesiod) the children of Uranos (Ουρανός) and Gaea (Γαία) (The Heaven and the Earth). They were involved in a conflict with the Olympian gods called the Gigantomachy (Γιγαντομαχία), which was eventually settled when the hero Heracles decided to help the Olympians. The Greeks believed some of them, like Enceladus, to lay buried from that time under the earth, and that their tormented quivers resulted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Kalii Durga {Inanna in Sumer} Founder of the Third Region - the Indus Valley in 2900 BC519 viewsInanna is the daughter of the moon god Nanna, and sister to the sun god Utu and the rain god Ishkur. [9] Her sister is Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld.
As the goddess of the planet Venus, Inanna was identified by the Akkadians with their own Venus deity, who may have been male[16]. Although the Akkadian name for the goddess was Ishtar, the Akkadians used Sumerian as a religious language; so their hymns, written in Sumerian, use the name Inanna.Since Inanna embodies the traits of independence, self-determination and strength in an otherwise patriarchal Sumerian pantheon, she has become the subject of feminist theory.[17] Indeed, in one analysis of "Inanna and the huluppu tree", the author points out how she was implicitly "tamed and controlled", even "demoted", implying her prior importance as a female role model.[18]Seal impressions from the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3100-2900 BCE) show a fixed sequence of city symbols including those of Ur, Larsa, Zabalam, Urum, Arina, and probably Kesh. It is likely that this list reflects the report of contributions to Inanna at Uruk from cities supporting her cult. A large number of similar sealings were found from the slightly later Early Dynastic I phase at Ur, in a slightly different order, combined with the rosette symbol of Inanna, that were definitely used for this purpose. They had been used to lock storerooms to preserve materials set aside for her cult.[2]
Sculpture of Aditya, the Sun God - Allahabad 1870s713 viewsGiants: Mystery and the Myth (DISCOVERY CHANNEL): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4awGR9jdT0&feature=related
UFO landings: http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseView.asp?section=landings
n Norse mythology, the giants (j?tnar in Old Norse, a cognate with ettin) are often opposed to the gods. They come in different classes, such as frost giants (hr?m?ursar), fire giants (eldj?tnar), and mountain giants (bergrisar). Jotun are different from other giants, that they usually aren't taller than most humans. The English, in lacking a proper word to describe such creatures, made use of the Greek derivative 'giants'; in a similar fashion, ogres are called trolls(pl. trolde) in Danish[citation needed].
The giants are the origin of most of various monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the Fenrisulfr), and in the eventual battle of Ragnar?k the giants will storm Asgard and defeat them in war. Even so, the gods themselves were related to the giants by many marriages, and there are giants such as ?gir, Loki, M?mir and Ska?i, who bear little difference in status to them.
Norse mythology also holds that the entire world of men was once created from the flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic proportions, which name is considered by some to share a root with the name Yama of Indo-Iranian mythology.
A bergrisi appears as a supporter on the coat of arms of Iceland.
Xerxes, the Great King beyond his father Darius528 viewsXerxes the Great, also known as Xerxes I of Persia, (Old Persian: 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠; X?ayār?ā)[1] (reigned 485?465 BC) was a Zoroastrian Persian Shahanshah (Emperor) of Achaemenid Empire.
Xerxes was the son of Darius the Great and Atossa and a descendent of Cyrus the Great. He succeeded his father in 486 BC with a very smooth transition of power challenged by no subject nation of the huge Achaemenid empire.
Immediately after seizing the kingship, Darius I of Persia (son of Hystaspes) married Atossa (daughter of Cyrus the Great). They were both descendants of Achaemenes from different Achaemenid lines. Marrying a daughter of Cyrus strengthened Darius' position as king.[9] Darius was an active emperor, busy with building programs in Persepolis, Susa, Egypt, and elsewhere. Toward the end of his reign he moved to punish Athens, but a new revolt in Egypt (probably led by the Persian satrap) had to be suppressed. Under Persian law, the Achaemenian kings were required to choose a successor before setting out on such serious expeditions. Upon his great decision to leave (487-486 BC)[10], Darius prepared his tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam and appointed Xerxes, his eldest son by Atossa, as his successor. Darius' failing health then prevented him from leading the campaigns,[11] and he died in October 486 BC.[11]
Xerxes was not the oldest son of Darius and according to old Iranian traditions should have not succeeded the King. Xerxes was however the oldest son of Darius and Atossa hence descendent of Cyrus. This made Xerxes the chosen King of Persia.[12] Some modern scholars too view the unusual decision of Darius to give the throne to Xerxes as a result of his consideration of the unique positions that Cyrus the Great and his daughter Atossa have had.[13]
Xerxes was crowned and succeeded his father in October-December 486 BC[14] when he was about 36 years old.[10] The transition of power to Xerxes was smooth due again in part to great authority of Atossa[9] and his accession of royal power was not challenged by any person at court or in the Achaemenian family, or any subject nation.[15]
Almost immediately, he suppressed the revolts in Egypt and Babylon that had broken out the year before, and appointed his brother Achaemenes as governor or satrap (Old Persian: khshathrapavan) over Egypt. In 484 BC, he outraged the Babylonians by violently confiscating and melting down[16] the golden statue of Bel (Marduk, Merodach), the hands of which the rightful king of Babylon had to clasp each New Year's Day. This sacrilege led the Babylonians to rebel in 484 BC and 482 BC, so that in contemporary Babylonian documents, Xerxes is refused his father's title of King of Babylon, being named rather as King of Persia and Media, Great King, King of Kings (Shahanshah) and King of Nations (i.e. of the world).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I
Although Herodotus' report in the Histories has created certain problems concerning Xerxes' religious beliefs, modern scholars consider him as a Zoroastrian.[17]
Agni, god of Fire502 viewsAgni is one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire[2] and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger from and to the other gods. He is ever-young, because the fire is re-lit every day, yet he is also immortal.
Agni, the Vedic god of fire who presides over the earth, has made the transition into the Hindu pantheon of gods, without losing his importance. With Vayu and Surya, who presided over the air and sky, he is one of the supreme gods in the Rig Veda. The link between heaven and earth, he is associated with Vedic sacrifice, taking offerings to the other world in the fire. His vehicle is the ram. [3]
His cult survived the change of the ancient fire worship into modern Hinduism. The sacred fire-drill (agnimathana) for procuring the temple-fire by friction ? symbolic of Agni's daily miraculous birth ? is still usedIn Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, he is a lokapāla guarding the Southeast. Jigten lugs kyi bstan bcos: which translates, "Make your hearth in the southeast corner of the house, which is the quarter of Agni". He also plays a seizurish role in most Buddhist homa fire-puja rites. A typical praise to Agni starts "Son of Brahma, Lord of the World, King of fire gods empowered by Takki, Whose supreme wisdom burns all delusion [...]In Hinduism, the giants are called Daityas. The Daityas (दैत्य) were the children of Diti and the sage Kashyapa who fought against the gods or Devas because they were jealous of their Deva half-brothers. Since Daityas were a power-seeking race, they sometimes allied with other races having similar ideology namely Danavas and Asuras. Daityas along with Danavas and Asuras are sometimes called Rakshasas, the generic term for a demon in Hindu mythology. Some known Daityas include Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha. The main antagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana, Ravana was a Brahmin from his father side and a Daitya from his mother side. His younger brother Kumbhakarna was said to be as tall as a mountain and was quite good natured.
Anu; King Of Hearts in cards510 viewsGiants (Discovery Channel Documentary): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmZun_We6DE&feature=related
IN THE END OF DAYS - THE EXCELLENT DRUM OF GOLDEN LIGHT WILL SHINE! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g_2M_J2d0c
He was one of the oldest gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and part of a triad including Enlil, god of the sky and Enki, god of water. He was called Anu
496 viewsRecent exploration activity in the northern region of India uncovered a skeletal remains of a human of phenomenal size.
This region of the Indian desert is called the Empty Quarter.
The exploration team also found tablets with inscriptions that stated that our Gods of Indian mythological yore, Brahma, had created people of phenomenal size the like of which He has not created since.
They were very tall, big, and very powerful, such that they could put their arms around a tree trunk and uproot it.
They were created to bring order among us since we were always fighting with each other.
One of he sons of Bhima of the Pandava brothers is also thought of to have been carrying these genes.Later these people, who were given all the power turned against all our Gods and transgressed beyond all boundaries set.
As a result they were destroyed by God Shiva.
The Geo Exploration team believes these to be the remains of those people.
Govt of India has secured the whole area and no one is, allowed to enter except the NatGeo personnel.
Giant Robert Wadlow is comparable to Goliath's height - Recessive Genes from our ancient Giant Ancestors sometimes do Return into human beings at present times.521 viewsMystery & Myth, Giants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ_saShscq8&feature=related
"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:4-5 (KJV).
The Bible tells of men of extraordinary size in the pre-flood world, calling them Nephilim. The Nephilim are said to be the hybrid offspring of angels materialized into human form that had sexual relations with women on Earth (Genesis 6:1,2,4). The global flood of Genesis was said to have destroyed all life on earth which would include the Nephilim (Genesis 6:17; 7:17-21), however, in Numbers, some of the spies of Israel report that the Anakites, decendents of the Nephilim, were still living in Canaan (Numbers 13:28-33).
The Anakites (Numbers 13:28-33), the Emites (Deuteronomy 2:10), and the Rephaites (Joshua 12:4) were giants living in the Promised Land. The Bible also tells of strife between David and the giant Goliath, ending with the defeat of the latter. According to the Bible, Goliath was "six cubits and a span" in height?over nine feet tall, (over 2.75 m) (1 Samuel 17:4 KJV).
Goliath's height is comparable to Robert Wadlow, who reached 8 feet 11.1 inches (2.72 m) and Leonid Stadnyk who has reached 8 feet 6 inches (2.59 m).
Also, Gog and Magog are usually considered to be giants, and are also found in the folklore of Britain.
Giant Mongol (recessive gen) in the land of Genghis Khan, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 1922, photographed by Roy Chapman Andrews512 viewsGiants in Hindu Mythology: In Hinduism, the giants are called Daityas. They were a race who fought against the gods because they were jealous of their Deva half-brothers. Some Daityas from Hindu mythology include Kumbhakarna and Hiranyaksha. In folklore from all over Europe, giants were believed to have built the remains of previous civilizations. Saxo Grammaticus, for example, argues that giants had to exist, because nothing else would explain the large walls, stone monuments, and statues that we now know were the remains of Roman construction. Similarly, the Old English poem Seafarer speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants. Even natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants. Giants provided the least complicated explanation for such artifacts.
In Basque mythology, giants appear as jentilak and mairuak (Moors), and were said to have raised the dolmens and menhirs. After Christianization, they were driven away, and the only remaining one is Olentzero, a coalmaker that brings gifts on Christmas Eve.
Medieval romances such as Amadis de Gaul feature giants as antagonists, or, rarely, as allies. This is parodied famously in Cervantes' Don Quixote, when the title character attacks a windmill, believing it to be a giant. This is the source of the phrase tilting at windmills.
Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in the folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Celtic giants also figure in Breton and Arthurian romances, and from this source they spread into the heroic tales of Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and their follower Edmund Spenser. In the small Scottish village of Kinloch Rannoch, a local myth to this effect concerns a local hill that apparently resembles the head, shoulders, and torso of a man, and has therefore been termed 'the sleeping giant'. Apparently the giant will awaken only if a specific musical instrument is played near the hill.
Many giants in British folklore were noted for their stupidity.[1] A giant who had quarreled with the Mayor of Shrewsbury went to bury the city with dirt; however, he met a shoemaker, carrying shoes to repair, and the shoemaker convinced the giant that he had worn out all the shoes coming from Shrewsbury, and so it was too far to travel.[2]
Other British stories told of how giants threw stones at each other. This was used to explain many great stones on the landscape.[3]
Giants figure in a great many fairy tales and folklore stories, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, Nix Nought Nothing, Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon, Young Ronald, and Paul Bunyan. Ogres and trolls are humanoid creatures, sometimes of gigantic stature, that occur in various sorts of European folklore. An example of another folklore giant is R?bezahl, a kind giant in German folklore who lived in the Giant Mountains (nowadays on the Czech-Polish border).Giants in the West
Aside from mythology and folklore (see Tall tales), remains of giants have been claimed to have been found in America. Giants are usually classified as human-like remains that are 7' 5" (2.26 meters) or more in height. The book Forbidden Land by Robert Lyman (1971) recounts the following alleged finds:
* A decayed human skeleton claimed by eyewitnesses to measure around 3.28 metres (10 feet 9 inches tall), was unearthed by labourers while ploughing a vineyard in November 1856 in East Wheeling, now in West Virginia.
* A human skeleton measuring 3.6 metres (12 feet) tall was unearthed at Lompock Rancho, California, in 1833 by soldiers digging in a pit for a powder magazine. The specimen had a double row of teeth and was surrounded by numerous stone axes, carved shells and porphyry blocks with abstruse symbols associated with it.
* Several mummified remains of humans with reddish hair claimed to range from 2-2.5 metres (6.5 feet to over 8 feet) tall were dug up at Lovelock Cave, (70 miles) north-east of Reno, Nevada, by a guano mining operation. These bones supposedly substantiated claims for legends by the local Paiute Indians regarding giants which they called Si-Te-Cah. However, there appear to be no verified Paiute legends about giants or that call the Si-Te-Cah giants [4]. Fortunately one of the giant Lovelock skulls is still preserved today. It measures almost 30cm (1 foot) tall and resides along with other various Lovelock artefacts in the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada.[citation needed]? Some of these artifacts can also be found in the Nevada State Historical Society's museum at Reno. Adrienne Mayor states that these skeletons are normal sized.[5] She also points out that hair pigment does not stay stable after death, and that ancient very dark hair can turn rusty red or orange due to a variety of conditions such as soil condition, temperature, etc.
* A 9' 11" (3.02 meters) skeleton was unearthed in 1928 by a farmer digging a pit to bury trash in Tensas Parish, Louisiana near Waterproof. In 1931 a 10' 2" (3.1 meters) skeleton was unearthed by a boy burying his dog in 1933 in Nearby Madison Parish.
Aside from in Forbidden Land, we can find other unverified examples or legends about the remains of giants:
* A 9' 8" (2.95 meters) skeleton was excavated from a mound near Brewersville, Indiana in 1879 (Indianapolis News, November 10, 1975).
* In Clearwater Minnesota, the skeletons of seven giants were found in mounds. These had receding foreheads and complete double dentition[citation needed]
* A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held 20 skeletons, seated and facing east with jaws and teeth "twice as large as those of present day people", and beside each was a large bowl with "curiously wrought hieroglyphic figures." (Chicago Record, October 24, 1895; cited by Ron G. Dobbins, NEARA Journal, v13, fall 1978).
* Near the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario there is a span of mountains five miles long that is in the shape of a man wearing a headdress lying down on his back. The span is called "The Sleeping Giant" from local Ojibway legend that identifies the giant as Nanabijou, the spirit of the Deep Sea Water, who was turned to stone when the secret location of a rich silver mine, now known as Silver Islet, was disclosed to white men. [6]
* Patagons of Patagonia in South America, are giants claimed to have been seen by Ferdinand Magellan and his crew.[7] Drake reported only finding people of 'mean stature'[8] although his Chaplain reported giants. However, even before Magellan, a Spanish romance called Primale?n of Greece was published in 1512 in which a dashing explorer discovers savages, one named Patagon, whose descriptions are very similar to those of Magellan.[9]
Esqueletos de Gigantes en la tierra/biblia/valle colorado - This giant, unearthed in County Antrim, Ireland, was found to be 12ft 2in high. Its girth of chest was 6ft 6in, and length of arms 4ft 6in. There are six toes on the right foot. This skeleton was525 viewshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3vQgIrYXaE&feature=fvw
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/giants.htm
This skeleton was on display in exhibitions in Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester. What later happened to the giant and its owner is unknown.
(Photo from the British Strand magazine. Dec 1895)
Australian aborigines - 'When the world was new, when the ancestors appeared from the north like giants'.
In old Pleistocene river gravels near Bathurst, N.S.W. huge stone artifacts-clubs, pounders, adzes, chisels, knives and hand-axes-all of tremendous weight, lie scattered over a wide area. A fossil hunter searching the Winburndale River north of Bathurst discovered a large quartzitised fossil human molar tooth, far too big for any normal modern human. A similar molar of chert fossilisation was also recovered from ancient deposits near Dubbo, N.S.W. Prospectors working in the Bathurst district over 40 years ago frequently reported coming across large human footprints in shoals of red jasper.
(Ref: http://www.cartage.org.lb/)
A stone circle in Scotland, nearby to Glenquickan was excavated in the early 1800's revealing the bones of ... 'a man of uncommon size' (2).
Giants in popular culture
Giants are a staple in fantasy, and also appear in other genres.
* The Brobdingnagians, from the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
* In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the character Alice temporarily grows and shrinks, once filling up a room in the White Rabbit's house due to her size, and another time growing into the trees.
* The giant, Giant Rumblebuffin from the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, revived by Aslan to fight the White Witch.
* Giants were the main theme of the 1960s television series, Land of the Giants
* Hagrid in the Harry Potter series is a half-giant, as is Olympe Maxime. Hagrid's half-brother, Grawp, is a full-blooded giant.
* The adventures of the protagonist in Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" include an enounter with a fearsome - but not too bright - giant.
* The 16 Colossi from the Shadow of the Colossus Playstation 2 console video game.
* The Magic: The Gathering collectible card game features many Giant creatures.
* The fantasy series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson has several significant giants.
* In the Spiderwick Chronicles, giants are incredibly large beings ancestral to ogres who spend most of their adult lives in hibernation and capable of breathing fire.
* The giant Despair appears in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.
* The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) is a children's book by Roald Dahl about a friendly, dream-delivering giant. The other giants in the book are evil.
* Numerous types of giants appear in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game including the famous module Against the Giants.
* Numerous types of giants (ice, hill, moss, and fire) appear in the MMORPG RuneScape.
* Andr? the Giant was featured in Sports Illustrated on December 21st, 1981, and is still considered one of the most popular wrestlers of all time. He also starred in the popular movie The Princess Bride as Fezzik, the gentle giant.
* Ultraman Tiga, the 1996 entry in the Ultra Series, heavily uses the mythical giant genre in its fictional back-story. In addition, many other shows throughout the franchise often refer to its lead heroes as Giant of Light.
* Paul Bunyan is a popular giant farmer in American folklore.
* The H.G. Wells book The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth depticts the discovery of a special food which can make children grown on it into 40-foot giants, and the upheaval this discovery causes in the world.
* The Zentradi, a fictional extraterrestrial race of giants from The Super Dimension Fortress Macross Japanese anime series and its Robotech American adaptation.
[edit] Names/Races of Giants
Article Bhima's son, Giant504 viewshttp://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/anunnaki/anu_11.htm
Recently gas exploration is going in the desert of south east region of Saudi Arabia. This desert region is called Empty Quarter, which means in Arabic "RAB - UL -KHAALEE"; this body has been found by ARAMCO exploration team. This proves what Allah SWT said in QURAN about the people of AAD nation and HOOD nation.
They were so tall, wide and very power full that they were able to pull out big trees just with the one hand. But what happen after when they become misguided and disobeys Allah SWT, Allah SWT destroyed the whole nation. ULEMA KIRAM of Saudi Arabia believes that this body belongs to AAD nation.
Saudi military took over this whole area. And nobody is allowed to go in this region except Saudi ARAMCO personnel's. Saudi government has kept it very secret but some military helicopters took pictures from air. And one of them he runs on internet here in Saudi Arabia.
(The length of this skeleton's head is about 5 feet. Therefore, the height would have been about 25-30 feet. Is that too tall for an Anunnaki?)
Recent exploration activity in the northern region of India uncovered a skeletal remains of a human of phenomenal size. This region of the Indian desert is called the Empty Quarter.
The exploration team also found tablets with inscriptions that stated that our Gods of Indian mythologicalyore, Brahma, had created people of phenomenal size the like of which He has not created since. They were very tall, big, and very powerful, such that they could put their arms around a tree trunk and uproot it. They were created to bring order among us since we were always fighting with each other.
One of he sons of Bhima of the Pandava brothers is also thought of to have been carrying these genes. Later these people, who were given all the power turned against all our Gods and transgressed beyond all boundaries set. As a result they were destroyed by God Shiva.
The message tries to add legitimacy to its fanciful tale by referencing the Quran's Prophet Hud and the people of Aad (or "Ad"). Some Islamic references do claim that the people of Aad were thought to be giants. However, other material describes them as having a "stature tall among the nations" or as simply being "physically well-built". The Christian Bible also makes mention of giants.
Hammurabi & Babylonian Sun god Sjamash (Sinear/Sumer) Shamash is an Akkadian name for Utu.504 viewsUtu ("Utu, who sheds a wide light) is the Sumerian for "Sun".[1] The Sumerian cuneiform character is encoded in Unicode at U+12313 𒌓 (Borger nr. 381).
In Sumerian mythology, Utu is the son of the moon god Nanna and the goddess Ningal. His brother and sister are Ishkur and Inanna.
Utu is the god of the sun and of justice, and the implementation of law. He is usually depicted as wearing a horned helmet and carrying a saw-edged weapon not unlike a pruning saw, which it is thought he used to cut through the side of a mountain from which he emerges, symbolising the dawn. He may also carry a mace and stand with one foot on the mountain.
He rises in "the mountains of the east" and sets in the "mountains of the west".
Sumerian Utu corresponds to Akkadian Shamash.
Marduk is spelled AMAR.UTU in Sumerian, literally, "the calf of Utu" or "the young bull of the Sun".Names/Races of Giants
* Daitya (Sanskrit)
* Gigantes (Greek)
* Titans (Greek)
* Cyclopes/Cyclops (Greek)
* Upelleru (Middle Eastern)
* Azrail (Armenian)
* Anakim (Hebrew)
* Enim (Hebrew)
* Rephaim (Hebrew)
* Zamzummim (Hebrew)
* Nephilim (Hebrew)
* Gog (Hebrew/British)
* Magog (Hebrew/British)
* Jake (Bruns)
* Goliath of Gath (Hebrew)
* Og of Bashan (Hebrew)
* Fomorians (Celtic)
* Wrnach (Welsh)
* Bendigeidfran (Welsh)
* Jotuns (Norse/Teutonic)
* Frost Giants (Norse/Teutonic)
* Fire Giants (Norse/Teutonic)
* Earth Giants (Norse/Teutonic)
* Ice Giants (Finnish)
* Yak (Thai)
* Puntan (Micronesia)
* Albadan (Spanish)
* Famangomadan (Spanish)
* Dehotgohsgayeh (Iroquois)
* Gedegwsets (Coos)
* Inugpasugssuk (Netslik)
* Kiwahkw (Maliseet)
* Yeitso (Navajo)
* Nunhyunuwi (Cherokee)
* Si-Te-Cah (Paiute)
* Dzoo-Noo-Qua (Kwakiutl)
* Nahgane (Slavey)
* Chahnameed (Pequot)
* Paul Bunyan (USA)
* Hewiixi/hewietari (Huichol)
* Cawr (Welsh)
* Kaour (Breton)
* Dasa Maha Yodayo (Sri Lanka)
* Gotaimbara (Sri Lanka)
* Mahasena (Sri Lanka)
* Higante also Kapre (Talgalog) and Agta (Visayan) (Philippines)
* K?mpe (Danish)
* J?ttar (Swedish)
[edit] See also
* A Book of Giants by Ruth Manning-Sanders
* Andr? the Giant
* Giant animal (mythology)
* Giantess
* List of tallest people
* List of giants in mythology and folklore
* List of giants in Norse mythology
* The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (H.G. Wells book)
[edit] Notes
1. ^ K. M. Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, p 63 University of Chicago Press, London, 1967
4. ^ Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton University Press 2005) ? ISBN 0-691-11345-9
6. ^ CBC.CA - Seven Wonders of Canada - Your Nominations - Sleeping Giant, Ontario
7. ^ Antonio Pigafetta, Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, 1524: "Il capitano generale nomin? questi popoli Patagoni." The original word would probably be in Magellan's native Portuguese (patag?o) or the Spanish of his men (patag?n). It has been interpreted later as "big foot" but the etymology is unclear.
8. ^ Hakluyt, Richard, Voyages of the English Nation, 3 vols. (London: George Bishop, 1600). 3.751
9. ^ Lawrence University Publications: Lawrence Today
* Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend (ISBN 0-500-51088-1) by Anna Dhallapiccola
* Lyman, Robert R., Sr. (1971). Forbidden Land: Strange Events in the Black Forest. Vol. 1. Coudersport, PA: Potter Enterprise.
* Childress, David Hatcher (1992). Lost Cities of North & Central America. Stelle, IL: Adventures Unlimited.
[edit] External links
Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giants
* Legends of true giants from around the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_(mythology)
Aliens landed in Voronezh Sept. 1989, Russian Federation509 viewsKlaatu, Giants & Anunna Androids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ_saShscq8&feature=related
On 27th September,1989 according to young children of Voronezh ,South of Moscow they have seen a three-eyed alien with a robot escort -Similar to what we saw in latest movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still". The alien was said to be about nine foot tall. The craft, according to eye witness testimony, landed on the outskirts of the city. Shortly thereafter, the tall alien appeared, and upon seeing the young lad, shot a type of weapon at him, causing him to vanish before the eyes of the other people around him.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4404
|
__label__wiki
| 0.757312
| 0.757312
|
Eric I.
Eric grew up in Wisconsin, and double majored in history and English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where occasional rumors that the school had a football team (“Badgers?”) reached him while he was getting hooked on the writing of Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot and Woolf. He graduated with a BA with High Distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa.
After a year spent studying in Avignon and then working in Paris and London, he won a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and began work on a PhD in English literature at Harvard, focusing on 19th-century British poetry and discovering along the way how challenging, absorbing and rewarding teaching literature could be. He has been a teaching assistant and tutor for numerous literature courses at Harvard, winning several teaching awards for his work, an instructor in the English and writing departments at Stonehill College, and an English teacher at Milton Academy.
Eric lives in Boston, misses Paris and Berlin, and can occasionally be spotted running along the banks of the Charles River.
Work with Eric I.
Harvard University, PhD candidate in English (ABD)
Harvard University, A.M English Literature
University of Wisconsin Madison, B.A. English & History (phi beta kappa)
Milton Academy, English Teacher
Admissions coaching (College)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4419
|
__label__cc
| 0.593673
| 0.406327
|
Jump to latest diary entries
This is a story of everyday researchers and teachers, struggling to do their job in a world pervaded by management bollocks.
This page is a continuation of the diary that started in June 2007, with the demise of UCL’s Pharmacology department (for the time being). It continued
from June 2008 to May 2009 on a separate page.
From June 2009 to May 2010
Now we continue from June 2014.
Links. Most items on this page can be linked directly by appending the date to the page link. For example http://www.dcscience.net/?page_id=6624#070614 takes you directly to the entry for 7 June 2014.
Old friend, Jonathan Ashmore, came to record an oral history for the History and Archives group of Physiological Society. This sort of thing happens more often as one gets older.
Went to a concert ar the Royal Festival Hall, one of a series prompted by the refurbishment of its magnificent 8000 pipe organ. The organist, Stephen Disley started at Liverpool Cathedral, so was well known to my sister who was, for many years, in the cathedral choir.
The programme had every popular organ piece in the book. Amazingly, the Widor Toccata had an orchestral accompaniment -never heard that before and it rather spoiled it for me. Also, the first pedal entrance sounded a bit harsh to me (compared with the Liverpool Cathedral organ, for example, or with Widor’s own performance, in 1932 when he was 88). Disley had studied at St Sulpice in Paris, where Widor had been organist. Another great piece was Saint Saens’ Organ Symphony (the finale only -as bad as Classic FM). The piano part was played by Roderick Elms, with whom my wife often competed against at music festivals in the 1960s (and she often won too). She played the piano part in the Saint Saens herself, but in Kingston Parish Church, not the Festival Hall.
I was quite surprised to be asked to take part in a religious programme, in a series called Things Unseen. You can hear or download the podcast there. Or listen now.
The other speakers were Islamic cupper, Ashiq Hussain, and Harley street Ayurvedic lifestyle consultant, Vijay Murthy. The best evidence that they could produce was that Victoria Beckham allegedly likes it. The conversation verged on the surreal.
Them: “when you are doing hijam you are eliminating toxins from the system” . “As a Muslim we believe that Mohammed, peace be upon him, prescribed hijama as . a gift by almighty God”.
Me. “cupping is pure make-believe -made up nonsense”. “-usual detox nonsense”. “a voluntary tax on the gullible” (that’s stolen from Ben Goldacre -I use it a lot)
The annual soiree at the Royal Society to see the summer science exhibition. Highlight for me was meeting David Spiegelhalter for first time in real life. He was very heloful iwhen i was writing my second post on the alleged risk of eating red meat.
I was less entranced by the ability of this gorgeous dog to sniff out cancer. His handler explained that the dog’s ability had been verified by the Prince of Wales and Karol Sikora. Someone should tell him that that’s not the way to convince people. It’s worrying when the Royal Society supports woo.
The invitation says that “decorations will be worn”, so I wore my London Marathon medal as usual. Nobody was pompous enough to object (so far).
Video of panel session on science communication now on YouTube. From Circling the Square meeting (20 May).
My real scientific interests rarely feature on this blog. Here is a movie in which I try to explain some of them, without the help of any diagrams (a hopeless task). I tried to persuade Lucia Sivilotti and Remigijus Lape to appear on the film, but they were too modest to agree. If anyone is interested, two crucial papers are Burzomato, V., Beato, M., Groot-Kormelink, P., Colquhoun, D. & Sivilotti, L.G. (2004), and Remigijus Lape, David Colquhoun & Lucia Sivilotti (2008)
Left for a 10 day rail tour of Germany. It included four days in Wernigerode, in the Harz mountains. The narrow gauge railway took us to the top of the Brocken. It isn’t far from Göttingen, but I could not go to the Brocken while working there, because it was in East Germany. Before reunification in 1991 all you could do was look at it over the wall. The Brocken has some fascinating statistical associations which will be the subject of a blog, coming soon. Meanwhile here are some holiday pictures (click picture for an album). On Sunday 26th we spent the day with Erwin Neher and saw his water mill.
I was invited by VICE media to give opinions about herbal aphrodisiacs. I’d expected a plushy media studio, but it was filmed in the kitchen of a tiny flat, above a barber’s shop, in Clapton (north of Hackney). A table was spread with asparagus, cheese fondue, strawberries, chocolate and other alleged aphrodisiac foods. And bottles of horny goat weed and other pills from Holland & Barrett. I duly debunked the lot of them.
Michael Quinion writes a wonderful newsletter about the origins of words. He did some investigation of the use of the term ‘blood cleanser’ at a time when I was having trouble from some herbalists. The current newsletter has a section on the word ‘corybantic’. But it failed to mention Archy and Mehitabel. These wonderful poems about Mehitabel. the corybantic alley cat, are the only time I’ve heard that word used.
Both my boats were named after Mehitabel, the corybantic alley cat immortalised in free verse by her Boswell, the cockroach, Archy, who had the soul of a vers libre poet, but was unable to reach the shift key.
You can find text of some of the poems at Archy & Mehitabel, by Don Marquis
Here is a taste.
the song of mehitabel
By Don Marquis, in “archy and mehitabel,” 1927
this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners
i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai
boss sometimes I think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay
Tonight was a ‘super-moon’. The moon is at its perigee. It’s about 14 per cent closer and 30 per cent brighter than when it’s at its furthest point from earth. This is the best picture I managed
(Samsung Galaxy 2 camera, 21x optical zoom, 1/1000 sec, f 5.6)
During the visit to Krakow in April, the organisers asked me to do an interview with a Polish journalist. It eventually appeared in Gazeta Wyborcza. The Google translation is dreadful.
Two roses (click for high resolution versions)
17 August 2014, after rain
Got a call at midday to ask if I could appear on BBC Newsnight. They wanted me to talk about the Cancer Drugs Fund. It’s a nice change from quackery. So I spent the afternoon checking on things like Roche’s profits. I also checked with Michael Baum, the recently-retired cancer surgeon whose views I respect enormously. He provided me with the perfect opening line for Newsnight “It’s a political stunt in response to shroud-waving by big pharma”. I was on with Karol Sikora, who seems to be the BBC’s default choice. Sikora has a long track record of supporting quackery, but this time we were more-or-less on the same side. One topic was the breast cancer drug, Kadcyla, for which Roche asks £166,000 per QALy. I was amused that throughout the interview Sikora mispronounced Kadcyla. as Kadcycla. I was too late to encounter Jeremy Paxman, but Laura Kuenssberg was a fair host [click the picture for the video].
Off on train to St Andrews. Arrived mid-afternoon. I was entertained excellently to dinner at the Doll’s House restaurant, by Silva Paracchini (Italian) and Melissa Andrews (American). James Naismith, who’d invited me, had to be absent for a funeral. Silvia had a vote in the referendum (but I don’t).
On 4 Sept I spoke under the title “Improbable Science and its Miscommunication”. The largish theatre was almost full and I was delighted by the idealism of young scientists (and some old ones) who seem to be grateful that I say things which they would like to say, but dare not because, rightly of wrongly, they fear that it would harm their career.
Back on the afternoon train. When I was working in Edinburgh I’d often take the 4 pm train to London (the Talisman) and dinner would be served in the restaurant car (even for 2nd class passengers) while passing the beautiful bit of coast near Durham, Now even in first class you get a sandwich in your seat. Here’s a rather woolly view of Durham (high zoom, fast train).
Spent Sunday evening doing a long interview for a Polish TV programme, Dzien Dobry TVN (the largest morning television show in Poland). It’s been dubbed in Polish (how accurately, I have no idea).
I went to the “H3 symposium: Public Engagement as a ’Pathway to Impact’ “. My opinions on “pathways to impact” were made clear a while ago.
My contribution was a short talk on “The thin line between public engagement and PR”t is on line at (starting at 1 hr 25 min). It’s not one of my best performances so not worth watching. All the material is on this blog anyway (see ).
The meeting was quite enlightening for me, because it showed the gulf that exists between corporate engagement and individual bloggers. I didn’t hear in any of the talks a single reference to blogs, and not a single reference to critical thinking. They were mostly engaged in entirely meritorious things like shows for school children to interest them in science. Some were employed by research groups to publicise the work of the group, None were engaged in encouraging critical thinking, which is the main aim of dcscience.net. They had barely heard of Ben Goldacre (or this blog). I guess we need both approaches but there is a problem with corporate activities because they can never really be critical about anything.
Sunday morning walk (such as it now is) along the Thames. Amazingly warm, calm day (23° by midday). The picture, taken at 12.44, fails to convey the warm glow of the autumn sun, low in the sky.
Went to Brighton to contribute to the meeting of the Independent Review of of the role of metrics in research assessment. The report of this group will be used by HEFCE to decide about the role, if any, of metrics in the next research assessment. I submitted an opinion to the committee earlier. The chair of that review. James Wilsdon organised a good meeting at which all views were represented. Unlike some previous meetings it wan’t (solely) a sales meeting for commercial publishers who are trying to sel their expensive products to universities.
There is an account of the meeting in tweets.
Two contributions stood out for me. One was from Meera Sabaratnam, from the School of African and Oriental Studies. She was one of the very few representatives of the humanities there, and spoke superbly. Her blog, Why Metrics Cannot Measure Research Quality: A Response to the HEFCE Consultation, is well-argued. It quickly attracted many supporters, and a follow-up post.
The other fascinating talk was from Dorothy Bishop (@deevybee). I agree with her about most things, but not her proposal to use the departmental h-index. as a surrogate for quality. I disagreed parlty because the correlation of h-index with departmental income was far from perfect (r2 = 0.7 was very far from perfect. But mainly because of the appalling pressure that would be put on academics to improve their h-index if this policy were adopted. But at the meeting, she pointed out that the number of people in the department was correlated even more closely with income from HEFCE r2 > 0.8. This implies that every staff member submitted is of much the same quality. Addition of the h-index produced only a small increase in predictive ability. That suggests to me the simplest of all solutions might do. Just give the same amount for each staff member. All you’d have to do is devise a system to stop people from cheating by submitting the departmental cat, or hiring people for the assessent period and then firing them soon afterwards.
Such a system would save the huge waste if money and time caused by the present research assessment. It would also make redundant the horde of companies which want to sell universities their metrics products. What’s not to love? These ideas are discussed on Stephen Curry’s blog, and on Dorothy Bishop’s account of the meeting.
Incidentally, there was much talk at the meeting about the "gaming" of metrics. This seems to me to be a euphemism for cheating. If an undergraduate cheats, big trouble follows. If academics cheat. they call it gaming. That just won’t do.
Drove to Oxford to give talk to Magdalen College’s Sherrington Society. The header picture comes from a 2010 interview on the BBC News channel, with homeopathic doctor, Charlotte Mendes Da Costa. There was a good audience for “We know little about the effect of diet on health. That’s why so much is written about it”. Then we had dinner at high table. However many college dinners I go to, I can never get used to the pomp and flummery. I don’t think I’d survive for ten minutes in that sort of atmosphere.
Got a call from RT TV (UK) asking me speak on the Saatchi Bill. That was a pleasure. Here it is (done from home, on Skype).
Lord Saatchi’s Bill would allow allow uncontrolled testing of treatments on any patient. It is not limited to cancer, nor to terminally ill patients (though some amendments, yet to be accepted, might change that). This sort of uncontrolled experimentation is likely to impede advances in treatment rather than to help them. And the vagueness of the wording of the bill could lead to an increase in litigation, rather than the intended decrease.
It is no coincidence that the legion of cancer quacks is in favour of the bill. It opens the door to their nonsense. Big pharma is likely to benefit too, because they will be able to sell improperly tested drugs with little or no effectiveness
For more information about the Bill, see http://www.stopthesaatchibill.co.uk/
See also Saatchi’s ‘Medical Innovation Bill’ will benefit lawyers and charlatans, not patients, by neurologist David Nicholl.
For more information about RT TV see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network) Although funded by Russia there was no Russian angle in this discussion.
Saatchi Bill again, this time on the flagship Radio 4 morning news programme, Today. It was only a 3 minute interview with Mishal Husain, but it was unapposed so I managed to get in the main points.
Click to play interview
The Saatchi bill problem is now a fulll post, The Saatchi bill won’t find a cure for cancer, but it will encourage charlatans.
The BBC is good at driving you to/from the studio, but cars are unnecessarily posh. On the way home, I had my first ever ride in an all-electric Tesla. It does 0 – 60 in 4.2 seconds but costs £50k -more than twice the price of a Prius.
I noticed a sudden surge in hits on the Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. On the three days (31 Oct – Nov 2) it was loaded over 7000 times. That’s a good proportion of the 18,000 views it’s had since it was posted over five years ago (May 2009).
The source of the hits turned out to be from a link on the quaintly-named page of the Facebook community., “I fucking hate pseudoscience“. They must have a lot of readers.
But that was just the beginning. Monday Nov 3 saw 21,000 hits, and on Tuesday Nov 4 there was another 17,000 . The Patients’ Guide has now overtaken Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo: the end of a myth. with 36,000 views, as the most viewed page on this blog.
Most people seem to browse at work. On Monday the total hits on this blog peaked at 24,374 in 24 hours. The Patients’Guide is now by far the most viewed post =well over 67,000 (I didn’t have Google Analytics installed until three years after it was first posted (May 2009).
Brain Magazine UK has produced a podcast. It was based on a rather long interview with Dr Paul Farrow. He’s a neuroscientist who came to our 2013 course on matrix algebra for single ion channels (picture here). It was good to meet him again. There is a blog, a bit of video and a long audio. I managed to use the F word (at 2’14" in the short video, 37 min in the audio, and at 36 min in full video)
The full length (1 hour) video interview is now on Youtube.
An interview for a Swiss radio programme appeared. It was about false discovery rates and glamour journals.
Listen to the interview (in German)
I decided to post the last email of Stefan Grimm. He’s the 51 year old professor at Imperial College London who appears to have committed suicide because he was threatened with being fired because his research wasn’t expensive enough. It went viral in a way that I’ve never seen At one point it was getting e new hit every second, from all over the world. In a couple of days it became my most viewed post ever. By Christmas eve it had more than 160.000 views from over 200 countries. Meanwhile Imperial tried (unsuccessfully) to pretend nothing had happened. In my view this incident has brought to a head the ever-growing anger at the way science is being corrupted. Another post followed on December 23rd with examples of bullying from the large number of emails that followed the first post.
The indignation engendered by writing these posts led me to write tweets that border on the vicious, but which are well deserved.
Wrnt to Cardiff because I’d been asked to talk to their postgraduate student society. I talked about the Miscommunication of Science. They seemed to be grateful to hear someone old saying that you don’t have to respect your elders but not betters, especially when they collude in hype. I get more pleasure from being appreciated by people so early in their scientific lives that I get from the old folk in the Royal Society.
Interview on Radio 5 live about over-treatment and over-diagnosis. It was far too short (and not helped by my accidentally hitting mute button on headset). The other person being interviewed was Joanna Zakrzewska who specialises in maxillofacial pain. Sadly she started by advocated acupuncture (I’ve sent her the link to Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo: end of a myth). Curiously, given the topic was "too many drugs", she grumbled that patients did not always take the drugs that they were prescribed. Not for the first time, I’ve wondered about the effectiveness of the psychological counselling that pain clinics offer. When my back hurts it’s bloody painful, and not to do with my psychological attitude to pain. If pain clinics could cure pain, I guess pain would not be the huge problem that it is. But I wonder if it might be better if they stopped exaggerating what they can do.
One of the presenters, Rachel Burden, said many ills were because if lifestyle choices and prevention was better and cheaper than cure. Well it would be if we knew how to prevent things. In fact much of your fate is pure luck -the John Snow lecture, by George Davey Smith has the details.
Listen to the interview
There is good stuff about over-treatment from Iona Heath, Peter Gøtzsche and Margaret McCartney. This cartoon, by Hilda Bastian, summarizes many of the problems.
I see that UCL has posted an edited version of the "impact" statement that was submitted by UCL to the 2014 REF. It’s at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/impact/case-study-repository/critical-evaluation-of-alternative-therapies
My favourite work topic, stochastic processes, hit the headlines for two days running.
Cancer: bad genes or bad luck?
Tomasetti and Vogelstein came to the conclusion that in many cases, the largest cause of cancers is simply bad luck, caused by stochastic errors in cell division, rather than any controllable environmental factors. This paper came under heavy attack from several quarters, not least Grrl Scientist and Bob O’Hara.
http://www.theguardian.com/…/bad-luck-bad-journalism-and-ca…
I found myself in the unusual position of defending a paper in Science, and the journalists who reported on it. Then I found that . Pz Myers had done an excellent job of defending the main conclusions of the paper.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/…/03/cancer-bad-genes-or-bad-l…/.
Shortly afterwards the oncologist and skeptic, David Gorski, posted another good response, Is cancer due mostly to bad luck?
I’m still puzzled about why some people seem so indignant about the idea that much of your fate is sheer luck. It is hardly a new idea. George Davey Smith’s John Snow lecture gave an excellent summary, and he pointed out to me that the topic had been discussed in 1977, by Richard Peto (reprint, via GDS).
The only people who stand to lose by the idea are those eager to sell you (largely fraudulent) “cancer-preventing” diets’.
Queuing for beds
Once again, the news headlines were dominated by long queues at accident and emergency departments and lack of beds. So I used twitter to link to a 2009 post, Queueing for beds, Andrei Andreevich Markov , and why I still love the NHS. The random (stochastic) arrival times, and random lengths of stays in hospital give rise to interesting predictions, not all of them obvious, If you want to turn patients away rarely you need more beds than you might guess. If you are operating near saturation, you will inevitably have to wait a long time, and turn away many patients. This quickly got 250 extra hits for the old post, partly because Christopher Cook (policy editor for BBC Newsnight) seemed to appreciate the elegance of the maths.
12 January 2015 Went to here Skeptics in the Pub Mark Burnley on The Skeptics guide to drugs in sport. Mucj of it was about the great Lance Armstrong scandal (strangely enougj, I was in the process of reading a chapter of Steve Jones’ forthcomimg book on the French Revolution which deals with related questions). It takes all the fun out of sport when so many people are cheating. It’s only a bloody game.
Met Chris van Tulleken for lunch at UCL. The meeting was triggered by some rather critical tweets from me about his TV diet programmes What’s the right diet for you. This was a Horizon special, in three 1 hour episodes. At the start, the volunteers were divided into three groups, ’emotional eaters’, ‘constant-cravers’ and ‘feasters’. Each group was allocated a diet that was, allegedly, appropriate for them. After three months that’d all lost weight. But this says nothing about whether the initial allocation to groups helped at all. In order to test that. you’d have had to allocate people randomly to the "wrong" diet. They might have lost just the same amount of weight. If that happened, the "personalisation" would be no more than make-believe.
Chris van Tulleken was a charming and intersting man (@DoctorChrisVT on twiiter). He agreed entirely with my criticisms, despite what was claimed on TV. That does raise a problem about whether it’s permissible to use obviously faulty experiments for the sake of making “good” TV.
Does too much jogging harm you?
Here are some comments on a recent paper, “Dose of Jogging and Long-Term Mortality“.
This paper purported to show that “strenuous” jogging was no better for you than none at all, whereas light (very light) joggng had a large benefit. In my opinion, this conclusion was without foundation. Here is an edited version of comments that I sent to Rosi Sexton. and put on my Facebook page.
I’d like to do a proper blog post about exercise, along the lines of those I’ve done about diet. That will take a lot more reading. My guess is that, like diet, exercise isn’t the panacea that it’s currently fashionable to claim. The lack of long term RCTs means that we just don’t know.
First it isn’t randomised so it can’t show causality. Unless exercise is the cause of the differences in mortality, then starting (or stopping) exercise won’t have the slightest effect on mortality. In the usual sleight of hand of observational epidemiologists, they admit this (under limitations) but then go on to make recommendations as though causality had been shown. It’s very much the same situation as diet studies. I’m very much with Ioannidis when he says
“Definitive solutions won’t come from another million observational papers or small randomized trials“
Second the people in the “sedentary non-joggers” group were nearly 20 years older than the jogging groups, and heavier, and had 5-6 times higher prevalence of hypertension and diabetes. It’s very dubious indeed whether Cox proportional hazards regression can compensate sufficiently for such huge differences in confounders (and of course it can’t compensate at all for confounders you haven’t thought of).
Third. They start off with quite a lot of people, but end up with 36 people in the “strenuous” group of whom only two died (see “central illustration”). That’s no way to estimate all-cause mortality. There is no worthwhile information at all about what they call the “strenuous” group. The confidence interval on the “strenuous” group shows the data are worthless.
Fourth, The (self-reported) exercise was recorded only once, early in the study (2001 – 2003). Even if it was accurate then, who knows what happened later? Even serious runners don’t keep it up for ever. My long distance running phase ran from roughly late 70s to mid-90s when my first hip osteoarthritis struck. During that time I was doing far more than there “strenuous” group, but if I’d entered their study at 60 (in 1996) I would have appeared very different.
The commentary on the paper in the same issue of the journal makes some good points (though they are rather committed to the “more the better”camp.
Glad to see my boss, Lucia Sivilotti, is on Youtube. The named lecture was given at the Pharmacology 2014 meeting in London. She give a clear account of “Agonist efficacy- the view from the single receptor”:
Went to Cambridge to speak at 8th annual EBI-Sanger Cambridge PhD Symposium (eSCAMPS). The topic was the Miscommunication of Science, -with some stuff on false discovery rates.
My son, Andrew, got married to Natalie Thompson today, at Shenley Cricket Club. Here are some pictures from the day (mostly taken by my cousin, Fiona Colquhoun). Click picture to open album (you can download high resolution versions: icon at bottom right of each picture).
There are a lot more pictures at the photographer’s site.
5 March 2015 Went to Royal Free Hospital for a rare talk to undergraduates, “The most important ‘transferable skill’ is mathematics”. In fact it wasn’t very mathematical. The abstract was as follows.
Much has been said recently about the problem of irreproducibility. It results in part from misunderstanding of statistics. I’ll explain why most screening tests do more harm than good (so NHS health checks are a waste of money). Then I’ll explain why the term statistical “significance” should never be used, and how its use has resulted in many false discoveries. Despite the title, I’ll talk about only things that are little more complicated than counting.
31 March 2015 At the Thinking Chinese meeting at UCL. Much of the meeting was about Chinese history and there were few scientists there. A while ago, I heard the organiser, Vivienne Lo, give a talk that was rather uncritical about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), so I wrote to her. As a result she asked me to be on a panel to discuss TCM. At first, almost all the other panelists were sympathetic to TCM (not surprising given that most of them made a living from it), but I got a couple more people who were a bit more critical. Nonetheless, the questions revealed that mere data was not going to shift the opinions of people with a romantic attachment to myths. My job was made easier by the announcement, a few days before the meeting, that TCK and Western herbal medicine would not be recognised by statutory regulation, on the grounds that there’s no reason to think that they work (blogged here).
1 – 2 April, 2015 Went to a more serious meeting at the Wellcome Trust, on "The Reproducibility of Science" . It was enjoyable. I’ve written a blog about the meeting, so no need for more here.
22 April 2015. High Wycombe Skeptics in the Pub -diet fads talk. Unusually the pub had no food, and the speaking area was contiguous with the bar, so a bit noisy. But it was fun.
26 April 2015. Went to see the stage version of The Railway Children at Kings Cross Theatre. It was beautifully staged -really creative. The appearance of the real steam engine was hugely impressive. Managed to get through it with only two tissues.
4 May 2015. Went to hear Rosi Sexton at London Skeptics in the pub. She’s probably the most multi-talented person I’ve ever met.
5 – 6 May 2015. Yet another meeting about publishing and reproducibilty, "The Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication". The event has been blogged by Dorothy Bishop. Here proposals might suit psychology, but won’t be appropriate in many areas of science. I added my views in a comment. It will be interesting to see how long journals in their present form can survive. In my opinion, they are out of date and exceedingly expensive. But I expect they’ll take a while to die.
13 May 2015. Went to the Royal Statistical Society to give the vote of thanks after a read paper. The paper pointed out the hazards of impact factors and other sorts of ranking. It is astonishing that these numbers still get published with no indication of the uncertainty in the ranking. The RSS is a pioneer in this sort of post-publication peer review. Here is a link to a paper by RA Fisher. It was read in 1935, and the vote of thanks, and seconder, are papers in themselves. The votes of thanks often demolish, in the politest possible way, the paper that they follow.
I had to forego the invitation to dinner with the RSS because the Prince of Wales’ letters were made public at 4 pm, and I’d promised to write a piece about them for the Spectator.
14 May 2015. The Spectator piece appeared on the web. It should get a decent readership because the announcement was retweeted by Andrew Neil, who has a quarter of a million followers on twitter. After it had gone, I found another letter, about acupuncture, and that’s been added to the version of the Spectator article on this blog. The blog version also has some follow-up, including a deeply shocking interview with Jack Straw.
19 May 2015. Went to Birmingham, for talk to Birmingham Humanists (on quackery). Thanks to Adrian Bailey for hospitality.
The Telegraph published a good piece on cancer quackery: "MPs call for police inquiry into bogus ‘cancer cures’ offer by alternative medicine practitioners". It has some video, taken secretly by the excellent Good Thinking .Society. It shows utterly irresponsible claims of cures being made to cancer sufferers. If Trading Standards won’t enforce the Cancer Act (1939), the police should. These charlatans are killing people, and making money from it. The story made the front page. Thanks to Laura Donnelly and Justin Stoneman for covering this important problem.
A real (expensive) treat. We went to Covent Garden to hear La Traviata. It was superb.
We listen incessantly to the Joan Sutherland recording, but Violetta, played by Marina Rebeka, was terrific. The last act, in which Violetta dies of tuberculosis is sheer genius it starts with a whimper, but ends with a bang, as she collapses and the curtain falls,
Listen to it now!
My 2007 post, La Traviata, La Bohème, and how quacks poison your mind, is relevant.
A chaffinch has been singing from a tree in the garden for weeks now.
Hear him sing
But he is rarely seen. This picture was taken a walking holiday in the Lake District, at Aira Force, (near Ullswater) in 2007.
Here is a powerpoint file of the Lake District walking trip (with more bird pictures). Best viewed whole screen.
This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office Online.
Went to Manchester to give a seminar on P values and false discovery rates (an extended version of the YouTube talk). That was followed by a question and answer session on statistics with postgraduates and postdocs (the picture was taken at the end, by my host).
Continued. The diary will now continue on a new page: The diary, June 2015 – May 2016.
3 Responses to The diary: June 2014 – May 2015
David a very lucid explanation of partial agonists/full agonist activity. Do you think this is a universal explanation, all ion channel receptors and GPCRs?
Thanks robbo. I presume you are referring to the video at 16 July 2014.
I really doubt whether anybody who didn’t anything about the field could follow it.
The answer to your question is that we’ve looked only at channels activated by glycine and by acetylcholine (muscle type), so all else is guesswork.
It does seem quite likely that something similar might happen with other ion channels. It seems inevitable that the agonist binding site will recognise the agonist and be most sensitive to the structure of the agonist. Therefore one might expect that the fact that some agonists are partial must be be recognised at the binding site., presumably because it the changes in the structure that are produced by full and partial agonists must differ close to the agonist binding site. The channel gate, being some distance away (on the molecular scale) can’t “see” what agonist is bound, yet the channel is held open for different fractions of the time by different agonists. An economical explanation for that is provided by the “flip” mechanism and by its generalisation, the primed mechanism (in which subunits are postulated to flip independently). The idea that the global conformation change that opens the channel is much the same regardless of the nature of the agonist has some plausibility based on the observation that haemoglobin seems to have only two conformations, regardless of whether the ‘agonist’ that produces the conformation change is oxygen or carbon monoxide.
Nevertheless, other explanations are conceivable. For example, it could be the case that the global open and shut conformations are sufficiently sensitive to the local structure at the binding sites that they depend on which agonist is bound. This seems unlikely to be an important factor, because of the old observation that the single channel conductance (how open the channel is) is independent of the nature of the agonist. And it is also inconsistent with the recent analysis that, within the context of the flip mechanism, the estimates of the rate constants for the opening and shutting reactions are almost independent of the nature of the agonist.
You ask also about GPCR and that is much more difficult. All the evidence cited above is dependent on observing the behaviour of single molecules in real time, and that isn’t possible with GPCR. In fact there is no well-determined mechanism for any GPCR that allows estimates of rate constants for any transitions. For a start nobody knows how to define the concentration of the G protein. One could plausibly speculate that the agonist produces a local conformation change at the extracellular end of the receptor, and that the time spent in the local conformation change is different for full and partial agonists. How that difference is transmitted to the intracellular end, and on to the transduction apparatus is entirely a matter of speculation. It would certainly be an attractive idea to postulate that the local conformation change is an analogue of the intermediate flip state, was produced for different fractions of the time by different agonists, and that the global conformation change that’s recognised by the transduction chain was an all-or-nothing transition, analogous to the open-shut transition. An agonist that was inefficient at producing the initial local conformation change would be less efficient at producing the global change, because less time would be spent in the flip state, just as for an ion channel. But as far as I know, there is no good reason to believe this explanation.
Interesting, the only information of GPCRs are the structural studies demonstrating the partial agonist of the beta1 receptor bind to different amino acid side chains than full agonists, so presumably alter the structure slightly differently. See Warne et al Nature 2011 469: 241.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4422
|
__label__wiki
| 0.513374
| 0.513374
|
Des O’Connor
DEAD O’GONNER
Long lived entertainer Des O’Connor has taken his final curtain call aged 88. A former Butlins redcoat, Des worked with Frank Sinatra and The Beatles, and he had four UK top 10 hits, including a number one, I Pretend, in 1968. In 1958, he toured the UK with Buddy Holly, and his music career sold over sixteen million records. In 1963, he was given his own chat show, The Des O’Connor Show, and he carried on in a variety of chats shows for the next forty years. He also was the third presenter of Countdown between 2007 and 2008. He was picked by 5 teams, including Windsor the Troll and Grief Encounter.
12 January 1932 – 14 November 2020
5 teams
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4424
|
__label__cc
| 0.62906
| 0.37094
|
Home » PEOPLE IN FASHION » DESIGNERS » Stella McCartney and LVMH announce a new partnership to further develop the Stella McCartney House
Stella McCartney and LVMH announce a new partnership to further develop the Stella McCartney House
Posted by: admin Tags: Antoine Arna, Bernard Arnault, LVMH, Stella McCartney Posted date: July 15, 2019 | No comment
Stella McCartney and LVMH have reached an agreement to further develop the Stella McCartney House. The new partners will detail the full scope of this deal in September. Stella McCartney will of course continue as creative director and ambassador of her brand, while holding majority ownership.
The goal of this partnership will be for the Stella McCartney House to accelerate its worldwide development in terms of business and strategy, while of course remaining faithful to its long-lasting commitment to sustainable and ethical luxury fashion.
Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH, declared: “I am extremely happy with this partnership with Stella. It is the beginning of a beautiful story together, and we are convinced of the great long-term potential of her House. A decisive factor was that she was the first to put sustainability and ethical issues on the front stage, very early on, and built her House around these issues. It emphasizes LVMH Groups’ commitment to sustainability. LVMH was the first large company in France to create a sustainability department, more than 25 years ago, and Stella will help us further increase awareness on these important topics.”
Stella McCartney added: “Since the announcement of my decision to take full ownership of the Stella McCartney brand in March 2018 there have been many approaches from various parties expressing their wish to partner and invest in the Stella McCartney House. While these approaches were interesting none could match the conversation I had with Bernard Arnault and his son Antoine. The passion and commitment they expressed towards the Stella McCartney brand alongside their belief in the ambitions and our values as the global leader in sustainable luxury fashion was truly impressive. The chance to realize and accelerate the full potential of the brand alongside Mr Arnault and as part of the LVMH family, while still holding the majority ownership in the business, was an opportunity that hugely excited me. Partnering with Mr Arnault, his family and LVMH is a big step for me and my family, but also the team at Stella McCartney. The brand has achieved so much since its launch, and this new partnership with LVMH is recognition of that work, but this I feel is just the start, and I look forward to a brilliant future together”.
The closing of this partnership is subject to the usual conditions, in particular the approval of the competition authorities.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4425
|
__label__wiki
| 0.908711
| 0.908711
|
Chinese settlement in New Zealand, past and present.
By James Ng
Amity Centre Publishing Project
Chinese settlement in New Zealand, past and present
The Chinese - the first non-Maori, non-European people to migrate in numbers to New Zealand - did so because of two Otago invitations to Cantonese goldseekers in 1865. Nevertheless, they retained a sojourner outlook for a long time and suffered discrimination on account of that, their competition to Europeans and their race. At the turn of the 20th century the racial issue became dominant and led to the White New Zealand policy of exclusion. Yet a significant remnant of Chinese hung on. Eventually, a number of their wives and children were permitted to come as refugees at the start of World War 2, and at its end, they were allowed to stay. More Chinese families were reunited here before communist China stopped emigration, and their settlement took hold and prospered. Then between 1986-96, a fundamental change in New Zealand’s immigration policy led to a big influx of middle-class Chinese from other origins, who much outnumbered the long-standing ‘Kiwi’ Chinese families. The newcomers’ social integration has yet to run its full course. Even so, New Zealand has gained a larger, permanent Chinese population with diverse origins, good education and resources, and more recent links to Asia.
Chinese have been in New Zealand for over 130 years. Originally, they were twice invited from Victoria, Australia to the province of Otago in 1865 to rework its goldfields,(1) and their first mining party arrived at the end of that year. From the beginning it was apparent that the Chinese would be a distinctive, significant and controversial ethnic minority.
Indeed, they have always been a distinctive minority which endeavoured to keep a place in this country. As the first non-Maori and non-European people to arrive their interactions with other New Zealand groups were bound to be significant. But why controversial? After all, the preceding Chinese migration to the Australian goldfields was regarded as a ‘safe’ influx, having a low crime rate and other good qualities such as industriousness(2) which should have been welcomed in a developing country like young New Zealand. The basic reason for dissension was their considerable difference in race and culture from the European, whereas New Zealand was suitable for European colonisation and was governed by Europeans. These differences fostered recurring controversy on the advisability of permitting Chinese immigration, out of which the belief grew that Chinese and other Asians should be kept out of New Zealand.
The Chinese bore the brunt of this belief because they were the earliest and most numerous Asian group to come. In the nineteenth century they reached a total of 4,364 persons or about 6% of Otago’s population towards the end of 1871, and a peak population in New Zealand of 5,000 or more between 1874-81,(3) the equivalent of 1% of New Zealand’s non-Maori population in the 1881 census. Historians have long recognised that the European reaction to the Chinese presence in New Zealand tested the limits of British colonial rule in relation to this country’s immigration legislation - and thus in its progression towards independence. Perhaps it is just beginning to be recognised that the Chinese involvement in New Zealand was an integral part of this nation’s pathway towards more Asianisation. As more details of this Chinese involvement emerge, it has become apparent that their full contribution to New Zealand was long underestimated because of sojournism on the part of the Chinese and discrimination on the part of the European.
On the whole, though, New Zealand discrimination did not take on the anti-Chinese extremes seen in North America and Australia, where racial prejudice against Chinese had set a precedent. In this and other aspects, the early Chinese in New Zealand were a microcosm of the Chinese goldseekers throughout the Pacific rim. Further, New Zealand’s story of its Chinese goldseekers - and their descendants - is the most complete because of the smallness of the country and its detailed documentation and photographic records of the Chinese population. In due course, New Zealand public attitudes positively changed, many Chinese families arrived and successful settlement ensued. They remained a small minority nonetheless, only 0.5% of the total population in 1986.
That said, a big new wave of Chinese and other Asian immigrants came recently. Thus in the 1996 census, the Chinese in New Zealand numbered 81,309 and were still the most numerous Asian group (40.8%). The Indian ethnic group was second, a few individuals arriving at the turn of the 20th century and numbering 181 in 1916. They were over 42,000 in 1996. The South Koreans, an entirely recent immigrant group, were third with over 13,000. They numbered 426 in the 1986 census and 903 in 1991. Of the total 1996 New Zealand population, the Chinese comprised 2.25% and all Asians, 5.5%.(4) The Chinese numbers alone would predispose them to figure prominently in the new feelings and barriers against Asian immigrants in the mid-1990s.
This article describes the Chinese progress in settlement in New Zealand. However, the story of the Chinese can have different emphases or angles; for example, their part in the increasing specialisation sought in immigrants in relation to the skills, investment and business acumen needed in this country. Thus the intakes of the past required mass to fill New Zealand’s open spaces, and a main question was merely ‘which peoples?’ Then in 1986, immigration was opened equally to all peoples, which would enlarge the incoming numbers of quality migrants. In 1986-96, overly broad immigration categories were introduced for skills and business categories and since the influxes of those years, the immigration lessons learnt are being assessed. Another line of thought might focus more on the successes and limitations of the three sojourner generations of New Zealand-Chinese, both in New Zealand and in their homeland. There are other aspects which may be further explored, including the European and Maori sides of the story. Nevertheless, the writer’s purpose in this article is to present an overview of Chinese settlement.
The history of the Chinese in New Zealand can be divided into four periods:
1. (1865-1900). The era of sojournism by choice.
Between 1865 and 1900 the majority of Chinese immigrants were goldseekers in Otago and on the West Coast of the South Island. Nearly all were males of Cantonese rural origin, from small farmer and country artisan stock in the counties of Panyu (especially), Taishan, Zengcheng and a few others.(5) Although at first the Chinese goldseekers came from Victoria, by 1869 they were coming direct from China as well and this inflow became the mainstream of Chinese arrivals. Virtually all were sojourners who wished to make a ‘pile’ and return to China. They were not interested in settlement here, but remained as aliens, and lacked the vote. The already worked-over goldfields reinforced their sojourner outlook, because few Chinese could support a family by mining. Instead, most sent remittances home and aimed to return to China on visits every five years or so with around £100 in savings,(6) to stay for about two years or longer if they could and then come back to New Zealand for another working spell.(7)
In Otago-Southland, they had come to the farthest southern goldfields in the world. Some of them spread to the West Coast goldfields. Leaving from China, they paid voyage expenses of around £12 (in 1870) (8) from family funds, loans or the credit-ticket system of Chinese employers in New Zealand, similar to the contract passages of European workers with other New Zealand employers. But indentured labour recruited by Europeans played no part in their migration to New Zealand. They often emigrated in kinship groups and extended camaraderie to those from the same county or group of counties in Guangdong province. They stuck together and stuck to their ways. They had to, because of language problems and the lack of personal assets. In doing so they formed the strongest cooperative groups in the goldfields(9) and this reinforced their separateness from the Europeans. It was their capability combined with group effort and aid which made them competitors to be reckoned with. Although most were small claim miners, in due course members of their ethnic group took on every branch of alluvial goldmining and pioneered the gold dredging of river flats. So far they are known to have been involved in only a few quartz mines, although the tradition that they did not undertake extensive tunnelling is now proven to be untrue.(10)
The Chinese goldseekers saved half or more of their earnings(11), and their savings were enhanced by a foreign exchange rate which rose from three taels (1870) to ten taels (1904) to one New Zealand pound.(12) Besides, the cost of living in China was cheaper. Thus an ounce of gold in savings was worth several times more to a Chinese sojourner than to a European miner. The Chinese could also enter other employment in the goldfields - from agricultural pursuits like farm labouring, rabbitting and market gardening to railroad and road building - and as the gold was worked out, they sought employment outside the goldfields.
Understandably, the Chinese aroused jealous antagonism among many European miners, and as the Chinese spread outside the goldfields, this antagonism spread to other European workers. At the start, the resentment emphasised their competition and sojournism as much as race. Then the issue of race was emphasised by Sir George Grey (1879),(13) and politicians from the West Coast joined in, as did the rising trade union movement. A West Coast politician early involved was the formidable R.J. Seddon, who continued his bias when premier (1893-1906) and is remembered as the chief anti-Chinese opponent in New Zealand history. For many years the principal political objective regarding Chinese was to limit their immigration, and two main parliamentary acts were passed; the Chinese Immigrants Act, 1881, and the Chinese Immigrants Act Amendment Act, 1896. Both imposed a polltax on the entry of new Chinese immigrants, the latter act raising the polltax from £10 to £100, or thousands of dollars in today’s money.(14) As for the Chinese already here, initially there was little legalised discrimination against them. Examples slowly appeared, including the more difficult process of naturalisation for Chinese and the Old Age Pensions Act, 1898, which excluded Chinese and other ‘Asiatics’, thereby relegating to penury the ageing Chinese miners remaining in the exhausted goldfields.
From 1881 the Chinese population fell, thus lessening their competition. Paradoxically, the antagonism against them gradually grew worse, due in large part to economic depression (the Long Depression, 1879-96) and the influence of anti-Chinese agitation in North America and Australia. A perverse consequence of this was that antagonism now increasingly focused on race, the European viewpoint being backed by pseudo-scientific theories expounding the existence of so-called superior and inferior peoples. Since the Chinese were allegedly inferior, the denigration of them found its justification, and it was then only a step away to wish to ban such persons from immigration. Fear of competition tends to limit the ingress of certain immigrants, but racism tends to ban them. Correspondingly, the main anti-Chinese political objective changed from limitation to exclusion, although Britain prevented any possible realisation of the latter until the Imperial War Conference in 1917. By the 1900s, nonetheless, the racist propaganda was coupled to the weak position of China, and had convinced all classes of the European population of the desirability of a White New Zealand.(15) This intense feeling was written into laws and regulations and was spoken of as the White New Zealand policy, although it was never formally documented as a statute or decree.(16)
Some New Zealand-Chinese reactions to the prejudice against them were recorded, revealing them as intense patriots who believed in their own superiority as a people, culture and nation.(17) They clung to their conviction that China was a major power, which had been an illusion since 1800 - and shattered, if they had acknowledged it, in the two Opium Wars. Imagine their disappointment as China’s weaknesses became more and more manifest through the Sino-French War (1884-85), the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Boxer Rebellion (1900-01). They, and the later Chinese in New Zealand, bitterly resented China’s fall in international status, and blamed that low status for their poor treatment overseas. They were aware of the better treatment of Japanese migrants elsewhere, which happened, they believed, because Japan enjoyed a higher international status.(18)
Most of the Chinese goldseekers managed at the last to return permanently to China.(19) The book Windows on a Chinese Past records their important role in the goldfields, thereby justifying their invitations to come. For many years in Otago they comprised about 40% of the goldminers and possibly produced 30% of the gold. One of their leaders, Choie Sew Hoy, pioneered a gold dredge in 1888 which led the world in dredging river beaches and flats, and revitalised Otago’s mining industry and the region generally. Within 14 years, in 1902, Otago and adjacent Southland had a fleet of 201 gold dredges either built or abuilding, nearly all modelled on the Sew Hoy dredge (better known as the ‘New Zealand gold dredge’). Besides, as already mentioned, the Chinese also provided labour for local agriculture, railway and road projects and other work, and dominated the fresh vegetable market.
A core of Chinese hung on in New Zealand, still not to settle but to sojourn. It is likely that most of these men had established small businesses - many market gardens, some fruitshops cum stores, the first Chinese laundries - outside the goldfields, or were to do so. Some were ex-goldseekers. Others were sons and young kin of goldseekers, coming to New Zealand from the 1880s by a nascent chain migration. They largely formed the second Chinese generation in New Zealand, their numbers added to by Cantonese contemporaries who had migrated independently, while the polltax was still an affordable £10. One of the latter was the grandfather of the writer; he had previously been in Darwin, and in Wellington in early or mid 1896 he joined a small group of Ng relatives and clansmen who were said to have been unable to go or return to the United States or Australia. The second generation lived like the goldseekers within kinship and locale groupings. They were the pivotal Chinese generation in New Zealand. Again like their goldseeker predecessors in being faithful to their families and inured to hardship,they stuck out the worse (rising) years of the White New Zealand policy whilst establishing the new Chinese businesses in a humble way by humble means. Their numbers were not big, at least partly because their continued influx was deterred by the £100 polltax. In 1901, the total New Zealand-Chinese population was only 2857.
Since sojournism dominated, there were at the end of the first era only 15 Chinese wives and 43 Chinese-European marriages in New Zealand.(20) Still, their families gave another hint of the rich social potential of the Chinese. The mixed marriages included that of Choie Sew Hoy (actually a hidden de facto relationship) and also Chew (Chau) Chong, the New Plymouth fungus buyer (of Auricularia polytricha) and butter factory pioneer (in the use of refrigeration). In addition, it is not generally known that the Maori people appointed Chew Chong an ‘ahupiri’ or regional chief - one of the two Chinese and five Europeans ever awarded this high honour. Chew Chong’s youngest son won the Military Medal in World War 1. The first known Chinese full-blood family in New Zealand were the Lo Keongs (1873), who produced the first Chinese music teacher, the first Chinese dentist, and the first two Chinese engineers who were among the first Chinese soldiers in this country. The second known Chinese full-blood family, the Wong Tapes (1875), included Benjamin Wong Tape, OBE, JP, who left New Zealand to achieve an illustrious career in Hong Kong. He was a founder of Hong Kong University. Among other early full-blood Chinese families were the Ah Chees of Auckland, who became prominent businessmen; the Young Hees at Greymouth, where the father masterminded the Opium Act, 1901 but departed to Hong Kong where his family have included a Legislative Councillor; and T.F. Loie’s family, whose New Zealand-born son David was posthumously awarded the rare King’s Police Medal for valour in Hong Kong during World War 2.
2. (1901-50). The era of sojournism by compulsion.
The second era found the Chinese in New Zealand remaining as sojourners in the land and still predominantly male, but now increasingly seeking the settlement of their families here. Their numbers fell to 2,147 in 1916, but besides the remnant of goldminers who were stranded in this country, this total included those who were by then mostly established in the previously mentioned market gardens, fruitshops and laundries. Eventually the Chinese expanded and predominated in these three occupations, and were to be found in or around urban areas all over New Zealand.(21)
Some of these small businesses could support families, and the wish followed the capability. Worsening worries of civil disorder and war in China furthered the wish from the turn of the 20th century. But this was for long a frustrating era for the Chinese in New Zealand, since the country’s laws aimed to ensure they stayed as sojourners and not become settlers. Legislators thought that if they could stop the ingress of Chinese newcomers (especially females), then those Chinese already here would ultimately leave for good or die out. From the turn of the century, therefore, New Zealand progressively erected an immigration system which finally (in 1921) could prevent new Chinese entry absolutely. At first, a few more Chinese men and wives came, particularly from 1903, overcoming the huge £100 polltax. This arrival of female Chinese (22) led in 1907 to the imposition of a reading test of a hundred words of Standard 4 level, over and above the polltax. Naturalisation for Chinese was stopped from 1908, by which time it was said that a White New Zealand policy was universally accepted. The addition of the reading test reduced new Chinese immigration to two or three individuals a year for several years.
Then quite astonishingly, 1,374 males and 115 females arrived from China as a new immigrant wave in 1918-20, when shipping lanes from Asia were restored to normal at the end of the war and before the implementation of the new permit system in 1921. These arrivals overcame both the polltax and the reading test, following which they were automatically granted permanent residence status. They were helped in paying the polltax by a change in foreign exchange which reflected the higher price for silver from 1916 and saw Chinese currency rise to 2.6 dollars to one New Zealand pound in early 1920, before again slipping in value.(23) They were mostly young men of the writer’s parents’ generation, brought to New Zealand by their fathers and kin in the small Chinese population here. The tremendous effort needed to bring them into this country - in savings and cramming for the English test - meant that few other Chinese could come without the crucial component of aid from within New Zealand. In turn, this chain migration meant that the New Zealand-Chinese newcomers continued to originate from a few Cantonese localities. Of more immediate consequence, their coming decisively circumvented New Zealand’s aim to shut out new Chinese entrants, thus ensuring a Chinese minority in New Zealand for many years ahead. The permit system, however, proved to be an insuperable barrier to continuing Chinese immigration. With its implementation in 1921 further Chinese immigration practically ceased, apart from a small quota system between 1921-26. But the full-blood Chinese already in New Zealand numbered 2,770 males and 316 females (including 135 wives) in 1926 and 2,233 males and 347 females in 1936.
Though this renewed immigration wave was still primarily one of sojourners, reflecting the long-established tradition operative in the migrants’ Cantonese home counties, it produced in effect the next Chinese generation in this country. Anti-Chinese attitudes in New Zealand did not deter them since sojourners tolerate less than ideal conditions away from home as long as they could gainfully earn, save and leave. And they could do so in New Zealand, because once arrived and admitted, the forces of law and order were extended to them. They aimed for a savings rate of one third, a visit to China about every five years and a take-home sum that was still around £100, until Chinese earnings improved after the Great Depression.(24) They continued to live circumscribed lives here within their traditional social groupings and were still separate from mainstream society. Now, though, the separatism was more European-induced than ever before, since notions of white supremacy, racial purity and the avoidence of racial ‘contamination’ or ‘pollution’ in marriage by ‘inferiors’ pervaded much of white society.
For all that, a basic level of decency was maintained towards the Chinese, and their businesses were still patronised. The decency was underlined by several churches, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and particularly the Presbyterian Church, which had a small Chinese mission in New Zealand and a big Canton Villages Mission among New Zealand-Chinese home villages in upper Panyu county, Guangdong province. This was the only Australasian church mission in China. The Chinese also acknowledged the high professional standard of the judiciary.(25) But it was exceptional for Europeans in New Zealand to hire Chinese, or for Chinese to have European employees, particularly in urban business activities. As European females were sometimes even arrested for consorting with them,(26) intermarriages remained few. Chinese market gardens which hired Maori labour sparked off a furore which went on for years about Chinese (and Indian) men and Maori women relationships, and indeed, 38 Chinese-Maori offspring were recorded in the 1936 census. The Great Depression (1930-34, although hard times actually extended from 1926-36 in New Zealand) affected Chinese businesses as well as European but new Chinese businesses were resented and opposed.(27)
Overall, the new wave of Chinese men was better educated in China (often to secondary school standard) than their predecessors, and could probably have adapted more to New Zealand life. Nevertheless, when faced with anti-Chinese prejudice, they too looked back to China as their primary home. One of their sayings was that ‘the leaves fall (return) to the roots.’ In their ancestral villages, two or three generations of overseas money earned by one or more male members per generation had enriched their families, many of whom became landlords. With this stake in China, and because their Cantonese schooling had emphasised the rebirth of China, they too were intensely patriotic towards that country. They firmly believed in the inner strength of China and the Chinese people. An added reason for their patriotism was another belief, continued from their predecessors, that only the heightened international reputation of a strengthened China could improve their lot in New Zealand. Specifically, they believed that only a resurgent China could disprove the prejudice of racial inferiority pressed against the Chinese here. The scattered Chinese communities in this country could not do it on their own, and they therefore established in New Zealand the Kuomintang party (1913) and the New Zealand Chinese Association (1937) as their two chief societies.(28) Both were strongly linked to each other and to the Chinese consulate, the staff of which was appointed by the Kuomintang government in China from 1929.
In 1937, the New Zealand Chinese Association began systematically raising funds for the Chinese war effort against Japan, and at the end of the war, was said to have raised either the highest or second-highest amount per capita in any overseas Chinese community.(29) Every Chinese earner in New Zealand contributed on a weekly basis (30) and many gave more than expected. The New Zealand government permitted the money to be sent to China. The two foremost Chinese leaders were Chiu Kwok-chun and his half-caste New Zealand-born friend Henry Yue Jackson, who worked in the Chinese consulate, and they were ably and fully supported by Consul (later Consul General) Wang Feng (1935-53). In every branch of the Chinese Association, men rose to the occasion; and many years later, the writer saw their faces light up whenever he mentioned the Association’s work in the war years.
However, due to the intense prejudice against them, the importance of the Chinese to New Zealand itself during this era was less than before. In the period up to 1945, only five Chinese had graduated from university, a number too sparse to make an impact. No commercial pioneers had followed Choie Sew Hoy and Chew Chong. In fact, the Chinese businesses, being chiefly constrained to market gardens, fruitshops and laundries, crowded in and competed with each other. For all that, one should not dismiss these three Chinese occupations lightly, since the Chinese skilfully provided a major social service in each. Labour unions finally left the Chinese alone in these three trades, probably in part because of a tacit acknowledgement of their usefulness to the general society.
The young men who had arrived postwar gradually succeeded their fathers in the Chinese businesses, many of the latter returning permanently to China in the early 1920s. Thereupon, some of the young men began developing the same wish to get their families to New Zealand. If they could do so, they believed that they were not turning their backs on China, but would get their families at least for a time out of danger; furthermore they would not need to go back to China at intervals, thereby interrupting their businesses here; they would still retire to China; and in the meantime they could send their children back for a Chinese education - as many of the small number of Chinese families already in New Zealand were doing. But of course under the immigration laws, they could not bring their families here. They were an unwanted minority under an immigration system which was enforcing sojournism by compulsion.
Then at last, positive change occurred in New Zealand’s attitude to Chinese, principally because of the international scene. In the late 1930s, Japan became regarded as a common enemy to both China and New Zealand, and the plight of the Cantonese people at war was frequently portrayed by the Canton Villages Mission of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. In 1936 New Zealand’s officialdom could still write: ‘The presence in a population of considerable groups of individuals of alien races who cannot be readily assimilated into that population… is not attended with advantage.’(31) This notwithstanding, inter-racial relationships between Chinese and Europeans had improved to the extent that in 1937, Chin Bing Foon of Dunedin was actually invited by a senior immigration officer to apply for the entry of his family.(32) Soon after, New Zealand made a landmark decision which, from 1939 until the departure port of Hong Kong was captured in 1941, permitted temporary entry to 249 Chinese wives and 244 young children of Chinese residents as war refugees.(33) My mother, brother and I came with them. This first big group of Chinese women and children were allowed to stay after World War 2 and the children became an indispensable factor in the ensuing settlement of Chinese here.
When New Zealand entered World War 2, many of the Chinese were nearing or in their 40s and not fluent enough in English to participate in the armed forces. The realistic task the New Zealand government set for them was to produce more vegetables for the rapid expansion of its troop numbers. The government designated market gardening as an essential industry and encouraged the formation of the Dominion Federation of New Zealand Chinese Commercial Growers in 1941 to increase vegetable production. Besides this, the Chinese in New Zealand earned a good reputation in World War 2 in a number of other ways.(34) As to soldiering, in both World Wars the number of full-blood New Zealand-Chinese of the right age to enlist for military service was small; in the 1916 census there were only 32 males and 8 females between 20 and 25 years and in the 1936 census, there were only 119 males and 38 females aged between 16 and 25 years. Still, at least 39 joined up in World War 2, of whom eight served overseas.(35) In China, an ex-migrant to Oamaru, Otago, named Lowe Lai-san, became a Kuomintang major general of distinction.
3. (1951-85). The era of settlement.
Generally, from 1951, an improving attitude towards the Chinese here led to the apparent disappearance of assumed racial superiorities of the past on both sides. This was therefore a happier era conducive to settlement in which the children, both Chinese and European, played the key role. The expectation of the general society was that the Chinese minority should settle, acculturate and eventually assimilate into the dominant New Zealand culture. Carried to a conclusion, this meant that the Chinese would be socially absorbed (assimilated); in practice this would have involved the learning and adoption of the dominant culture coupled with the giving up of their own, and intermarriage. Generally the youngest Chinese children were the ones most willing and able to do this, and their young European friends were most accepting of them.
As mentioned, the refugee wives and children were allowed to stay after the war as permanent residents (1947) and New Zealand further loosened its anti-Chinese regulations on immigration to allow the reunification of more families here. Three very important events happened in 1951. The census that year recorded a ratio of 40 married Chinese women to every 100 married Chinese men in New Zealand, but in that year also the new communist government in China slammed its gates on emigration, and generally kept them shut till 1976. This was the first very important event, a tragic development which meant that many Chinese men failed to get their families out of China and were destined to die as ‘bachelor husbands’ in New Zealand or Hong Kong - because very few dared to go back into China till the 1980s. However, as it turned out, New Zealand had already gained a sufficient number of reunified Chinese families with young children to create a forward movement of settlement within their ethnic minority. And, dare one say it, it was probably an advantage for these families to settle without having to assist continual inflows of new immigrant kinsfolk who would probably have slowed down that process.
For the reunified families especially, the second very important event in 1951 was that the New Zealand government granted naturalisation to Chinese again, a privilege, it will be remembered, which had been stopped in 1908. The writer recalls the excitement with which his father and uncles greeted the announcement, to them another major symbol of the fairer treatment of our ethnic minority. They noted that the liberalisation of the immigration laws for Chinese to that year had been nearly all carried out by Labour ministries and the reinstatement of naturalisation was actioned by a National Government, signifying that both Labour and National were as one in treating the Chinese more justly.
The event was all the more significant because the older New Zealand-Chinese saw that they and their families could not go back to China after the communists there began persecuting the landlord class - to which many of them belonged - as part of a land reform campaign begun in 1951. That was the third very important event. The torments inflicted on landlords caused a deep revulsion among our parents towards communist China. At the same time, very few retained faith in the Kuomintang remnant in Formosa after its failures, nor believed its vow to reconquer and reinvigorate China. For these reasons, the reinstatement of naturalisation represented in many Chinese eyes the promising start of a new era which logically pointed to settlement in New Zealand - and required that reinstatement as a necessary prerequisite.
Deep down, many others (perhaps most) of the writer’s parents’ generation still had doubts whether the Chinese could really put down roots in New Zealand. They had long memories of prejudice, and these doubts even led some of them to buy property in Hong Kong - in case New Zealand again turned its back on the Chinese. In the 1950s and even in the 1960s, New Zealand still had little real knowledge of the Chinese and some other minorities, whilst its old ethnic intolerances retained much force.(36) The older Chinese knew this and their reservations were not helped by communist China’s participation in the Korean War (1950-53) followed by persistent, strong New Zealand anti-communism particularly espoused by the Returned Services Association.(37) Both these events generated suspicion in greater or lesser degree towards all Chinese. The New Zealand-Chinese could not help but feel the suspicion, despite the reassurances of our European friends.(38) Fortunately the Kuomintang Chinese consulate was still recognised until 1972, and the New Zealand-Chinese could take some shelter under its umbrella. They could point to it and say that not all Chinese were communists and neither were they. The quid pro quo was that the Chinese in New Zealand withheld public criticism of the Kuomintang party, observed Double Ten (October 10) Day and flew the Kuomintang national flag on that occasion. By the time the Kuomintang consulate was replaced by the Chinese communist embassy, the feelings towards the Chinese in New Zealand were visibly getting better. More Chinese were mixing to a greater extent in the general society, and the embassy helped by keeping a fairly non-controversial profile and maintaining a moderate, one-nationality stance towards the local Chinese.
One can summarise the effect of China on the New Zealand-Chinese as follows: In the early years of this era when most of us were still perceived as outsiders, China’s international reputation considerably affected the Chinese here for good or bad - as our forebears had experienced. As settlement progressed, the collective image of the Chinese in this country became more and more accepted in the public mind as New Zealanders. In parallel, China’s influence upon that image has much receded - though negative media reports can still be found which have some impact upon us. Looking back, the writer feels he has only experienced two periods when China’s international reputation had been really well regarded in New Zealand - during World War 2 and just after, and in the years 1972-89 (before the Tiananmen Square incident) when America was well-disposed towards China.
The parents’ doubts on these things did not apply to their young children. The refugee and postwar Chinese children were allowed free education as were the New Zealand-born Chinese youngsters of the time, and in the schools they influenced and were influenced favourably. Through their childhood friendships with their European peers and respect for their teachers during their most impressionable and optimistic years, they were convinced that New Zealanders were basically fair and tolerant, and that being so, they could settle in New Zealand. They knew of the European expectation of their assimilation and the inevitable loss of Chineseness (as their parents warned), but they were not afraid of that. Indeed, many were eager for change and were especially attracted - in those early years of their lives - by the penchant for individuality and transformation inherent in New Zealand’s European culture. They saw the road of assimilation open to them, with its challenge and the more promising future it offered in comparison with rural based Cantonese or communist or Kuomintang alternative ways of life. Many travelled that road, intent upon achieving assimilation.
Yet in the end most retained some Chineseness. The majority of the young Chinese could not wholly assimilate since they could not give up their strong ties and obligations to their parents (which in turn led to the retention of other customs), marry into the European community (because like tends to marry like), abandon all their preferences like that for Chinese food, and entirely overcome deep-rooted cultural traits like indirectness. Also acting against assimilation was the usually unspoken but real barrier of skin colour, although the writer personally felt a greater barrier by being Chinese. The incompleteness of their assimilation was in due course justified by the concept of multiculturism, which had its beginnings in New Zealand in the 1960s (introduced, perhaps, by the Hunn [1960] and Booth-Hunn [1962] Reports)(39) and has been gradually accepted. Multiculturism supports the social integration of a people rather than assimilation because integration is a two-way process of cultural transfer, respect and understanding; multiculturism therefore leaves an ethnic minority with various features of its indigenous culture. In contrast, assimilation is a one-way process of social absorption which is now somewhat out of favour with sociologists and replaced in desirability by integration.
However, the New Zealand-Chinese experience is that the youngest children particularly seek acceptance, acculturation and assimilation into the dominant culture; as adults with a greater or lesser degree of remaining Chineseness they are comfortable, tolerated and integrated within the environment of multiculturism; but since a dominant culture prevails, their offspring continue the advance of assimilation within their families. This progression of assimilation is in keeping with the American experience of Asian and other migrants.(40)
The young New Zealand-Chinese realised too, that their better futures required education and whether with parental consent or not, they sought university education. In one remarkable bound, 92 of them, including about one third of the refugee children, graduated from university between 1945 and 1961.(41) With that, they gave further proof of the capacity of the Chinese to do well in New Zealand. They widened the Chinese base of occupations, improved their social status, and provided models for the young Chinese in New Zealand to follow.
As a result, a high proportion of the young New Zealand-Chinese of rural Cantonese descent go to university today at two to three times the rate for the total population.(42) The chief direction of these young Chinese seems to be towards the professions rather than commerce. Second generation Chinese professional families have emerged, and are New Zealand-born. They are climbing higher in their professions, progressing, say, from the general practitioner father to the specialist son. Of course, settlement is not a uniform process within a community; it is a range of progress, with a vanguard of families and a tail. The ‘tail’ referred to here is formed by the Cantonese propensity for chain migration, whereby those still with strong family ties in China on either spouses’s side bring their relatives if possible to New Zealand. These arrivals become included among the least assimilated Cantonese Chinese. They principally work in labouring tasks in small Chinese supermarkets, restaurants, takeaways and the like which have since succeeded market gardens, fruitshops and laundries; but their children often follow the example of the ‘vanguard’ and become graduates.
In the main, the long-established Chinese families in New Zealand can be said to have substantially undergone assimilation and many have tertiary education. They are entering most aspects of New Zealand life as confident New Zealanders of Chinese ancestry. The concept of multiculturism now pervading New Zealand enables them to explore their remaining Chineseness, but they do that from a New Zealand base. An observer calls them a ‘"model minority", unobtrusive, law-abiding, and undemanding - a largely middle-class, well-educated, and low profile group untroubled by any concerns of ethnicity.’(43) In 1984, Bateman’s New Zealand Encyclopedia reported that ‘The Chinese minority in New Zealand today is highly respected and is regarded as one of the most successfully integrated groups in the country.’
New Zealand has become their home and country. They have changed from being New Zealand-Chinese to Chinese-New Zealanders, a new ethnic entity. This full acceptance is the greatest achievement of the writer’s generation and his childrens’, earned by mixing with and facing and sharing the obligations of the wider society. The writer has witnessed in Dunedin, Otago, how local Chinese young folk have made life-long friendships with European-New Zealanders, and then - especially as doctors, lawyers, accountants and other graduates - have progressively uplifted the image of their community. The racial climate in New Zealand generally has advanced for the good since the 1950s. In truth, the readiness of their European and Maori friends to accept the Chinese and apologise for past prejudices makes them proud to be part of such an equitable nation as New Zealand is today. For their part, a greater knowledge of their history in New Zealand has given them a better understanding of why things developed as they did.
For example, if they had been early New Zealand-Europeans instead of Chinese, how would they have regarded the latter’s worth to the young years of the nation - as aliens, sojourners and competitors with very little social bonding to the dominant British? It was not then realised that such a different race as the Chinese could successfully settle and contribute like any other race in New Zealand. Nor was it generally known that because their way of life was so different, their social adaptation best began with their young children, particularly those nine years and under who could go through most of New Zealand’s school system. It was, and still is, in the schools that different peoples best mix together and get used to each other; but even now, there is ignorance of the longish time it takes for the acceptance of different communities to mature on both sides - in the writer’s experience, as much as a generation (30 years) in time, plus additional time for individuals each to add to that acceptance by making their mark and gaining seniority in society.
It cannot be denied, though, that the New Zealand-Chinese settlement proceeded with a lot of luck. It was lucky that China and Formosa were spurned so the young Chinese of the writer’s generation felt no obligation to go and help in those unhappy lands. Thus they could concentrate on settlement here and there was no influx of new Chinese immigrants to distract them, certainly no big influx like that of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Being a small minority which was scattered all over New Zealand, they did not evoke resentful visions of competition to the dominant society, especially because New Zealand had very prosperous times in the 1950s and 1960s with plenty of work. So there was no need to fight for jobs, and being increasingly New Zealand-born, the young Chinese had no problems either with legalised discrimination - which seemed to them to be steadily eliminated from the laws and regulations in any case.
In summary, the third era was a continuum of the Cantonese goldseekers of last century, the links going back to them forged by chain migration from China. These Cantonese descendants comprise what may be regarded as the traditional or long-standing or ‘Kiwi’ Chinese community in New Zealand, which by immigration, natural increase and much freer intermarriage, numbered in 1986 about 13,000 full-blood and 4,000 Chinese-European and Chinese-Maori mixed-blood persons; or 0.5% of the total population.(44) Their full-blood members were a close-knit ethnic group in that they knew much about each other, and their families were often linked by kinship or marriage ties. But other Chinese were already coming to New Zealand and, in 1986, there were over 9,000 other full and mixed-blood Chinese here, particularly consisting of Indo-Chinese refugees and Pacific Island Polynesian-Chinese who had chiefly arrived in the 1970s.
4. (1986- ). The era of newcomers.
From 1986, considerable new immigration of Chinese from yet other origins pushed up the total number of Chinese in only ten years to over 81,000, and ushered in a new fourth era. In this short time a surge of Asian immigration has altered forever the composition of New Zealand’s population. In the long term, this surge will probably push the country more towards Asianisation. As to the immigrants themselves, the biggest ethnic group has comprised Chinese unrelated to the ‘Kiwi’ Chinese. Their integration with the wider society is proceeding as well as can be expected, but it is already clear that New Zealand has gained a larger, permanent, quality Chinese minority with more recent links to Asia.
By 1986 it was increasingly evident that New Zealand was turning to Asia for much of its livelihood. When the White New Zealand policy was being formulated, New Zealand had very little trade with China and little with the rest of Asia. But New Zealand now has to accept a fundamental truth, that free commerce between nations grows only in an atmosphere of trust, mutual respect and equality. A proof of equality lies in immigration policy, and as former Deputy Prime Minister Don McKinnon once expressed it; ‘We will find these markets much harder to penetrate, and some may close if we are seen to be vigorously marketing into them, but at the same time at home are seen to be saying "We don’t want your investment or your people here".’(45)
The fact that New Zealand was becoming more aware of its proximity to Asia was only one significant reason for changes in its immigration policy. In the 1970s there was much discussion about immigrants and immigration, notably criticism of British and Pacific peoples in the early years of this decade and the relatively smooth entry of 7546 Indo-Chinese refugees (about 80% of whom were ethnic Chinese)(46) between 1975-87. Consequently, there was dawning support for drawing on wider sources of origin for immigrants, and the very beginnings of that support effected small changes in racial entry rules from 1965-74. A number of Chinese from various homelands were permitted residence in this period. Among them were Peter Chen (physical education lecturer) and his four talented daughters who include Mae Chen (lawyer); Ming Cher (writer); Tak Hung (Zenith Technology Ltd); Norman Lau (administrator in forestry); Judge Margaret Lee; Professors S.H. Ng and Jilnaught Wong; A.C. Tan (telecommunications engineer) whose three offspring David, Audrey and Michael have all been notable academically; and Steven Wong (Fresher Foods Ltd). Jack Yan, who has a Fashion on Internet business, probably came in this period but Professor K.M. Goh and the late Professor Frank Liu came a little earlier.
The Labour Party had prominent Yugoslav supporters who reinforced the party’s thinking on broadening the immigration sources.(47) The Hon. Kerry Burke, Minister of Immigration in the new, reforming Labour Government of 1984-90, personified the new thoughts on trade expansion and wider immigration origins. He said to the writer that he was determined to aim for ‘a more simple and just immigration system’ which would choose solely on the quality of the applicant rather than give preference to places of origin. He said he was not influenced by the economic state of New Zealand, nor by the net outflow of migrants then occurring, nor by the contemporary Hong Kong exodus - but he was impressed by the good character of the Yugoslav and Kiwi Chinese peoples. Burke knew that the communist regimes in Yugoslavia and China were still - or had been - largely denying emigration, but he thought the Fijian Indians would respond to a relaxation of New Zealand’s immigration rules - as indeed happened when the military coup occurred in Fiji in 1987.
Burke drew up the new immigration policy passed by his government in 1986.(48) He was aware his policy would change the New Zealand population ‘more than any time since Captain Cook’, a change he personally welcomed. He was assisted by a government subcommittee of four and the Assistant Secretary of Labour (Immigration) - initially Ron Gates and then particularly Gordon Shroff, with their own advisors.(49) The first fruits of this new policy were several hundred Fijian Indian students. Burke left New Zealand from 1991-98, but commented to the writer that some of the measures of the mid-1990s were ‘disguised racism’. In relation to the English language test of that time, he said that the United States, ‘the most successful immigrant nation in the world, merely requires literacy in the applicant’s own language.’
From 1986 the long-established Occupational Categories were permitted to recruit immigrants from among all races. More boldly, the existing Entrepeneur and Business Immigration Policy (which was a stagnant programme) was changed from the approval of proposals to the approval of people of all races who wished to become self-employed business people or investors in New Zealand, and had starting capital plus some NZ$150,000 for personal establishment costs. The new scheme became known as the Business Immigration Policy or BIP, and had the explicit intention of attracting self-employed business migrants with money who, it was thought, would positively stimulate their chosen fields of endeavour whatever these might be in New Zealand. This was a challenging assumption, but it has American proof that given legal protection as for all citizens, ethnic groups who take traditions of self-employment overseas and have capital ‘are much more likely to start in and succeed at business upon arrival.’(50) However, the truly fundamental change in the revised policy and regulations was the full opening up of entry to races from non-traditional sources. In this, New Zealand had at last followed similar measures in the United States (1965), Canada (1967) and Australia (1973). Thus the second of the twin pillars of the White New Zealand policy (racial preference in entry and naturalisation) was apparently dismantled. Simultaneously, the new policy of 1986 also reviewed the family reunification, refugee and humanitarian categories of immigration but left these more or less unchanged.
Permanent and Long-term Migration (for a year or more), June 1984-85 to 1999-2000 (including New Zealanders).
Year Arrivals Departures
Source: Immigration Fact Pack, July 2000.
A net outflow was interrupted by increased (notably Asian) immigration until the latter in turn was interrupted by new immigration rules.
The BIP, the broad terms of which could permit large inflows, generally took a little time to catch on (Table 1). But to European eyes, New Zealand as a migrant destination was ranked 17th out of 22 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.(51) To Asian eyes, however, New Zealand was more attractive, being in a sense on the periphery of Asia and a safe, green haven which offered good access to sound educational facilities for children.(52) Moreover, the BIP was less stringent than the entry requirements for North America and Australia.(53) The then existing exodus from Hong Kong meant that some Hong Kong Chinese migrants could regard New Zealand as another haven.(54) By 1988, over 30 immigration consultancies in Hong Kong were touting New Zealand.(55) The Hong Kong Chinese interest in migrating to New Zealand spread to Taiwanese and Malaysians. Other Asians were also attracted at this stage, but in smaller numbers (Table 2).
No. of Asians approved in all categories for residence in New Zealand: top 13 Asian origins by nationality compared with Gt. Britain and South Africa, 1986-95.
1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Total
Cambodia 281 10 482 749 90 266 96 41 85 178 2278
China 156 233 654 567 1042 1765 2451 1778 4291 5178 18115
Hong Kong 162 352 993 1975 3249 6706 3131 2926 2762 3125 25381
India 190 323 673 486 707 604 870 1339 2156 3323 10671
Japan 53 55 264 154 200 272 306 294 296 348 2242
Malaysia 375 713 1826 1675 2124 1502 2089 1209 817 646 12976
Phillipines 440 616 620 633 894 938 585 504 636 1167 7033
Singapore 143 160 257 165 175 167 183 172 235 258 1915
South Korea 16 29 47 94 194 696 1915 2687 4166 3463 13309
Sri Lanka 84 185 277 210 278 311 353 638 1011 1347 4694
Taiwan 17 43 993 2588 2118 1111 2307 2509 4995 12397 29078
Thailand 22 27 48 66 159 175 177 125 176 207 1182
Vietnam 136 145 174 158 337 374 99 255 464 203 2345
Gt Britain 4373 4539 5056 3314 3868 3789 3216 4597 5968 6422 45142
South Africa 266 342 418 240 314 265 377 2773 3943 1883 10821
Source: Figures by courtesy of Hon. R.F.H. Maxwell, Minister of Immigration, 30 May 1996.
Accordingly, the aggregate number of Chinese applicants from all places of origin became an increasing percentage of the total annual inflow of migrants into New Zealand, although British immigrants, the previously top preferred group, continued to be among the most numerous newcomers. There was also an increasing exodus to New Zealand by South Africans, many of British descent. Among Asian immigrants, the Chinese were the largest percentage. This trend continued despite the tightening of the BIP scheme in 1991, because a new, fairly achievable points system was introduced in the same year as the ‘General Category’ of immigration.(56) Subsequently in the June 1993-94, 1994-95 and 1995-96 years, the total number of people approved for residency reached 33,237, 49,619 and a record 55,142 respectively. In these totals, the North, South and South East Asians combined reached 51%, 57% and 61% respectively, and those from North Asia - China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - reached 11,933 (36%), 20,807 (42%) and 24,008 (43%) respectively.(57) These were the peak numbers before a general downturn followed.
In 1991, a review panel of three Europeans under the newly elected National Government (1990-99) had introduced more controls and needs into the BIP, and renamed it the Business Investment Category or BIC. They designed the new General Category or GC to increase the ingress of skills and to balance the prospective inflow of the businessmen and investors of the BIC. The GC replaced the Occupational Categories, and was to give encouragement to managerial and professional applicants who had previously been largely excluded, besides keeping openings for trade skills. In the General Category, a job to come to was an advantage but not essential. Also, a good knowledge of English was thought desirable but the reviewers did not give this factor much weight. The proficiency in English required was the comprehension level of a 12 year-old in the principal applicant only for the GC and in one person in the family over 17 years of age in the BIC.
The maximum points which could be awarded in the GC were as follows: qualifications, 15; work experience, 10; a younger age, 10; an offer of skilled employment, 3; a community sponsor, 3; a family sponsor, 2; and settlement funds of $100,000, 2. The autopass mark of the scheme rose from 20 in 1991 to 31 by July 1995. A further three points could be awarded with investment capital (1 point per $100,000 up to $300,000, to be invested in New Zealand for at least two years). Those applicants going for these 3 points were placed in the General Investment sub-category, which kept separate figures and netted from North Asian applicants $164,900,000 (June 1993-94), $209,800,000 (1994-95) and $304,500,000 (1995-96). These sums were additional to the Business Categories which from North Asia in June 1994-95 (under the BIC) took in $326 million, and in 1995-96 (nearly all under the BIC) $395 million.(58)
It was thought that by applying flexibility to the number of points allotted or required, it would be easier to control the number and mix of migrants who qualified under the GC, according to official targets. Initially the target was set at 25,000 approvals for residence per year in relation to all the immigration categories, with the General Category to act as a residual category to make up the target. Since the General Category favoured younger migrants with education over money, it especially gave a good chance for young mainland Chinese graduates to come. Their savings in yuan meant little because its exchange rate much favoured the New Zealand dollar. But when foreign qualifications were considered, the General Category discounted the effect on the immigrant of any prospective restrictions of New Zealand’s trade associations and professional bodies in the acceptance of these qualifications. The few community sponsors appointed for applicants became increasingly sought after as the autopass points increased, and they emulated the immigration consultants in charging fees.
The General Category having replaced the old BIP as the chief Chinese portal of entry, educated younger persons now had an advantage over money and mature business acumen. In 1995 New Zealand boasted of ‘achieving (in the previous four years) the highest percentage of skilled immigrants of any country in the world.’(59) But the Chinese already seemed to know that North America and Australia offered greater work and business opportunities than New Zealand, which explains why this country did not attract their very rich migrants. In fact, the sums brought here under the BIP were said to average up to $500,000 or $600,000,(60) and the General Category’s average migrant was likely to have brought in less. Still, many Chinese immigrants, particularly in the BIP wave, were thought to have each brought in several million New Zealand dollars and are rich by New Zealand standards.(61) More seriously, the news soon spread back to the previous homelands that New Zealand had limited employment, mature internal markets, distant external markets, producer board monopolies which hinder small entrepreneurship, a more conservative business culture on the whole, and manifold difficulties in the acceptance of non-British or non-British linked qualifications. The writer recalls some of these points being expressed from about 1990, and all of them were heard by 1996. James Koh (who expanded Contec Data Systems in Christchurch) discussed them the following year.(62) Such concerns may have caused hesitation about coming even after acceptance for entry, thus accounting for some of the discrepancy between the ‘approved for residency’ figures and the number of actual migrant arrivals. Others may have been delayed for other reasons, but a delay in coming was allowed.
In the writer’s opinion, another adverse factor acting against the employment (and hence eventual settlement) of a number of new Chinese migrants is their attitude. They have come with an excessive wish for an easy ‘life style’ while they educate their children. Perhaps they had been influenced by a recruiting mention of a ‘great life style’. Be that as it may, the Hon. Aussie Malcolm (a former Minister of Immigration and present-day immigration consultant) thought they have come for ‘the sizzle and not the steak’ - particularly, he said some migrants in the General Category.(63) Given significant disadvantage or hardship, they may retreat (and return to where they had come from, or cross the Tasman where the grass seems greener, or go to North America) rather than face the test. They are not like traditional immigrants who are determined to acquire wealth and utilize talents to prove themselves and regain control over family destinies.(64)
Nevertheless, New Zealand may follow to a greater or lesser degree the common American experience in the turning of many fine immigrants - even those with technical or scientific skills - towards self-employment and entrepreneurship. In running their businesses they show common attitudes and strategies - hard work and singleminded devotion to building their business, comfort with risk taking, strong ethnic community links and values, fresh perspectives on business opportunities, tight deployment of resources, concentration on market niches and close ties to their customers (who frequently are members of their own community).(65) These are working features which can earn success in any endeavour. Usually the immigrants start small, use family labour, live frugally, focus on quality and do only what they can do well. As their skills and networks expand, so do their businesses. Some such American firms have successfully utilized community ties across the oceans, tapping into connections in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere to gain wider markets and venture capital. America itself has realised that if immigrant entrepreneurs are provided with greater access to capital, employment and training, the country could help them to channel ‘more of their extraordinary energy into productive enterprise.’(66)
So far, it appears that the Chinese newcomers’ investments in New Zealand have been mainly passive - ‘one has no second chance with hard-earned capital and, when unsure, it is best to play for safety.’(67) Early successful big business enterprises of Chinese migrants included Contec Data Systems and the Lakeland Hotel in Queenstown. However, as is customary for new immigrants everywhere, most of their businesses are in the small size range, many to serve the migrants themselves. In 1996 in Auckland, the latter included language schools, property agencies, stores, supermarkets, butchers and other food shops, many restaurants, furniture shops, travel and immigration agencies. Those newcomers who catered for the general public included acupuncturists, herbalists, ‘Chinese medicine’ doctors, and importers of pottery, rugs and computers. Many bought housing and commercial buildings for rental, often to other newcomers or Asian students. Since 1996, growing occupations are homestays for students and still more restaurants and noodle bars. Laundromats, dairies, cheap item ‘two dollar’ type shops, and photography and video hire shops have also appeared.
Medium and large sized businesses of Chinese migrants are still few and concentrated in Auckland. But they may be the beginning. The former size include the Lim family’s ceramics factory; computer design firms and wholesalers like Information Technology and Security Services, Times Technology and I Way Computers in Auckland and Golden Leaf in Dunedin; Chinese food factories like Sam’s Chicken; property developers like L and Y Holdings and the Suncern Group; and Jean’s Natural Herbs Ltd. Big projects are a mere handful. The Chinese scheme for Britomart has failed(68) but successful ventures are the Auckland Institute of Studies (a private tertiary institution with some 150 staff and 1300 students); a high quality golf course; World Television (WTV), a distribution network for Asian programmes; Ernslaw One Ltd (with forestry, salmon farming, scientific instruments and land development interests); and Tsung-Hui Pan’s Sherwood Manor Hotel and Waterfall Park in Queenstown. Not included are branches of Chinese firms with head offices outside New Zealand.
Last year (2000) the chief executive officer of the giant international courier Exel in Singapore told the writer of increased business from all types of Chinese enterprises in New Zealand, although ‘mainly short term’ as yet. Overall, an interval of around 15 to 20 years appears to be needed before most Chinese (and European-New Zealander) residents have acquired enough capital, expertise and social networks to establish noteworthy ventures which could grow. This length of time applied to Choie Sew Hoy, Chew Chong, Hugh Sew Hoy (the chief New Zealand-Chinese businessman of the writer’s parents’ generation, who arrived in 1938 and established clothing factories from 1959), Tak Hung and Steven Wong.
While some newcomers have become established in business, many others have not yet. M. Ip surveyed the employment profile of Chinese newcomers over the previous 10 years from 1996 and found that only 12% were self-employed. Another 20% were fulltime wage and salary earners, 8% were unemployed and seeking work, and more than 58%, including university graduates, were not part of the labour force.(69) However, many students may have been in the last group, and student numbers may have also partly accounted for the relatively low unemployment rate found in this survey. In figures which include Kiwi Chinese, the 1996 census recorded 21,003 full-time and 6,672 part-time Chinese workers, 4,302 were classed as unemployed, and 29,208 were not in the labour force. Out of 7,410 Chinese known to be on unemployment, domestic purposes, sickness and invalids benefits, 5,733 were on the unemployment benefit. Another 4,476 were on the student allowance. Probably all these figures are incomplete because over 20,000 Chinese - like one million others - did not answer the employment and income questions. Since then, the granting of social welfare and student allowances to permanent residency newcomers has been tightened up, imposing a two-year wait from the date of entry into New Zealand in all but the emergency benefit and tertiary students’ loans. Using commissioned data files of the 1996 census, Lidgard et al found that 24% of Taiwanese males and 22% of Taiwanese females were unemployed and actively seeking work, and the respective percentages for Koreans and Hong Kong Chinese were 21% and 23%, and 18% and 15%.(70) Ho et al additionally found that about 33% of newcomers from mainland China were unemployed and actively seeking work.(71)
These figures indicate a serious unemployment problem among Chinese newcomers; a worrying situation since employment is one of the anchors securing newcomers to a new land. This is especially so for mobile, young, quality migrants. Some reasons are already mentioned but another key factor is the English language, the poor command of which hinders the formation of new social networks and denies the full utilisation of high skills. In their search for work, some newcomers also encounter racial discrimination, and no doubt this exists, although the writer himself has seen reasoned refusals and criticism of shortcomings misinterpreted as racism by individuals at the receiving end. This year (2001), the Auckland Chamber of Commerce has participated in a drive to diminish negative perceptions holding back the hiring of Asian newcomers. In the face of the disadvantages, many newcomers turn to the food industry, which serves universal tastes; the rental industry, where the owner retains simple but full control; and enterprises which serve other newcomers.
Because of the unemployment problems of the Chinese and other Asian newcomers, do they use more social services than the average New Zealand citizen? There is a paucity of relevant New Zealand statistics but it seems likely that social patterns are broadly similar between the immigrants of America and this country. The American experience is that immigrants ‘always’ earn less than native born Americans when they arrive. Yet even if they are poorly skilled (as most of their immigrants are) they substantially catch up financially in their lifetimes, not to mention in the lifetimes of their children and grandchildren. Because immigrants initially earn less, the American-born citizens at first have to pay more taxes than they, and the immigrants receive a ‘little bit more’ in social services. Generally the latter services are not in healthcare or programmes for the aged (because of age selection in the immigration process) but in schooling. However, when the taxes are added up over the lifetimes of immigrants and their children, they actually pay more in taxes in the United States than they receive in benefits. This payment would be even higher should the United States particularly concentrates on selecting higher skilled young immigrants.(72)
For all their unemployment, one might conclude that a number of Chinese newcomers show little tendency to take on different and especially menial work in New Zealand when their plans are thwarted and their qualifications go unrewarded. Indeed, this tendency may be another reason for Ip’s large ‘not part of the labour force’ section of her survey. Perhaps this is partly because some had sold assets like property and shares before leaving and the additional capital buffers them from a compelling need to earn some money - for a time anyway (frequently for the three years needed to become naturalised, after which they leave New Zealand). It is said, however, that some mainland Chinese take on whatever work they may find, since they are generally the poorest recent Chinese subgrouping to come to New Zealand, perhaps little better off than the Indo-Chinese refugees when they first arrived.
Yet others, when faced with unemployment, adopted either one of two strategies. Many graduates have gone to a tertiary institution for more study and a New Zealand degree, which would bypass the qualification blockage. This strategy also enabled the impecunious individual to obtain a student allowance or loan, and if friends flatted together, their combined allowances enabled them to live adequately - until the allowances were disallowed in 1999 for two years after entry in New Zealand. Mainland Chinese were the chief users of this fairly common route and some figures indicate that a significant but not overly excessive number of Chinese university students with permanent residency did seek the student allowance.(73) For this, the mainland Chinese university students especially were disparaged. The other strategy was for the chief rice-winner of the family to return to the previous homeland to work among pre-existing networks and familiarities. This route was often used by Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese who were nicknamed ‘astronauts’.
The first cases of ‘astronauts’ appeared very early, whereby heads of migrant families returned to the previous homeland and commuted to and from New Zealand where the rest of the family resides. To be sure, some astronauts were returning to prepare their businesses for sale or to await a pension to mature, but they were soon joined by others who were commuting out of necessity because they could not get employment in New Zealand. Though thought to be a fairly common phenomenon, no figures exist as to its prevalence. In fact, Professor R. Bedford has pointed out that there was no evidence to suggest that ‘what was known as astronaut families had happened on anywhere near a significant scale’.(74) To the writer’s knowledge these families show great commitment to each other and to New Zealand in tolerating such a major family separation. The writer’s acquaintance with several astronauts convinces him that most, if not all of them would have much preferred to have had relevant work in New Zealand. They bring money back to New Zealand for family living expenses.
Other writers have identified the astronaut phenomenon as part of a transnational readiness to seek employment across frontiers, a growing world tendency in modern times particularly for quality migrants.(75) In 1998, for instance, it was reported that 29,920 of 58,738 British immigrants coming to New Zealand in the past decade had left (76) and surely some of them had departed because of the transnational proclivity. One might wonder, however, whether the terms ‘transnational workers’ and ‘astronauts’ are merely variants of the old ‘sojourners’. At all events, Chinese sojourners, transnational workers and astronauts have been criticised in New Zealand as lacking in loyalty to, and involvement in this country, despite similar traits shown by European sojourners among the goldseekers era and throughout colonial life. Or indeed, by modern European-New Zealanders who go overseas for OE (Overseas Experience) to Britain, Australia, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and elsewhere to work and perhaps to return. The fact that their Chinese counterparts were - and still are - singled out for disapprobation is a reminder of the long apprenticeship newcomers and aliens usually have to serve when they wish to join new societies.
An inevitable consequence of the new immigration has been the creation in New Zealand of two Chinese resident populations. They are the recent immigrants and the long-established Chinese, unrelated to each other except by race, the latter astonished and somewhat perturbed to find themselves so outnumbered by the new Chinese arrivals. Looking at the incoming stream - and the huge concomitant ingress of Asian tourists and students actively sought by New Zealand institutions - the Kiwi Chinese marvel at the contrast of today’s opportunities with immigration policies of earlier times. The long-established Chinese, including mixed-bloods, were estimated from the 1996 census to now form about a quarter of the Chinese total.(77) Fortunately, both the recent and long-established Chinese appear to have largely comparable ranges of westernisation, so neither could look down on the other in this aspect. A few leaders on both sides are making some positive moves to get closer to one another.(78) Unfortunately, no one of regional (much less national) stature has yet emerged from any Chinese grouping to unite them all and speak with one voice - although the indefatigable Mrs Pansy Wong, originally from Hong Kong, and currently New Zealand’s sole Chinese parliamentarian (1996- ), is very praiseworthy in her endeavour to do so.
The new Chinese immigrants show several salient differences to Kiwi Chinese. Generally they have an urban background and are indeed quality migrants - high achievers with money or education, and skills to match - whereas the Kiwi Chinese had a Cantonese rural base before acquiring a Western education. Usually the new arrivals come as nuclear families from a wide diversity of origins - from Shenxi to Singapore - and to date they have developed few features of chain migration.(79) Hence they are more prone to loneliness, to combat which they have formed a greater variety of societies and associations than the old rural Cantonese migrants ever did. Naturally, the Chinese newcomers also tend to mix together according to their country or place of origin, thus forming subgroupings usually referred to as ‘the Taiwanese’, ‘the mainland Chinese’ and so on, each with their societies. They are analogous to the old subgroupings of the Kiwi Chinese based on Cantonese counties of origin, from which were formed benevolent societies called the Poon Fah, Naam Shun, Tung Jung, Seyip and Kwongchu Associations.
Since the newcomers have no previous links in this country, they are less interested in the Chinese past here, and have no stake in preserving the traditions and relics of that past. For all that, both newcomers and the long-standing Chinese families share a basic Chineseness, although most of the former (with the exception of Hong Kong immigrants) speak Mandarin Chinese, whereas the latter chiefly speak Cantonese. As a consequence, their common language usually is English.
Settling in.
Some observers think many New Zealanders still regard this country as a South Pacific nation, yet the increase in Asian immigration was an unmistakeable statement to Asia of the wish of many New Zealand leaders - at that juncture - to further develop ties with that continent. Unfortunately, the surge in immigration stirred up a brief but intense anti-Asian reaction such that the National Government (1990-99) was put on the defensive and amended its emphasis on Asia to a less dynamic perception of New Zealand as an Asia-Pacific nation. The present Labour Government (elected in 1999) appears to have followed suit,(80) although Prime Minister Helen Clark has recently made a tour of Asian capitals.
The Asian influx, including the Chinese component of it, settled in Auckland especially and Christchurch, the two cities with the main international airports. In Auckland, a city of over one million persons, Asians became about 10% (now said to have increased to around 12%) of the population, over 40% of the Asians being Chinese.(81) This kind of concentration has counterparts elsewhere, as in Vancouver and Los Angeles. On the one hand, the Asian immigrants added to strains in Auckland’s city infrastructure - in schools, housing, transport and water.(82) On the other hand, they appeared different from the humble Cantonese arrivals of old and many New Zealanders were at first either perplexed by or resented these non-European foreigners, both for their confidence and their wealth. In the context of Auckland’s economic problems, the resentment was illustrated in the term ‘Chowick’ for Howick, an upmarket suburb in Auckland favoured by the newcomers where the houses were around NZ$600,000 each.(83) The ill-feeling was compounded by the concentrated, rapid and apparently unrestrained increase in Chinese and other Asian numbers, and by the behaviour in some immigrants perceived by New Zealanders to be irritating - loud speech, the jumping of queues, a general lack of courtesy towards other shoppers, hard bargaining, having expensive cars and uncertain driving styles, and an alleged over-readiness by some to claim social welfare and the student allowance.(84) There were also exposures of rackets bringing Thai prostitutes to Auckland (in 1989 and 1992), and rumours of Chinese triads circulating since 1988, though the triad stories were later (1997) put into perspective by the head of Auckland’s two-men Asian Crime Unit.(85) In the background, the American and British media were becoming ever more vocal about China’s human rights record. Quite suddenly anti-Chinese and anti-Asian immigration controversy and racial abuse appeared in the open, sparked off in 1993 as the ‘Inv-Asian’ or ‘Asian Invasion’.(86)
As the influx and controversy continued, the National Government gave three months’ notice of really tough new immigration criteria to be introduced in October 1995. A rush of applicants occurred - no doubt heightened by the immigration agency system - of such volume that the applications were still being processed under the old criteria in November 1996. The new criteria extensively changed both the business and general categories, and included in both a difficult points system and an English language test for Asians much stiffer than that used in the past.(87) These changes possessed powerful blocking properties which greatly decreased the number and acceptance of Asian migrant applications (Table 3). The English test alone would have been effective thus, but the required points could be changed from week to week. In addition, all migrants had to have a returning resident’s visa for overseas travel, which was issued for a family only after the principal applicant had sufficient residence in New Zealand to qualify for New Zealand tax residence status (which also delved into world income). Clearly this visa was aimed at ‘astronauts.’ So much for the ideal of equal criteria for all immigrants, and the loss of this ideal for many non-English speaking Chinese and other Asians can be seen in comparison with the contemporary South African influx (Table 3). In 1994, the South Africans found it so easy to enter New Zealand they called the immigration procedures applicable to them ‘the chicken run’,(88) and their inflow registered no change after 1995.
No. of Asian, British and South African approvals for residence among the top 10 nationalities for permanent and long-term N.Z. immigrants (of all categories), 1996-2000.
Taiwan 12,751
China 5,385 4,950 4,220 3,065 3,569
Hong Kong 2,742 1,118
India 3,590 2,311 2,433 2,652 3,585
Philippines 1,437 875 776 655 924
South Korea 2,836 913
Sri Lanka 747 671
Gt. Britain 5,478 5,507 4,840 4,218 5,080
South Africa 2,283 3,712 3,366 3,428 3,706
Source: Immigration Fact Packs.
Chinese numbers remained significant only from mainland China, from which country came highly motivated and qualified immigrants who tend to seek family reunification here. According to M. Ip, approvals (not arrivals) of Taiwanese immigrants numbered only 664 in 1997 and 344 in 2000.(89)
Immigration became a major election issue in 1996. Machiavelli said men’s hatreds generally arise from envy and fear. Since the Asian influx landed in a period of major social change and mixed economic performance, it is likely an underlying fear for many people opposing their immigration - even if they had no personal contact with Asians - was the possible takeover of jobs from New Zealanders,(90) although unemployment fell from 11% of the workforce in 1991 to 6.1% in 1996. Furthermore, Auckland figures in 1996 showed that only 5% of all the jobseekers enrolling with the New Zealand Employment Service were originally from an Asian country.(91) It seems that those in skilled trades and manuel work were the persons most worried for their jobs; and while it is generally true that ‘those people who compete directly with immigrants lose’, probably the fact was overlooked that most Asians who were approved principal applicants in the General Category had professional skills. Only 5% of them were trades workers.(92) In 1996 too, several New Zealand cities must have felt some benefit from the years of inflow of well-educated migrants with sufficient money to buy quality housing and goods - particularly in the immediate years after the grim 1987 stock market crash. Over 50% of Auckland’s growth in the first half of the 1990s was said to be due to international immigration.(93) Even in southern Dunedin, housing prices kept up or went up and significant optimism existed in sales and services because of the influx of only about 50 families each of Taiwanese and South Koreans (followed by another 50 families of mainland Chinese and some Indian migrants). Yet the Kiwi Chinese were surprised by the reappearance in this period of old catch-cries and larrikin action,(94) showing that New Zealand’s past perceptions of non-European aliens had not been entirely expunged from the national psyche.
In truth, however, the controversy had much less breadth and depth in proportion to population than the old public outbursts over Chinese immigration. It largely concerned Auckland, and although anti-immigration rhetoric did arise throughout the country, a brief appearance of the malignant virus of racism was not endorsed by political parties other than the small but vocal New Zealand First party, nor by newspapers or trade unions. This was a considerable contrast from the situation a century earlier, when all the trade unions, nearly all the newspapers and most of the politicians, were against the Chinese. But in 1996, many politicians, including the prime minister and deputy prime minister, publicly condemned any signs of racism; and strong statements were issued by the Jewish and Catholic Church leaders, although the Presbyterian and Methodist response was weak.(95) As for Prime Minister J.B. Bolger, his National Government’s introduction of the October 1995 regulations might yet be judged by history to have condoned the anti-Asian outcry.(96) But in keeping with the general background of decency, his party chose Pansy Wong as a Christchurch list candidate, and she entered parliament in 1996. Maori comments on the Asian immigration were mixed and except for Winston Peters (the head of the New Zealand First party), Maori leaders tended to steer clear of the controversy, partly because of the new considerations the growing presence of an Asian minority might eventually have on Maori-Pakeha relationships and the long-term application of the Treaty of Waitangi.(97)
The newcomers, it should be noted, are not the passive targets of racial prejudice that the old Cantonese Chinese in New Zealand were. As well as being more overtly reactive to racism, they have access to the vote, and have enough numbers in three or four Auckland electoral seats to make their votes count. In earlier times, politicians could safely ignore or abuse the Chinese, partly because of the usually unassertive nature of sojourners, and partly because they did not have the vote anyway, or were too few and scattered in numbers to make it count. That this situation no longer exist was shown by the formation in 1996 of two new though short-lived political parties which some Chinese newcomers joined - the Ethnic Minority Party of New Zealand and the Asia Pacific United Party. The Asians also held a street march in Auckland in protest against the prejudice they felt directed at them.
For all that, a truly remarkable development after the 1996 election was the steady diminution of anti-Asian feeling.(98) By the 1999 election, immigration was not an issue at all, not even revived by the New Zealand First party. A year earlier, the local body elections even voted in a Chinese (Ken Yee) to represent Howick, and there were eight successful Chinese local body candidates out of 14 throughout New Zealand. The surge of newcomers had noticeably slackened and it was as though many New Zealanders realised too, that they should not blame the immigrants for faults in Auckland’s infrastructure or New Zealand’s immigration policies, which allowed the rate of inflow to exceed Auckland’s absorptive capacity - both in structural systems and in the social acceptance of foreigners. Some of the writer’s friends hoped the immigrants realised that much of the feeling expressed against them had not specially risen because of race. The rapid ingress of any large group of strangers will create controversy, difficulties and fears. As a matter of fact, New Zealand history can produce examples of abuse hurled at European immigrants who were seen to be flooding in. For instance, the earlier Scots in Otago disparaged later influxes of Scots in the early 1870s, calling them ‘sallow-faced, shifty, loud-mouthed … hereditary paupers.’ In more recent times, the incoming thousands of Dutch in the 1950s were given a hard time for being too industrious and assertive and, in the early 1970s, it was the turn of the British (‘Bash a Pom’) and Pacific peoples. The point is that all newcomers to a society come under an edgy scrutiny, particularly when they arrive in large numbers. It is the ‘new boy on the block syndrome’, which newcomers should understand.
In the year following the 1996 election, the new government - a coalition of the National and New Zealand First parties, the latter with 17 seats and Winston Peters as deputy prime minister - began to abate the tough immigration stance with a speech in Hong Kong.(99) In December 1997 and October 1998, it began to soften and change the regulations. The incoming Labour Government (in 1999) signalled it will ease them further, especially the skilled migrant categories, but the English language requirements still remained a significant barrier for many.(100) Accordingly, the immigration of Asians remained more controlled than before the regulations of October 1995. At this point, one thought that if base level controls had been present in the first place and thought out and put in when the ambitious, even radical BIP and General Category schemes were introduced, both the influx and accompanying public reaction may have been less. Other signals were rather mixed. A stamp issue in 1998 focused on New Zealand’s multicultural society. In June 1999, the rumour - later unsubstantiated - of one ship with 102 Chinese ‘boat people’ heading for New Zealand led to the passing of urgent legislation to further ‘improve the effectiveness of the removal regime for persons unlawfully in New Zealand by streamlining the procedures involved [particularly in relation to claimed] refugee status.’(101) In late 2000, Asians appeared less favoured than others during a crackdown on overstayers.(102) When the long delayed ministerial Advisory Group on Immigration was established in 2001, it had no Chinese representative. On the other hand, the government established the Asia 2000 Foundation of New Zealand in 1994 to promote Asia to the public, and sponsored the Population Conference in Wellington in 1997 which gathered together much knowledge on population and immigration. It included four Asian contributors - R. Prasad (the Race Relations Conciliator), Pansy Wong, Manying Ip and James Koh. In 2001, a new, small Office of Ethnic Affairs was established, upgraded from a ‘desk’ in the Department of Internal Affairs.
Then in February and September 2001, the writer experienced a sense of déjà vu when announcements were made which would again revamp the immigration categories, aim to markedly increase the number of skilled and business immigrants (many of whom would be Chinese and other Asians for reasons already mentioned), substantially lower the English language requirements and raise the cap on the number of permanent residency immigrants to 50,000 annually.(103)
It is common sense that planning should be undertaken not only for sustainable entry numbers but also for social relationships after entry. But the New Zealand government has traditionally left immigrants to their own arrangements unless they were enforced refugees. Thus the Indo-Chinese refugees rated special help and churches were called upon to help them and family sponsors found to guide them. However, in the 1986-96 inflow, much bigger numbers of Asian newcomers had little or no support here, even though they too, were migrating from an Asian culture to a European one. Yet it is fair to say that New Zealand did not expect such big numbers of Asians and were ill-prepared to receive them. The real accusation is that most New Zealanders at all levels, Kiwi Chinese included, did not try very hard to help even when the extent of the inflow was realised.
A. Trlin’s New Settlers [Research] Programme has noted the absence of a balanced institutional structure of immigration in which an immigration policy regulating entry should have been complemented, he said, by a post-arrival policy geared to the economic, social and cultural needs of migrants to assist them to settle and integrate, and an ethnic relations policy, appropriate to a situation of emerging multiculturism, ‘which includes measures to foster inter-group relations, counteract xenophobic attitudes and combat discriminatory practices.’(104) More trenchant comments have been made by immigrants, including ‘Do New Zealanders in fact only want Asian resources but not want Asians as their neighbours?’ … ‘The government neglected the "bridging" needs - it took the profit from the immigrants but did not itself put in money to make the most of the investment in people.’(105) Presently, the Labour Government appears to be recognising the post-entry needs of all immigrants and is making some moves to minimise the problems and maximise the opportunities of their arrival.(106)
Even so, a visitor to Auckland in 1996 would have found the differences between the immigrants and the long-term residents being worked through, in large part due to the efforts of the new arrivals themselves. Law and order were never at risk of breaking down. The way of life of the dominant society remained unaltered. The biggest difficulty created by the migrants affected the Auckland schools which rapidly gained large numbers of migrant children who spoke little or no English. But the school problems were gradually being understood and addressed.(107) A primary need of the migrants was to improve their English but a Polytechnic English improvement class in 1996, to give one example, was oversubscribed by 1,000 would-be pupils. Private educational ventures sprang up to supplement the public services. In other ways the Chinese and other Asian migrants were usually self-supporting. They rented, bought or built their own housing. They had already formed various support groups.(108) The Chinese were publishing an ethnic newspaper and four other news-sheets, soon to be joined by a free weekly Chinese edition of the New Zealand Herald. They had established 17 new Chinese churches and nine Buddhist organizations. They were endeavouring to understand New Zealand, as evidenced by Manying Ip and others who were introducing Maori life to newcomers, and Song Lam, who was writing her book The Maori of New Zealand, Maori legends, traditions and history. Another book about New Zealand, A Piece of Jade in the South Pacific, was being written by T. Fang et al.(109) Candice Ng from Hong Kong published New Zealand Air Passengers’ Guide (1995), Wellington Police Crime Prevention Book (1996), and New Zealand Residential Property Investors’ Guide (1998), all in Chinese. A vanguard of Asians had entered Auckland’s academic, professional and business circles and were beginning to provide some voice and leadership. There was recognition of the migrants’ economic value, and they were estimated to have brought in a billion dollars in investment in the three years to December 1994.(110) The migrants also brought money for housing and other living costs - the Taiwanese alone were said to have brought to Auckland an estimated $750 million in 1995.(111)
‘Immigration has a modest but positive economic effect. It is not an engine of growth, its not going to transform your economy but the effect is positive, not negative.’(112) However, a large section of the New Zealand public unrealistically expected the Chinese and other Asian immigrants to stimulate the regional or national economy quickly and to a marked degree.(113) They were even expected to set up another Silicon Valley - with no planned backup like a startup park, nor with preferential policies nor with research and economic cooperation in place. When such high hopes were unfulfilled, often an unfavourable and unfair reaction occurred among the expectant Europeans. In this regard, commercial liaison committees were eventually set up to attract Asian money, but usually late. As to the migrants’ Asian and American qualifications, it has already been mentioned that many were either not recognised in New Zealand or the path to recognition was long and arduous.(114) The October 1995 immigration regulations corrected the Immigration Service’s previous flaw by requiring the prior registration of about 25 different types of qualifications in New Zealand before immigration. But surely it should not have been so difficult to have checked on the acceptance processes for many foreign qualifications before the introduction of the General Category. An invidious long-term effect of such shortcomings is that word of them gets back to the lands of origin. Another is that off-hand official treatment does not help to build bonding and loyalty to New Zealand.
Nevertheless, despite all difficulties, every community of Chinese newcomers have families and individuals who have succeeded, or are succeeding in putting down roots in New Zealand. Generally they retain numerous Chinese cultural features but being well-educated, they also have the potential to integrate well into the wider society. The widespread sociologists’ view is that the immigrants’ retention of their own culture confers advantages both on the individuals concerned and the nation.(115) Another advantage immigrants possess is a fresh perspective; ‘if you bring in people who replicate yourself … you don’t gain [much] at all … You gain because people come in who are different. The very fact that creates all sorts of other tensions about how you integrate people who are different, how you adjust your own population to deal with people who are different, is a source of economic gain in the first place.’(116) Successful newcomers in New Zealand include Betty Kwan (an expert on the measurement of fat levels in packaged meat); Chung-Pin Lim (winemaker); Allen Yip (athletics coach); Professor Yi-Huali Gao and Dr Yun Wang (mushroom experts), James Meng (opera singer); academics Professor John Chen, Elsie Ho, Manying Ip, Sylvia Yuan and many others, including Dr D. Zhang, an engineer researching titanium alloys from iron sands; Ou Lu (ballet dancer); Ping Wang (artist); Audrey Chan (vocalist); the Chan Cheng Quartet; Jiang Yuxian (story teller); Ann-Marie Houng Lee (writer); Aaron Li (table tennis player); Li Feng (badminton player); the Taiwanese Remuera Women’s Choir; the Formosa Choir (Dunedin); Yi Jin (harpist); Peter Chan (photographer); Yu-Fen Wang (choreographer); Onlie and Diana Ong (ceramic sculptors); Nancy Caiger (community worker); David Tung (seahorse breeder); Shifen Gong (editor of A Fine Pen, The Chinese View of Katherine Mansfield, University of Otago Press, 2001); and Drs Allen Liang and Swee Tan.
For all that, further Asian arrivals (Tables 3 and 4) have remained low in numbers and not only because of the remaining barriers. After 1996, New Zealand’s net gain of immigration over emigration steadily fell; and after 1999 there was a net loss (Table 1) which shows signs of reversing itself only this year (2001).(117) A major cause of the outflow has been the emigration of New Zealanders themselves, often to go to Australia, many with skills needed at home but dissatisfied with the employment outlook for them in this country. Their emigration has been recently joined by departures of recent Chinese and Korean (and South African) immigrant families. Some have gone to Australia and elsewhere; others have returned to Hong Kong, Taiwan and other places of origin.(118) By 1998, 8789 of 58,190 Chinese recent immigrants had left (119) and to date, Auckland may have lost as many as 30% of its Chinese and Korean newcomers.(120) The picture will become clearer when figures become available from the 2001 census. Some of these losses were statistically predictable, for it has been quite usual - both internationally and in New Zealand’s own history - for 40%-50% of emigrants sooner or later to return to their places of origin or go elsewhere.(121) Though one might assume the Chinese would find similar difficulties in Australia with social networks and qualifications, it is estimated that 50% went to Australia, while another 30% returned to their previous homeland, and 20% went to North America and other countries.(122) The return to a previous homeland includes China, which evidently is making an effort to attract talent back.
Business applications accepted by category and nationality, March 1999-June 2000.
Employees of Entrepreneur Investor Long Term Total
Businesses Business
China 8 2 118 208 336
Hong Kong 9 23 32
India 1 1 10 12
Japan 1 2 5 18 26
South Korea 2 21 120 143
Taiwan 1 55 7 63
Thailand 1 9 10
Gt Britain 3 1 21 31 56
South Africa 3 4 7
The regulation changes in October 1995 had shrunk business application approvals from 2325 under the BIC to 14 under the revised rules in the June 1995-96 year. The inflow of business capital also fell precipitously.(123) Table 4 shows a subsequent improvement, especially from China(124) and North Asia generally.
These departures are more serious than the astronaut phenomenon because they take away whole families, whereas the astronaut families are still centred in New Zealand. Three examples illustrate the variety of reasons why families leave. A mechanical engineer hitherto employed in heavy industry could not find comparable work in Dunedin even though he spoke good English. He apparently gave away the idea of taking up other work. He whiled away the three years to his family’s naturalisation, after which he returned to Taiwan, where he took up a job offer within days. A medical specialist who could not practise here looked after his two young children while his wife took a post-graduate degree. When she graduated and the family were naturalised, they left for Melbourne where they had extended family. Because of her New Zealand degree she could work in her speciality in Australia and he then became an astronaut commuting between Melbourne and Taiwan. An energetic businessman in Dunedin founded a martial arts school, a monthly Chinese news-sheet, a video hire shop, and he also rented property, but still he found his financial horizons limited and after naturalisation took his family to Sydney. Possibly the common factor in all three examples is the perceived lack of suitable work in Dunedin; but to me, only the last man seemed to have tried hard to get employment here.
Included in the departures is an emerging group formed from young adults who emigrated here as adolescents with their parents in 1986-96. Like their parents, they had usually retained much of their old culture. They were recipients of one of the greatest advantages reaped by the immigrants, that of free education including tertiary study before the imposition of university fees in 1990 (and increased in 1994). As older children, many may have been unhappy here (125), but they gained a tertiary education. As graduates, their best future is often back in their previous homeland, where they still have family links, know the Chinese language fluently (unlike their younger siblings), have the precious possession of a university degree and a good knowledge of English. All these points give them an edge in applying for employment with a transnational firm. They do not all go back; the writer knows of some doing great service in New Zealand hospitals. And some of those who have gone may return after their ‘Overseas Experience’, and yet others will look back with some nostalgia for this country.
Despite the departures, it appears certain that when the 2001 census is processed, it will be seen that a sizeable portion of the Chinese newcomers have stayed and are settling here. And it is clear too that they will indeed become a significant segment in professional, academic and commercial circles, especially in Auckland. A New Zealand Chinese Scholars Association and a vigorous Chinese Medical Association have formed in Auckland, the latter affiliated to counterparts in Australia. Business organizations like the New Zealand Hong Kong Business Association, New Zealand China Trade Association, Sino-New Zealand Business Club, Taiwan Business Association and Asian Business Association have also been established. Newcomers play a significant role in these as well as in several sister city relationships with Chinese cities. Inevitably, sooner or later, a Pan-Chinese Association will be set up representing all the Chinese in New Zealand.
As to the younger children of the Chinese newcomers growing or grown up in this country, an increasing number have already become school duxes, won university scholarships and entered university specialist schools. As Manying Ip said in her speech of 25 October 2001, they and other Asians have already set an example in New Zealand of Asian effort and diligence which will influence and guide all ambitious young folk. Other Chinese are gaining distinction in a variety of ways. They include a host of young musicians like Beth Chan, Jasmine Chen, Henry Wong Doe, Chen-Yin Li, Li Liu, Susan Kao, Debby Wong, Carolyn Wu (Christchurch) and Carolyn Wu (Auckland). Furthermore, there are Bic and Boh Runga (vocalists); Y.M. Lin and Jo Luping (artists); Tania Ang (rhythmic gymnast); Jimmy Lim and Xiubi Zhao (fashion designers); Vanessa Wu (photographer); Alan Clark, Hwee Sin Chong, Jay Piggott, Shona Yu and many other students who have been praised in the media for scholarship; Lisa and Hong Looi (Tak Kwan Do experts); and Karen and Li Chunli (table tennis players). Incidentally, they are matched by a young adult group of Kiwi Chinese including Chantelle McCabe (a student and Rose of Tralee); Lydia Elliott, Luise Fong, Simon Kaan, Tan Yuk King, Denise Kum, Kathryn Lim, Eric Ngan and Quintin Young (artists); Venessa Ling Jack (photographer); Carolyn Meng Yee (T.V. producer); Lynda Chanwai Earle (writer); Angela Sew Hoy (community worker for the deaf); Rodney Leong and Sharon Ng (fashion designers); Jennifer Yee (T.V. cook and author of Discovering Asian Ingredients for New Zealand Cooks); Steven Lim (medical student and swimmer); Andrew Low (engineer and anaesthetics programmer); Kiri Wong (top all round Maori scholar and P class yachtswoman); and Jared and Sonya Kwok (hockey players). The writer has been unable to ascertain so far which group - newcomer or Kiwi Chinese - Jason Chan (a coffee expert), Adam Custins (a photographer with a Chinese father) and Nathan Haines (a jazz player with a Chinese grandfather) fit into.
The prime reason for most of the recent Chinese immigrants coming to and staying in New Zealand is likely to be their youngest children’s education and welfare. Jan Morris noted that in colonial days it was almost universal for British migrants to become disillusioned at some stage in their new environment, but they tended to stay on for their children’s sake. There is some academic and anecdotal evidence that this reason for staying also applies among the Chinese newcomers in New Zealand.(126) If so, their young children are unconsciously playing a crucial role in their families’ settlement, just as the writer’s generation did in the settlement of the Kiwi Chinese. Moreover, they will go through all the adaptive processes that we went through. During that time, they will see New Zealanders as the friendly, fair and tolerant persons as we saw them. And they too will become proud Chinese New Zealanders, confident in their New Zealand and Chinese cultural mix,(127) able to flourish here as in few other countries, and of good worth to New Zealand. Their non-Chinese peers and friends will grow up and regard a multicultural New Zealand society as the norm. When this full integration of the Chinese immigrants of 1986-96 occurs, New Zealanders may well look back and wonder at the fears and uncertainties expressed against their coming.
1. Otago Witness, 30 September 1865, pp.13-14. The first invitation was signed by Provincial Superintendent J.H. Harris and sent in January 1865. The second invitation additionally offered ‘the same protection as other residents receive’; it was probably signed by the Provincial Secretary and sent in October 1865 (the Superintendent was inland, out of Dunedin, the provincial capital). The original invitations have not been sighted as yet.
2. Otago Witness, 23 September 1865, p.9; and 30 September 1865, pp.10-11. Other qualities mentioned elsewhere were that they seldom meddled in the politics of the host country, nor did they notably chase after women. The latter quality was usually implied in statements on Chinese morality, their intermarriages and their relationships with children and young girls – as in the N.Z. House of Representatives, Appendix to the Journals, (AJHR), ‘Select Committee on Chinese Immigration’, 1871, H-5, H-5A and H-5B.
3. There were 4,159 Chinese in Otago in September 1871, according to the AJHR, ibid, H-5A, p.13, plus 205 arrivals to Dunedin on a ship in October 1871, (Outlook, 24 March 1906, p.8). The approximate total Otago population (including Southland) at the end of 1871 was derived from the February 1871 census total of 69,491 plus the figures given by the Provincial Superintendent at the opening of Session XXXIII of the Otago Provincial Council in April 1872. He reported on external migration and births and deaths over the previous year, which gave a net gain of about 4,849 persons. The figure of 5,000 or more between 1874-81 is deduced from annual arrival and departure figures in official statistics on external migration. The censuses in March or April, 1874, 1878 and 1881 noted 4,816, 4,442 and 5,004 Chinese respectively; the lower figures in March or April may have had something to do with Chinese New year - in a wish to return in time for or a reluctance to leave for New Zealand till after that occasion.
4. These percentages are based on a total New Zealand population of 3,618,303, a Chinese population of 81,309, and an Asian population of 199,164 (recorded in the comprehensive study of D. Bell, [ed.], Ethnic New Zealand, Towards Cultural Understanding, New Settlers Focus Group, Hamilton, 2nd ed., 1998).
5. These counties were recurrently mentioned in Rev. Alexander Don’s surviving writings on the New Zealand-Chinese; he was the sole missionary to them from 1879 to 1913. Particularly useful is his bilingual Roll of Chinese in New Zealand, 1883-1913, reproduced as volume 4 of James Ng’s four volume work, Windows on a Chinese Past, Otago Heritage Books, Dunedin, 1993-99. In 1896, Don’s Roll listed 1,080 Chinese in Otago, of whom 67% were from (upper) Panyu, 17% from Taishan and associated Seyip counties, 2.5% from (south-western) Zengcheng county, 3.5% from Heungshan (in districts now included in Zhongshan county) and 2% from Hua county. The proportions changed over time, so that in the 1950s, the Panyu, Seyip and Zengcheng folk were said to be about equal in number. The Panyu numbers possibly decreased because they tended to stay too long in goldmining and concentrated less on establishing small businesses outside the goldfields, which would have enabled them to gain a better foothold in New Zealand.
6. Rev. Don recorded a range of intervals in the sojourners’ returns to China but in the Outlook, 23 March 1901, p.21, he wrote, ‘Many a young wife has seen her husband leave, to return rich in five years: six and eight times five have passed, and he has not come …’ Don recorded that James Shum, ‘a typical [independent] rusher’ who landed in Otago in early 1871, had managed to save ‘over £100’ after much hardship by 1875 and returned home for a visit (Ng, ibid, vol.3, 1999, pp.330-45). The AJHR, 1871, H-5B, concluded that the Chinese goldseekers were content to leave after amassing a net sum of £100 upwards. The gold wardens who testified to this select committee recorded 8s-10s as the weekly cost of living for Chinese miners, and if doing well, as at Wakatipu, they were saving 15s-20s weekly. Therefore they could take home a maximum of about £250 in five years but ‘most’ Chinese goldseekers in the early Otago years had immigrated under the credit-ticket system and so were usually bonded for three years during which time they received wages but paid back the fare and other expenses like clothing and gear. Commonly, they had few savings in hand at the end of the three years (AJHR, 1871, H-5, p.5), but they had gained passage and experience.
7. Again Rev. Don had a range of the number of returns to China. But possibly an ideal formula was four visits to China during a 30 year working life, with each return averaging two years. This formula would place the final or fifth return at about 50 years of age. In the Otago goldfields, the saying was that a miner was past his physical best at 40 years and old at 50. The writer recalls that his grandfather and four of his market garden contemporaries in Gore left New Zealand permanently in the early 1920s, probably most in their early or mid-50s (having been delayed by the Great War).
8. Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, vol.3, 1999, pp.330-45. This appears to have been the fare of a direct chartered ship’s voyage to Dunedin, without a stopover in Sydney or Melbourne, which would have added to the cost. This sum is probably confirmed in the N.Z. Presbyterian, 1 July 1884, p.3, where a Chinese told Don that he and a mate each borrowed 40 taels (then £13) for voyage expenses in an unspecified year (but possibly in the early 1870s) at 2% monthly (25% yearly over the Chinese year of 12 ½ months) interest. By comparison, the corresponding fare from Britain c.1870 was £13-£14.
9. There were many references over the years to this feature. In 1871 for example, the AJHR, H-5 included these statements, ‘The Chinese have a better idea of organization … They show a readiness to combine labour and are so much more amenable to discipline … more so than you could possibly get Europeans to be’ … ‘They work generally in small parties upon their own account and meet with fair success’ … ‘It is well known that the Chinese, by their more systematic and careful mode of operation, are frequently enabled to work profitably ground abandoned by European miners as worthless’ … ‘[The Chinese are] enabled to work auriferous ground profitably which otherwise could not be worked by Europeans for some time, owing to the absence in the latter of combination of effort.’
10. Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, vol.2, 1995, pp.19-21.
11. In 1871, the lowest wage recorded were those of Chinese who worked for Europeans. They got around £1 to £1 10s weekly, with living costs taking 8s-10s of that, according to gold wardens and G.B. Barton in the AJHR, 1871, H-5 and H-5A. The Tuapeka Times, 5 October 1871, confirmed that Chinese could be employed for 20-25 shillings a week. Thus their savings were around 50%, and if they did better than that in goldmining, they saved more.
12. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, 10th ed., 1902, vol.27, p.30; Outlook, 24 December 1904, p.16. For the price of silver (which was almost but not quite the value of silver currency) see: W.F. Spalding, Eastern Exchange Currency and Finance, Pitman and Sons, Bath, 4th ed., 1924. (Incidentally, for the Chinese dollar exchange rate, 1935-45, see A.N. Young, China’s Wartime Finance and Inflation, 1937-1945, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965).
13. See Grey’s memorandum to parliament, AHJR, 1879, D-3.
14. It seems impossible to quantify £100 in 1896 in today’s money. But F. Snedden, King of the Castle, A Biography of William Larnach, D. Bateman, Auckland, 1997, p.254, researched Statistics New Zealand figures and found that £100 in 1914 was equivalent to about $10,000 in 1996. No earlier equivalent, she said, was obtainable. From another viewpoint, one can compare the average wage of the past to those in equivalent positions today. About the time the £100 polltax was introduced, the average wage of artisans and storekeepers was around £2 10s to £3 a week. General labourers got around 7s a day or about £100 a year. (New Zealand Official Year Book, Government Printer, Wellington, 1898, pp.293-96). Another reference point for comparison arose when Dr Robin Gee of Auckland wrote that a house at the turn of the 20th century could be bought for around £300 (personal communication, 13 June 1996); and TV1, Pioneer House, 25 March 2001, recorded that a new three bedroom wooden villa house sold for £200 in Grey Lynn, Auckland, c.1900. One should remember that the Chinese wage generally was less than that of Europeans.
15. T.D.H. Hall, ‘N.Z. and Asiatic Immigration’, in A.T. Ngata et al, New Zealand Affairs, L.M. Isitt, Christchurch, 1929, pp.87 and 93. Hall mentioned the Imperial War Conference agreement on immigration restriction, as also recorded in the New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, (NZPD), 1920, vol.187, p.905.
16. S. Brawley, ‘No White Policy in NZ, Fact and Fiction in New Zealand’s Asian Immigration Records, 1946-78’, N.Z. J. History, 27 (1), April 1993, pp.16-36.
17. Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, vol.3, 1999, pp.105-11.
18. For example, a miner named Chan Tsoi said, ‘Let China imitate Japan, then Europeans and Americans will not tax us.’ (A. Don, Diary, 1899-1907, manuscript, Kirkland private collection, Dunedin, item 684, 1906).
19. This statement remains a broad one since the number of Chinese newcomers entering New Zealand in the nineteenth century is unknown, because the official figures did not separate out the re-entrants. Between 1866-73, there were no official figures for Chinese arrivals and departures, but in September 1871, there were estimated to be 4215 Chinese in New Zealand. (AJHR, ‘Select Committee on Chinese Immigration’, 1871, H-5A, p.13; 4159 were in Otago). A ship arrived at Dunedin in October, with 205 more, making the total to be about 4,420 in that year. They could be taken as the starting point since this total probably included few re-entrants. Between 1874-81, there were 4852 arrivals and 3307 departures, and a net population of 5004 in the April 1881 census. Then between 1882-1900, there were 2116 arrivals of whom 1274 were newcomers who paid the polltax. Presumably the rest were re-entrants. 3345 Chinese departed. The census population in 1901 was 2857. So we have 4420 (1871), plus 1274 (1882-1900) plus, say, 2400 or about half of the arrivals between 1874-81, giving an estimated total number of 8094 Chinese immigrants arriving in New Zealand in the nineteenth century. Probably this total is still an underestimate because of the lack of complete figures. The number of Chinese deaths in New Zealand also involves guesswork. The two mass exhumations of the Poon Fah (Panyu and Hua counties) Association (completed in 1883 and 1902) totalled 704 bodies. This association and the small Naam Shun (Namhai and Shunde counties) Society were the only known Chinese benevolent societies in nineteenth century New Zealand. In proportion to the Panyu and Hua numbers, other Chinese deaths to 1902 may have taken the grand total to around 1000. But the Poon Fah Association was also active c.1892 and may have undertaken more exhumations then; in addition after 1902, there were probably a few hundred deaths of aged Chinese goldseekers who could not or would not leave for China.
Even so, when one considers the approximate total number of immigrants, the census populations of Chinese and the approximate number of deaths, the figures indicate that most of the goldseekers made their way back to China, whether successful or not in their overseas ambition, dead or alive.
20. There were 93 mixed marriages recorded in the 1886 census. The decrease to 43 in 1901 was probably accounted for by departure to China and Australia.
21. In the Outlook, 7 October 1905, p.8, Rev. Don was reported saying: ‘When the surface mining was exhausted, many took up other occupations – fruit and fish selling, laundering, [market gardening] and storekeeping, spreading over the colony until now in Wellington, Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay [which Don visited] hardly a town is without its Chinese tradesmen’. The New Zealand censuses, which eventually separated out the Chinese in detail, recorded their spread from the goldfields. At the turn of the 20th century, the centre of Chinese activity had passed from Dunedin to Wellington.
22.The parliamentary debate on the Chinese Immigrants Amendment Bill, 1907 (which introduced the reading test), prompted comments like this: ‘… during last year the largest number of Chinese women arrived [13 females] of any preceding year in the country’s history. The result of this is that we are having New Zealand-born Chinese children, who are unfortunately, brought up to live according to the habits of Chinese’. And, ‘There are in New Zealand at the present time fifty-five Chinese women. I think these figures alone will go to prove conclusively that is about time something is done to deal with this matter’. (NZPD, 1907, vol. 142, pp.839-40). Of the 55 females here in 1906, 32 had arrived from 1904. Forty of the total were wives. The writer’s impression is that many of the wives were from Zengcheng county, since they had early schools for females and men from this county were in most of the Chinese fruitshops cum groceries, which were among the most successful Chinese businesses.
23. The Harvest Field magazine of the Presbyterian Church gave the following information consequent on the increased price of silver: 9 July 1917: eight or nine Chinese dollars to one New Zealand pound; 8 July 1918: $6.40 to £1; 8 July 1919: under $6 to £1; 9 February 1920: last October the rate was $4.40, and last December, $3.87 to £1; 8 May 1920: $3.50 now equals £ 1; 14 December 1920: the rate is rising to $4.60 to £1.
24. The writer’s grandfather was said to be able to save half his earnings (presumably after expenses and tax) but his father and father-in-law were known to aim for one third, at least after World War 2. The 1936 census revealed that of 2223 Chinese males, 457 had no income, 1209 earned less than £104 per annum, 232 earned between £104-£156, 76 earned over £156 and 249 did not specify. By comparison, the average New Zealand income in that year was £160. The 1945 census showed much improved Chinese earnings.
25. The Chinese goldseekers acknowledged the general fairness of the courts (N.Z Presbyterian, 1 April 1885, p.184) and from what the writer heard in childhood, this was the general opinion held by his father’s generation also.
26. P. Law, Too Much ’Yellow’ in the Melting Pot? Perceptions of the New Zealand Chinese, 1930-1960. M.A. thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin, 1994, pp.17-18.
27. New Chinese businesses were opposed whether they were of the traditional or new types. See Tuapeka Times, 19 September 1894, 15 May 1895, 15 June 1895, 13 July 1895 and 16 September 1896. Also Quick March, 10 July 1920, pp.45 and 51, and 10 May 1921, p.53; and NZPD, 1922, vol. 194, p.513.
28. The Wellington branch (including Christchurch and Wanganui members) of the Kuomintang (KMT) was formed in 1913 and the Auckland branch (including Hamilton members) in 1917. They were preceded by the Chinese Reform Party in Wellington at the turn of the 20th century and by the Tung Meng Hui, also in Wellington from c.1910. Both Wellington and Auckland sent delegates to the Sydney conferences of the KMT organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. The New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA) was essentially a new organisation constituted in September 1937, following the failed United Overseas Chinese Association (1928) and the even earlier Chinese Association (1909). The NZCA absorbed other Chinese patriotic bodies which had sprung up throughout New Zealand except the KMT and county associations.
29. A prevalent belief of the Kiwi Chinese is that they raised either the top or second highest sum per capita of all the overseas Chinese communities; namely over £230,000 in levies and donations and some £250,000 in Chinese war bonds from 1937 to 1945. New Zealand war bonds were additional. As yet there is no confirmation for this belief, but C.P. Sedgwick, The Politics of Survival: A Social History of the Chinese in New Zealand; PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 1982, pp.404 and 698, gives NCZA figures for 1937-44 amounting to £174,149 in levies and donations (which went on into the last week of 1945). As a result of the organisation and publicity required for collection, most Chinese got to know each other the length and breadth of New Zealand.
30. Every Chinese employer was levied 10 shillings weekly (on the assumed, average net earning of £5 weekly) and every employee 2 shillings in the pound (on the assumed average wage of £3 weekly). Even children’s wages were levied. These figures reflected the increased earnings of Chinese in New Zealand after the Great Depression and are interesting in comparison with the contemporary New Zealand basic wage of £3 16s weekly for male adults. However, increased earnings for many employers did not eventuate till around 1940 and so their levies were negotiable, especially since, say, the gardeners’ incomes might fluctuate with the seasons. Nevertheless, many in this predicament voluntarily gave the full levy or more.
31. Census report, 1936, vol.IX, Race, p.1
32. Personal communication with Chin Bing Foon, 18 June 1996. The Chin family was joined by the families of Yee Gnar Wah and Young Tong Shing in what seems to have been an incipient immigration scheme for prominent Chinese businessmen, before this was superseded by the Chinese refugee scheme.
33. N.R. Murphy, A Guide to Laws and Policies relating to the Chinese in New Zealand, NZCA, Wellington, 1997, p.251, notes that the Chinese refugee scheme was withdrawn in 1940, due to complaints from European fruiterers and other traders. However, the backlog of approved applications was presumably allowed to proceed. Other applications after 1940 were perhaps approved on an ad hoc basis. That may explain why the late application of the writer’s family was approved not on a refugee basis but because the writer’s grandfather had been naturalised in 1906.
34. The New Zealand-Chinese fundraising for China was not generally known (though approved by the New Zealand government) but what was publicly known - vegetable production (said, with no known survey, to amount to 80% of the fresh vegetables for the public), the promotion and buying of New Zealand war bonds, sharing the work at receptions for soldiers, etc - won much goodwill. Thus the NZPD, 1944, vol.266, pp.633 and 635 recorded: ‘The standing of the Chinese in the community was excellent; he had contributed to every patriotic effort that came his way… a good citizen’).
35. These are incomplete figures which do not include mixed-blood Chinese recruits, of whom it is known that Wing Commander Andrew F.H. Tye, DFC, and another airman Wm H. Lip Guey both died in action. Pilot Officer Willie Lee (actually Chan) learnt to fly in China, and died in a Spitfire accident in Gt Britain. Nurse Ivy Chiu (nee Gin of the Wah Lee merchant business) of Auckland served with distinction with Chinese and American forces in south China.
36. R. Thompson, Race Relations in New Zealand, a Review of the Literature, National Council of Churches, Christchurch, 1963, quotes J.R. McCreary, ‘The Modification of International Attitudes: A New Zealand Study’, Dept. of Psychology, Victoria University, Wellington, Publications in Psychology, No.2, 1952. McCreary recorded racial attitudes which in 1952 showed Chinese preferred ahead of other coloured minorities but behind the Anglo-Saxon peoples and also Maoris and Pacific Islanders, Germans, Jews, Russians and Italians. Thompson additionally found that G.M. Vaughan, Ethnic Awareness and Attitudes: a Developmental Study of Maori and Pakeha Children in New Zealand, Ph.D. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1962, reached similar findings. A. Trlin, ‘Social Distance and Assimilation Orientation: a Survey of Attitudes towards Immigrants in New Zealand’, in Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 12, no.2, September 1971, pp.141-162, still revealed similar findings (although in my opinion, the cumulative effect of my generation entering the general society, and the concept of multiculturism, were by then starting to cause a fairly rapid transformation of European attitudes towards the New Zealand-Chinese).
37. The Returned Services Association held the cachet of war service and was powerful, political, influential and pervasive in society. Not only was it anti-communist but it was also generally conservative and monocultural in outlook. Through ageing membership, its power declined slowly in the 1970s and more rapidly from the early 1980s.
38. On occasion, the suspicion was expressed overtly. For instance, during the Korean war a K Force soldier began a rumour that the Chinese in my hometown of Ashburton were communists or communist sympathisers, when he was told in our fruitshop on a Friday night that there were no bananas left for sale to him. The rumour swept through the town but enough Europeans supported the Chinese to reassure them to ride it out. The writer remembers how uncomfortable it was.
39. J.K. Hunn, Report on Department of Maori Affairs; with Statistical Supplement (24 August 1960), R.E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, 1961, pp.14-16. J.M. Booth and J.K. Hunn, Integration of Maori and Pakeha, No. 1 in a series of special studies, Department of Maori Affairs, Government Printer, Wellington, 1962.
40. J. Smith, International Perspective on Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration, in Proceedings of the Population Conference, New Zealand Immigration Service, Wellington, 12-14 November 1997. On pp.45-46 and pp.50-52, Smith reported that by the third generation, intermarriage almost reaches half in Asian and Hispanic ancestry communities in America, their fertility rates have converged to the national norm and economic differences ‘with the Mayflower generation’ have been erased.
41. Compiled from university graduation lists. After 1961, the number of overseas Chinese (Colombo Plan) graduates made compilation difficult. The writer graduated in December 1959 at the tail-end of the Chinese refugee graduates and knew most of the small group of Chinese university contemporaries throughout New Zealand.
42. E.S. Ho, The Challenge of Culture Change. The Cross-cultural Adaptation of Hong Kong Chinese Adolescent Immigrants in New Zealand. PhD thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton,1995, p.24. She quotes C.Y. Chung, ‘In 1981, 24.3% of all New Zealand Chinese males and 16.2% of all Chinese females aged 15 years and over studied in tertiary institutions, compared with the New Zealand average of 7.1% for males and 6.1% for females’. New Zealand Now, Asian New Zealanders, Statistics New Zealand, Wellington, 1995, p.53, show similar percentages in fig. 8.4, for 1991.
43. M. Ip, ‘Chinese New Zealanders: Old Settlers and New Immigrants’, in S.W. Greif, (ed.), Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand: One People, Two Peoples, Many Peoples?, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1995, p.186.
44. Census, 1986, ‘Birthplaces and Ethnic Origin’, Tables 10, 11, and 12. These tables reveal that the total number of full-blood and mixed-blood Chinese in New Zealand was 26,304, of whom the full-blood New Zealand-born persons totalled 8,352 and those born in China, 4,572. It would be fair to assume that in 1986, the great majority of the full-blood New Zealand-born and China-born Chinese persons (plus an unknown number of Hong Kong-born relatives) comprised what may be regarded as the traditional New Zealand-Chinese community. The Chinese-European mixed-blood population was 2,556, of whom about 85% were New Zealand-born. The Chinese-Maori population was 807, plus 1,263 of further admixture. Most of these mixed-blood groups could be safely regarded as part of, or derived from the traditional New Zealand-Chinese community. Thus in 1986, the New Zealand-born and China-born full-blood Chinese, the New Zealand-born Chinese-Europeans, the Chinese-Maoris, and those Chinese-Maoris of further admixture totalled 17,064.
45. N.Z. Herald, 12 April 1996, p.1-5. Mr McKinnon also said 40% of New Zealand’s exports go to, and a third of New Zealand’s imports come from, Asia.
46. N. Murphy, ibid, p.304, reports the number of Indo-Chinese refugees and the Chinese percentage.
47. Personal communication with Hon. Kerry Burke, 31 March 2001.
48. K. Burke, Review of Immigration Policy, August 1986, Government Printer, Wellington, 1986. Mr Burke said to me there was ‘no problem’ in passing his review in the Labour Government. The Immigration Act, 1987 followed and spelt out procedural details (but not policy).
49. The government subcommittee comprised the MPs J. Anderton, R. Prebble, F. Gerbic and R. Northey. The No. 2 of Gates and Shroff was Don Bond, and their academic advisors included R. Bedford, J. Poot and Ruth Farmer. Shroff wrote ‘New Zealand’s Immigration Policy’, in the N.Z. Official Year Book, 1988-89, in which he acknowledged the influence on his department of J. Poot’s research on the relationship of international migration and the economy, much of it via a computer model. Poot embodied his thinking in the papers: J. Poot, G. Nana and B. Philpott, International Migration and the New Zealand Economy, A Long-Run Perspective, Victoria University Press for Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington, 1988; and J. Poot, ‘International Migration and the New Zealand Economy of the 1980s’, in A.D. Trlin and P. Spoonley (eds.), New Zealand and International Migration, A Digest and Bibliography Number 2, Massey University, Palmerston North, 1992. The paper by W. Kasper, Populate or Languish? Rethinking New Zealand Immigration Policy, New Zealand Business Roundtable, Wellington, 1990, was also influential. A.D. Trlin, ‘For the Promotion of Economic Growth and Prosperity: New Zealand’s Immigration Policy, 1991-1995’, in A.D. Trlin and P. Spoonley (eds.), New Zealand International Migration, A Digest and Bibliography Number 3, Massey University Printery, Palmerston North, 1997, p.4, summarised: ‘Poot et al (1988) demonstrated that an annual net migration gain of 15,000 people [which was] equated by Kasper (1990) with an annual gross intake of 30,000 [39,000 according to Poot, 1992] would [over 15 years] yield small but significant increases in the national income, living standards, population growth and the demand for labour … without adding to inflation as immigrants stimulated the economy with their demands for housing, goods and services.’ Other writers have added to the list of assumed benefits of immigration in the resulting genetic and cultural diversity, new skills and entrepreneurialship, new ideas and expanded international linkages. Consequently, New Zealand governments have in the recent past (Otago Daily Times, 21 March 1990; Dominion, 23 December 1997) aimed for net annual gains of 10,000 and gross intakes of about 35,000 but have been defeated by the uncontrolled factor of departures and unpopular immigration regulations. From 1 October 2001, the Labour Government is aiming for a gross intake of about 50,000, up from 38,000 in the previous year (Otago Daily Times, 17 September 2001, p.2).
50. M.E. McCollom, ‘Immigrant Entrepreneurs’, in J.A. Klein and J.G. Miller (eds.), The American Edge, Leveraging Manufacturing’s Hidden Assets, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993, pp.163-65.
51. National Business Review (NBR) Weekly Magazine, 15 February 1991, p.14. This survey was conducted by the Lausanne business school, IMEDE, for the World Economic Forum. Also see Otago Daily Times, 19 May 1993, where New Zealand was also ranked 17th (behind seventh placed Australia) in the United Nations’ quality of life index. In an earlier editorial on immigration, the NBR, 24 August 1990, p.8, supported a net inflow of immigrants and concluded that, ‘It is from Asia New Zealand has most to gain from immigration’.
52. In addition, immigrants have told the writer that the political uncertainties of Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan at the time were also factors in their decision to leave. Ross Pauling, a senior partner in charge of Business Migration at Coopers and Lybrand, Manukau, noted four reasons: ‘the educational opportunities it offers for their children; its NZ policies and environment for racial equality and understanding, the stability of its Western-style democratic Government; and the relatively pollution free environment.’ (Coopers and Lybrand, Forecast, August 1990, p.5). Although they knew about the ‘quality of life’ features, obviously many immigrants did not fully know the difficulties of establishing business and earnings in New Zealand. Yet some may not have cared about all the details since they were coming for a less hectic life, a life style change (G. Reid, ‘Dreaded Asian Invasion a Myth,’ N.Z. Herald, 12 July 2000, p.A13; personal communication with James Koh, 7 April 2001). W. Friesen and M. Ip, ‘New Chinese New Zealanders: Profiles of a Transnational Community in Auckland’, in W. Friesen, M. Ip, E. Ho, R.D. Bedford and J.E. Goodwin, East Asian New Zealanders: Research on New Migrants, Aotearoa/New Zealand Migration Research Network, Research Papers, No. 3, Albany, Auckland, Massey University, Department of Geography, 1997, found only 10% of their survey had immigrated primarily for business reasons.
53. NBR Weekend Review, 18 November 1988, p.15: ‘ "People are looking for an insurance policy." And New Zealand’s is going cheap. "It’s the cheapest in the world".’ See also NZ Listener, 19 November 1988, pp.18-20; Otago Daily Times, 28 June 1989; and Listener and TV Times, 22 and 29 January 1990. Yet the BIP has brought in solid migrant families and money. However, the relative ease of entry by the BIP has also fostered a disparaging view that some Asian (and later South African) immigrants came to New Zealand specifically to use the country (after the granting of permanent residency or citizenship) as a ‘back door’ to Australia. Evidence to support this view remains anecdotal so far; I myself have not come across any such case.
54. Indeed, some commentators thought the BIP was actually designed to attract Hong Kong emigrants. For example, Colin James wrote, ‘the Asian profile has been growing, partly as a result of a programme designed to encourage wealthy Taiwanese and Hong Kong residents to bring their money … and business skills to New Zealand.’ (Far Eastern Economic Review, 19 April 1990, p.21). Others like Professor Michael Hill (of the Department of Sociology, Victoria University) had the same perception although A. Trlin and J. Kang, ‘The Business Immigration Policy and the Characteristics of Approved Hong Kong and Taiwanese Applicants, 1986-88,’ in A.D. Trlin and P. Spoonley, (eds.), New Zealand and International Migration, 1992, p.48, cast doubt on this aspect. Burke himself denied any design in connection with the Hong Kong exodus, and Gordon Shroff said to me he was actually worried about the Hong Kong potential influx as he thought many of them might be seeking a temporary rather than a permanent haven.
55. NBR Weekend Review, 18 November 1988, p.15.
56. N.Z. Immigration Service, Report of the Working Party on Immigration, March 1991.
57. N.Z. Immigration Service, Immigration Fact Packs.
58. ibid.
59. N.Z. Immigration Service, New Zealand’s Targeted Immigration Policies, July 1995, p.4.
60. NBR Weekend Review, 18 November 1988, p.16; ‘A general profile of Hong Kong immigrants to New Zealand is of couples in their late 30s and early 40s, with two or three children either approaching, or in adolescence. They are neither super-well educated nor super-wealthy, yet conversant in English, with a commitment to ambition and advancement and with an average up to $500,000 to $600,000 to do something with’. A. Trlin, and J. Kang, ibid, pp.48-64, found much the same characteristics for Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants, except that a high proportion of their sample were well-educated and the Hong Kong Chinese spoke better English than the Taiwanese.
61. Personal communication with Jean Wong, 28 March 1996. Mrs Wong, a prominent member in the Auckland Taiwanese community who was one of the first to arrive (in 1980), told me that while the BIP admitted numerous solid families of small businessmen, many other Taiwanese immigrants had the equivalent of a ‘few’ million NZ dollars, though their base of wealth often was still in Taiwan. Graham Chin from Malaysia, a bank manager for Asians in the Countrywide Bank (personal communication, 29 March 1996), confirmed that the first wave of Chinese migrants came particularly under the BIP and often had ‘three or four million NZ dollars net’. He said the second wave came mainly as General Category migrants and had less, especially after buying a house.
62. J. Koh, International Linkages initiated and/or established, in Proceedings of the Population Conference, New Zealand Immigration Service, Wellington, 12-14 November 1997.
63. Personal communication with Hon. A. Malcolm, 28 March 1996.
64. McCollom, ibid, p.164, wrote that ‘The very process of uprooting and resettling forces immigrants to become highly adaptive, ingenious and perservering.’ Perhaps this observation applies less to migrants emphasising the idea of a ‘great life style’.
65. McCollom, ibid, pp.168-70.
67. Personal communication with Graham Chin, 29 March 1996.
68. Weekend Herald, 18-19 November 2000, p.E2.
69. N.Z. Herald, 29 October 1997, p.A13; and M. Ip, Successful Settlement of Migrants and Relevant Factors for Setting Immigration Targets, in Proceedings of the Population Conference, New Zealand Immigration Service, Wellington, 12-14 November 1997.
70. J. Lidgard, E. Ho, Y.Y. Chen, J. Goodwin and R. Bedford, ‘Immigrants from Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong in New Zealand in the mid-1990s: Macro and Micro Perspectives’, Population Studies Centre, Discussion Paper no. 29, University of Waikato, Hamilton, 1998, p.16. (The published reports of Statistics New Zealand are frequently so broad nowadays that one has to commission specific files, as probably happened in this paper).
71. E. Ho, J. Goodwin, R. Bedford and B. Spragg, ‘Migrants in the Workforce: A Preliminary Comparison of the Experiences of Chinese and Korean Recent Immigrants in 1991 and 1996’, Briefing Paper No. 7 prepared for the participants at the Population Conference, Wellington, 12-14 November 1997, Population Studies Centre, University of Waikato, Hamilton, 1997, pp.14-15; quoted by A. Trlin and A. Henderson, The Effects and Implications of Unemployment Among New Chinese Arrivals: A Report from the New Settlers Programme, paper presented at the conference of the Association for the Study of Chinese and their Descendants in Australasia and the Pacific Islands, and the Department of History, University of Otago, at Dunedin, 20-21 November 1998.
72. Smith, ibid, pp.55-59. The Otago Daily Times, 16 August 1997, p.16, reported M. Ip’s survey which found that each of about 1,000 Chinese migrants had taken an average income drop of $NZ21,000.
73. The subject of the student allowance caused public ire because it was thought that some Asian newcomers were claiming them on the grounds that their parents had little or no income in New Zealand, although suspected of having considerable assets either in this country (like an expensive home) or in the previous homeland. The story goes that Asian students were turning up in their BMWs to apply for the student allowance. Despite this, the mainland Chinese students may have received the most attention because they seemed to be frequent applicants. But there were genuinely poor Chinese students who were studying for another degree because their original qualifications were of little use for finding work. North and South, February 1997, pp.40-41, found that at Auckland University, 6536 were on student allowances; 1982 of them were permanent residents rather than New Zealand citizens; and 476 of the permanent residents listed their land of origin as Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China or Korea. In Canterbury University, 473 or 44% of the permanent residency students were receiving student allowances, compared with ‘only 30% of the New Zealand students enrolled at Canterbury [who] are eligible for student allowances.’
Now that student allowances are barred for two years after entry, another story has arisen concerning new immigrant students (allegedly from mainland China) who apply for the emergency benefit, obtain a student loan and eventually skip the country after graduation. The writer has heard variations of this story, commonly with the addition of getting parents to New Zealand and leaving them here afterwards to live on social welfare. But where are the hard figures? The reality from a doctor’s experience is that older people moved to a new culture and environment strongly tend to be social isolated, especially if family leave them alone.
So, while not excusing any exploitive students and their parents, one wonders how extensive the above practices might be.
74. N.Z. Herald, 15 November 1997, p.A5.
75. M. Ip, S K-M Kang and S. Page, ‘Migration and travel between Asia and New Zealand’, Asia-Pacific Migration Research Network, Massey University-Albany, No.2000/1. The authors suggest that the Chinese astronaut phenomenon in New Zealand has progressed in a significant number of cases beyond merely seeking work to the deliberate adoption of the transnational way of life as a means for possessing more than one citizenship, building multi-locality networks, and having multiple transnational work options. The authors think that this extension of the astronaut way of life will grow extensively in the present climate of globalisation. Be that as it may, my comment is that at their level, they have chosen a risky way of life with built-in instability of operations, a way of life not suitable for all. Perhaps it suits numerous southern Chinese and Indian trading families, but it has not been widely adopted by Japanese, for instance. Also, while dual nationality is acceptable in many countries, sooner or later a situation will arise in the course of living when the biblical text ‘You cannot have two masters’ will apply to these persons and families. Is it too far-fetched to think that just one civil crisis at one base could unravel a transnational’s well-laid plans? Transnationalism often appears to be a defensive strategy, as seen for example, in the Chinese advice in New Zealand given to offspring to take up medical studies ‘because medicine is a respected profession which can be practised anywhere in the world.’ The deliberate adoption of the transnational way of life may be another defensive strategy to disperse members of a family to other countries and citizenships. The dispersal may increase commercial opportunities but a principal aim is to ensure the survival and security of part of the family and its assets should civil catastrophe involve other members.
The Beijing Review, 15 February 2001, p.8, reports that there are about 130 million transnational workers in the world today. Yet this phenomenon is not new. J. Keegan, The First World War, Pimlico, London, 1999, pp.10-12, describes the turn of the 20th century as a notable period in the progress of an integrated international economy, with freely flowing capital based on London and other European financial centres, and complemented by world-wide intellectual, philanthropic and religious movements. That active phase of commercial interdependence, which substained many transnational workers, was accelerated by developments in steam and rail transport, the telegraph and stamped postage, rising populations, large scale migrations, new sources of raw materials and cheap manufactured goods. It was widely believed then that such interdependence would rationally prevent an extensive outbreak of war in Europe. But two World Wars followed when men and women had to choose where they stood, that is, what nationality they were and where their loyalties lay.
E. Cheung, ‘Loyalty and migrants’, in Asia 2000 Foundation of New Zealand, Review, March/April 2001, p.10, found that the members of the Hong Kong New Zealand Club had returned from New Zealand to Hong Kong for different reasons. Some could not find work in New Zealand, some were waiting for their (H.K.) pensions to start before returning to New Zealand and some were in Hong Kong selling New Zealand products full time.
76. N.Z. Herald, 13 May 1998, p.A17.
77. The estimate is based on the total Chinese population in 1996 (over 81,000), as against about 17,000 full-blood and mixed blood persons enumerated in the 1986 census who are presumed to be of Kiwi Chinese stock (see end-note 42), plus some natural increase since then.
78. The writer knows of only a few organizations in which different Chinese subgroupings are integrated together; they include the Chinese Medical Association and Vincent St. Presbyterian Church in Auckland, and the Dunedin Chinese Presbyterian Church and the Dunedin Chinese Language and Cultural Trust. In Auckland, the two main Kiwi Chinese societies – the local branch of the New Zealand Chinese Association and the Auckland Chinese Community Centre -- are not strong enough to lead other subgroups. But in every New Zealand city, there are Chinese men and women with goodwill towards other subgroups; Steven Wong in Auckland for example has formed the Chinese Associations of New Zealand which is getting a good response from several other organizations.
79. M. Skinner, A. Trlin, A. Henderson and N. North, Old Country Connections: The Importance of Relatives and Friends in International Migration, New Settlers Programme, Massey University, paper presented at the conference New Directions: New Settlers, Migration and New Zealand Society into the 21st century, Wellington, 12-13 April, 2000, reveals an early tendency of mainland Chinese to assist relatives and friends to New Zealand.
80. Personal communication with Mrs Pansy Wong, MP, 10 March 2001. Nevertheless, about 70% of New Zealanders now realise that Asia is the most important region for this country (T. Groser, CEO of the Asia 2000 Foundation, on Asia Down Under, TV1, 26 April 2001). This statement was based on the Asia 2000 Foundation survey on New Zealanders’ attitudes towards Asia in April 2000. The results were that some 69% of New Zealanders believed Asia was most important region to New Zealand’s future, ahead of the South Pacific (54%), Europe and U.K. (54%), Nth America (50%) and South America (22%).
81. R. Walker, C.W.D. Wu, M. Soothi-O-Soth, and A. Parr, New Zealand’s Asian Population: Views on Health and Health Services, Health Funding Authority, Auckland, 1998, Appendix A, lists city and district Chinese populations as follows: North Shore city, 6,441; Waitakere city, 3,726; Auckland city, 20,214; Manukau city, 12,540; Papakura district, 435; Franklin district, 489; total for Auckland region 43,845: Hamilton city, 1,479; Palmerston North city, 1,746; Upper Hutt city, 330; Lower Hutt city, 1881; Wellington city, 5,310; total for Wellington region, 7,521 [generally believed to be dominated by Kiwi Chinese]: Christchurch city, 5,925: Dunedin city, 2,256.
82. Auckland’s city infrastructure was put under strain because most Asian newcomers settled there and because many Chinese and Koreans limited their choice to Epsom, Remuera, Howick, Pakuranga and North Shore. These are well-off suburbs with good primary and secondary schools, and Mrs Lily Lee Ho (a senior Education Department official) and her colleagues told me that some schools were very stressed when their rolls were rapidly altered with large percentages of Asian children - 20% or 30%, and in one case (Pakuranga High), over 50%. The character of the suburbs also altered and, by 1996, new quality housing was being built wherever feasible with Asian buyers in mind. Housing prices went up in the ensuing boom, aggravated by immigrants buying additional property for rental. (The boom subsided with the fall in the number of new immigrants). As regards transport, Auckland is popularly reputed to be in a ‘gridlock’ position, and the water supply and sewage system need costly additions and upgradings because of the growth of the city. Enterprise Auckland, Asian Immigration. Economic and Social Survey, Auckland Institute of Studies, September 1996, p.3, found that Asian immigrants above all dislike the transport conditions in the city.
83. By 1996, it was estimated that residents in Howick had become about one third Asian, most of them Chinese (personal communication with Miss Samantha Wong, a local land agent, 24 March 1996). Whole new streets were being added on the periphery of Howick and about half the new houses were being sold to Asians. Miss Wong said the Chinese were often ‘buying down’, having sold their dwellings in their previous homeland for a much higher price.
84. New Zealanders usually don’t bargain and they dislike flash cars (or at least others owning them), the possession of which promoted comments like, ‘They [the migrant newcomers] had wealth and flaunted it.’ The hesitancy in driving, now less noticeable, may have resulted partly from wives (with ‘astronaut’ husbands out of New Zealand) driving in conditions different to what they were accustomed to. That some newcomers abused the social welfare system is indisputable; for example, upset Howick doctors reported apparently wealthy Asians using welfare community cards at their surgeries (Otago Daily Times, 25 March 1995), which gave each of them (and like Europeans) a medical subsidy perhaps totalling $300-$400 per annum. Probably these sums are for serious new ailments since all migrants undergo checks for a reasonably clean bill of health before arriving. There was suspicion that some Asian immigrants were ‘schooled up’ to claim welfare benefits, but ultimately of course the blame rests on individual greed. In 1996, no figures were available (personal communication with Hon. P.J. Gresham, Minister of Social Welfare, 5 June 1996). In 1997, it was reported that ‘more than 7,700 [unspecified] migrants [were] on some form of welfare benefit’ (Otago Daily Times, 13 November 1997, p.3).
85. Personal communication with Detective Sergeant S.T. Bennett, 5 December 1997; reported in Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, vol.3, 1999, pp.260-61.
86. ‘Inv-Asian’: Eastern Courier, 16 April 1993, pp.6-7, special feature, part 1; "Wins and Losses in immigration lotto’: Eastern Courier, 23 April 1993, pp.6-7, part 2. These articles were syndicated to a number of free community newspapers like the Eastern Courier, East and Bays Courier and Manukau Courier. The immediate response included letters from M. Ip, A. Loo and Mee-Mee Phipps (East and Bays Courier, 5 May 1993, p.4; Manukau Courier, 6 May 1993, p.10). A complaint against the articles followed (Otago Daily Times, 29 April 1993) and was withdrawn, but then Dr T. Snowdon forwarded a complaint and the Press Council ruled that there was a case for rebuke in relation to part 1 (Manukau Courier, 10 September 1993, p.10).
87. The notice and new regulations were printed in the N.Z. Immigration Service’s document, New Zealand’s Targeted Immigration Policies. Summary of October 1995 policy changes, July 1995. The changes were also detailed in the N.Z. Immigration Service’s Immigration Fact Pack bulletins from February 1996. As to the rush of applicants trying to beat the October 1995 ‘adjustments’, the processing of their papers fell months behind and were still being processed under the old categories in November 1996, according to the Immigration Fact Pack of that date. This is what the Fact Packs said about the language test, ‘English language skills [are] also required by the accompanying partner and dependent children 16 years and over. The minimum English language requirement, if migrants do not come from an English-speaking background, is level 5 of the general module [with changing papers] of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) [of Cambridge University]. Principal applicants must meet this requirement, while non-principal adult applicants can instead pay a $20,000 fee which is refundable in full or part if the standard is reached within their first year in New Zealand.’ In other words, the government was assessing the extra social costs of inadequate English at $20,000 a person.
88. ‘Chicken run’: North and South, May 1994, pp.45-51.
89. N.Z. Herald, 12 July 2000, p.A13.
90. N.Z. Herald, 12 April 1994.
91. Personal communication with Hon. W. Creech, Minister of Employment, 4 June 1996.
92. The Listener Heylen poll in the N.Z. Listener, 15 October 1994, p.13, gave a breakdown of the 54% of respondents who were against more immigration from Asia, showing that most opposition came from skilled trades or manual workers. A.D. Trlin, ‘For the Promotion of Economic Growth and Prosperity: New Zealand’s Immigration Policy, 1991-1995’, ibid, p.13, found that over 50% of the General Category principal applicant approvals were obtained by professional persons, while managers were 11% and trades workers were only 5% of the total. The quote about competition is in J. Smith, ibid, p.53.
93. N.Z. Herald, 17 November 1997, p.A11.
94. A litany of abuse is described in the Taiwanese magazine, Sinorama, ‘A New "Yellow Peril" for New Zealand’, October 1996, pp.9-19. Also see, N.Z. Herald, ‘School erupts in race fight’, 25 March 1994; ‘Chinese fearful’, 12 April 1994; ‘Chinese abused, soaked in drink’, 25 April 1994; Otago Daily Times, ‘Skinheads target Asian youths [in Nelson]’, 18 July 1995; Eastern Courier, ‘Racial taunts in Howick’ 26 April 1996, p.5. There was also the formation of the extremist party ‘Kiwis against Further Immigration.’.
95. Jewish rabbis and Catholic bishops issued strong statements against the clamour (N.Z. Herald, 8 June 1996, p1-20; Press, 21 September 1996, p.3) but the Presbyterian and Methodist Public Questions Committee was so weak in response that the N.Z. Herald, 8 April 1996, p.1-6, described their statement as ‘disappointing.’
96. The Hon. A. Malcolm may have presaged this judgement when he said that the October 1995 changes in immigration rules ‘legitimatised Winston Peter’s attack on Asians.’ (Personal communication, 12 March 1999).
97. Negative comments were made by Dr Ranginui Walker (see A.D. Trlin, ‘For the Promotion of Economic Growth and Prosperity: New Zealand’s Immigration Policy, 1991-1995’, in A.D. Trlin and P. Spoonley, ibid, pp.18-19), and the (Maori) Bishop of Aotearoa supported W. Peters (Otago Daily Times, 14 March 1996). Dr Walker was quoted in the Sunday Star Times, 28 April 1996, p.C6, ‘New migrants have no commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi’; and in his article ‘Immigration Policy and the Political Economy of New Zealand’ (which appeared in 1995 in S.W. Grief, Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand, pp.282-302), his best-reasoned points relate to the limited or even lack of consultation with Maori over immigration policies. Sir Peter Tapsell criticised bigotry and demogogues in the electoral seat of Winston Peters (N.Z. Herald, 29 June 1996, p.1-5). Sir Tipene O’Regan supported the Asian immigrants in the Population Conference, Wellington, in November 1997. Sir Paul Reeves also seemed to give support to the Asians, at least in trade (Otago Daily Times, 14 November 1997, p.3). Georgina te Heuheu, Minister of Women’s Affairs and Associate Minister of Treaty Negotiations spoke of Maori and Asian common features to a Wellington Chinese Community Forum (City Voice, 22 October 1998). Jenny Lee, Annette Sykes and Mike Smith expressed their positive feelings for Asians at the conference of the Association for the Study of Chinese and their Descendants in Australasia and the Pacific Islands, and Department of History, Otago University, in Dunedin, November 1998.
98. A NBR-Consultus poll in October 1995 showed that 51% of those surveyed thought this country had too many Asians; in March 1996 this percentage had fallen to 46% (Press, 18 May 1996, p.3); and in 1997, to 37% (Otago Daily Times, 13 December 1997, p.14). In comparison to past polls, A.D. Trlin, ‘For the Promotion of Economic Growth and Prosperity: New Zealand’s Immigration Policy, 1991-1995’, ibid, pp.17-18, reported an Insight poll in 1992 which found that 44% of respondents thought this country had too many Asians, and a TV1 Colmar Brunton poll in 1990 which found that 32% felt the numbers arriving from Asia should be reduced. The Asia 2000 Foundations April 2000 survey found that 29% of New Zealanders still continued to hold negative views about Asian immigration, compared with 36% in 1997.
99. Otago Daily Times, 15 December 1997, p.1.
100. Softening the regulations: Otago Daily Times, 23 January 1998, p.A6 (editorial commenting on the December 1997 changes). The N.Z. Immigration Service, Immigration Fact Pack, December 1998 and July 2000 describe the regulations to those dates. Difficulties with the remaining language requirements were reported and contrasted with Australia’s 500 hours of free language tuition by the Manukau Courier, 26 August 1999, p.9.
101. The quote is from the introduction to the Immigration Amendment Act, No. 1, 1999, in New Zealand Statutes, 1999, vol.1, p.120. The urgency was undertaken in order to insert further provisions on the detention, departure and wilful aiding of unlawful arrivals in the Immigration Amendment Act, No. 2, 1999.
102. The NZPD, 2000, vol.587, pp.5881-83, record Pansy Wong and Keith Locke criticising an amnesty scheme which appeared to favour long term, well-settled overstayers especially from the Pacific Islands over less long-settled Asian refugee-claimants and overstayers. Locke also ascertained the removal rate (from New Zealand) of overstayers in 1998/99; the figures he gave were as follows: Chinese, 14% of an estimated 600 persons; Tongans, 9% of an estimated 5000 persons; and Britons, 3% of an estimated 1200 persons.
103. Otago Daily Times, 10 February 2001, p.30 and 17 September 2001, p.2.
104. A. Trlin, N. North, R. Pernice and A. Henderson, The New Settlers Programme: Encounters, Responses, Policies: An Introduction to a Research Project, at the National Conference of New Zealand Federation of Ethnic Councils (Inc.), Massey University, Palmerston North, 14-16 November 1997. Subsequent criticism includes the report of the New Zealand Association of Citizens Advice Bureau, Forgotten People: The Experience of Immigrants to New Zealand, March 2000).
105. Sinorama, October 1996, p.15; and personal communication with Graham Chin, 29 March 1996. H-K. Yoon (ed.), An Ethno-Geography of Taiwanese, Japanese and Filipino Immigrants in Auckland, Occasional Paper No. 28, Department of Geography, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1995, has these two insightful, migrant comments:
‘An immigrant’s lifestyle is a mixture of a life that is accustomed to and the new life that one has to get used to. This is not easy … to try and embrace a culture that is totally different to theirs is a complex process and not completely achievable … Life in a new country is like a maze, the migrant not only feels lost but there is also the struggle of finding their own ‘niche’ in a new country.’ (H.P. Baral, ‘Filipino Migrants in Auckland’, in Yoon (ed.), pp.171-72).
‘The New Zealand public (or the media) was not giving the Asian community time to settle and find their place in society … As one respondent commented, "while it is a culture shock for New Zealanders who have had so little contact with eastern culture, it is even more of a shock for Asians, who have to change their entire way of life. All we need is time - but time is something the media won’t allow.’ (T.M. Boyer, ‘Home Sweet Home’, in Yoon (ed.), p.80).
106. Press release by Hon. L. Dalziel; 12 June 2000.
107. According to Mrs Lily Lee Ho, a Kiwi Chinese who is the national English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) coordinator in the Ministry of Education, the worse time was in 1995, when some schools gained so many Asian newcomers. The initial ‘culture shock’ for teachers was partly eased when Asian parents formed associations and networks which established better dialogue with the education sector. The Auckland College of Education also helped by sending advisers to guide and assist teachers. With an ensuing wider spread of migrants all over Auckland, plus more government funding for language needs, the situation had decreased in intensity and prominence by 1997.
108. In Auckland and elsewhere, each district, each municipality and each school board seemed to be on its own in addressing the immigrant problem. Little coordinated aid was given to enable the Chinese and other Asians to settle in more quickly, enter employment or invest more quickly and proudly become New Zealand citizens more quickly. For instance, Lorna Wong was the sole Plunket Nurse (an adviser on infants and very young children) in the sole Chinese unit for the Chinese newcomers in the 1995 period. One is glad to report that this unit now has four nurses. Newcomers tried to help themselves – by manning the telephones of Life Line and Citizens Advice Bureau, by setting up a radio station, publishing newspapers, and setting up support groups based on previous homelands, churches, Buddhist groups, and the like. In this regard, R. Pernice, A. Trlin, A. Henderson and N. North, ‘ Employment and Mental Health of Three Groups of Immigrants to New Zealand’, NZ Journal of Psychology, vol.29, No. 1 (June 2000), pp.24-29, found widespread low mental health among mainland Chinese, Indians and South Africans in the first few months upon arrival, whether employed (most of the South Africans) or unemployed (most of the Chinese and Indians).
109. S. Lam, The Maori of New Zealand, Maori Legends, Traditions and History (in Chinese), The Publishing House of World Chinese Writers, Taiwan, 1998. T. Fang, G. Tian and L. Chen, A Piece of Jade in the Pacific (in Chinese), Guangdong Tourism Press, Guangzhou, 1999.
110. Otago Daily Times, 10 March 1995.
111. N.Z. Herald, 3 April 1996, pp.4-5. E. Ho, J. Lidgard, R. Bedford and P. Spoonley, ‘East Asian Migrants in New Zealand: Adaptation and Employment’, in A.D. Trlin and P. Spoonley, New Zealand and International Migration, 1997, p.43, quotes the Auckland City Council’s estimate in 1996 that immigrants invested about two billion dollars in the Auckland housing market in 1995, while another one billion was spent on household goods, vehicles and other property investments.
112. J. Smith, ibid, p.53.
113.There was widespread expectation in New Zealand that the migrants would quickly ‘bring a welcome boost to the job market and economy’ (Christchurch Mail, 19 November 1990, p.3; Otago Daily Times, 2 March 1991 [cartoon] and 24 March 1992; Metro, November 1991, pp.116-24 [‘Will the immigrants really kick-start the economy?’]). It almost appeared as a quid pro quo situation which might be simplistically expressed as follows: ‘We let you in, and you provide us with quick economic results!’ This expectation may have contributed to the angst against the astronauts - they were leaving and working in and appearing to benefit another land instead of New Zealand - and as indicated, against the immigrants as a body when the economic boost failed to materialise as much as the protesters hoped for.
114. For example, take the incoming medical practitioners who were admitted between 1991-95 without due consideration as to whether their qualifications would be accepted in New Zealand. The New Zealand GP, 24 January 2001, p.4, noted that in only three mid-90s years, New Zealand gained 536 non-nurse health professionals from the Middle East, 285 from South East Asia, 908 from South Asia and 1,329 from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. Only a minority qualified for registration here. In 2000, 1201 doctors applied to the Medical Council for a newly introduced, long overdue bridging programme for registration, with six courses catering for 300 doctors in three years. Some in the medical profession have claimed that around 600 South African doctors also arrived about the above period, but presumably they were able to register by an easier process because of their British linked medical schools.
115. McCollom, ibid, p.175.
117. Otago Daily Times, 22 August 2001, p.8; TV1 News, 10 September 2001.
118. Hong Kong migrants throughout the world have been reported returning to that city since its successful changeover of sovereignty in 1997 (Beijing Review, 23-30 March 1997, pp.13-15). The returnees usually had acquired a foreign passport (in addition to one issued by the special administrative region of Hong Kong), thereby making it more convenient to travel and conduct business abroad. Among those returning from New Zealand, Eric Cheung (a reporter in the TV programme ‘Asia Down Under’) found mixed feelings and reasons for return (E.Cheung in Asia 2000 Foundation of New Zealand, ibid, p.10). The same probably applies to those returning to Taiwan and elsewhere.
119. N.Z. Herald, 13 May 1998, p.A17.
120. Personal communication with Rev. Stuart Vogel, 3 March 2001. He is the convener for the Chinese and Korean Presbyterian Churches in Auckland, and the estimate was arrived at by discussion between colleagues, parishioners and himself. He added that the departures occurred despite big losses in the sale of their homes.
121. M. Ip, S.K-M Kang and S. Page, ibid, p.5, quotes E. Laquian, A. Laquian and T. McGee (eds.), The Silent Debate: Asian Immigration and Racism in Canada, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1997, p.210: ‘From Italy in the early 20th century it was [a] 40 to 50 percent return rate [from North America] and for the English in the late 19th century it was around 40 percent.’ Laquian et al further thought that Chinese sojourners appeared to have been little different from that of many European settlers. R. Bedford and J. Lidgard, ‘Arrivals, Departures and Net Migration 1984/85 – 1995/96’, in A. Trlin and P. Spoonley, New Zealand and International Migration, 1997, p.40, wrote that ‘[departing] migration flows are common after a major influx of immigrants to New Zealand – they occurred in the 1960s amongst Dutch and English immigrants, during the 1970s amongst Pacific Island immigrants, and in the late 1980s amongst Asian [mainly Indo-Chinese] immigrants who moved to other countries such as Australia, especially after they obtained permanent residence status or citizenship in New Zealand.’ L. Winklemann and R. Winklemann, Immigrants in New Zealand: A Study of their Labour Market Outcomes – Part I, Department of Economics, University of Canterbury, prepared for the Department of Labour, Wellington, 1997, found that only around two-thirds to three quarters of the immigrants of 1981-85 who were recorded in the 1986 census, were re-enumerated in the 1996 census.
122. Personal communication with Rev. Stuart Vogel, 3 March 2001. One of the New Zealand features about Chinese immigration from the earliest years is that both their coming and their going excites adverse comment. At present, however, the race situation in Auckland appears quiet and public comment on the exodus is muted.
123. The 2325 v.14 approvals occurred in 1995-96 (Immigration Fact Pack, August 1996). The business capital inflow, presumably from North Asia, fell from $395 million in 1995-96 to less than $5 million in 1997-98, (W. Gamble, ‘ "Few lures" for Asian migrants’, N.Z. Herald, 29 March 2000, reporting an interview with M. Ip).
124. Mainland China is now the leading Chinese source among the top 10 countries with migrants coming to New Zealand. In 2000, 1,186 China nationals entered New Zealand in the General Skills Category (the successor in October 1995 to the General Category), 336 in the business categories, and 739 and 984 in the marriage and parent sub-categories respectively of the family category. Overall, the mainland Chinese immigrants seem to have the greatest persistence, the least wealth, a high percentage of tertiary qualifications, young children, the greatest urge of all the Chinese newcomers to reunify families in New Zealand, the greatest spread of cultural attainments of all the Chinese groups, a curiosity about spiritual matters, and a tendency to go to New Zealand universities and then leave the country in the search for work. A. Henderson, N. Watts and A. Trlin, Social Participation, Settlement Factors and Integration: the Experiences of Skilled Chinese Immigrants, a paper presented at the conference New Directions; New Settlers, Migration and New Zealand Society into the 21st Century, Wellington, 12-13 April 2000, discusses several aspects of the story of mainland Chinese newcomers. The figures in Table 4 may signal a new grouping of investor and business migrants from mainland China. A successful example of this new group is the Jing Li Bao factory for the manufacture of soft drinks at Paeroa. Professor Jilnaught Wong (personal communication, 2 May 2001), reports that these businessmen often come via the three year ‘long term business visa’ scheme which gives them time to establish a business. After that they can apply for permanent residency. The NZPD, Weekly Hansard 33, 28-30 November 2000, p.6969, recorded that this scheme had been 18 months on the statute books before the spouses of long term business visa holders no longer needed to have a work permit to come to New Zealand.
125. E.S. Ho, Y.Y. Chen, S.N. Kim and Y. Young, ‘In Search of a Better Future: Report of a Survey on Post-School Education and Employment, Choices Among Asian Adolescent Migrants’, University of Waikato, Population Studies Centre, Discussion Papers, No. 17, Hamilton, 1996. I have seen adolescent immigrants among the Kiwi Chinese go to school, and with the best of intentions be put into a lower class than their age and potential suggested because of their English language deficiency. Consequently they had few school friends and disliked school. Unlike adolescents in many newcomer families, they usually missed out on a tertiary education too, chiefly because they were needed to work in the family business.
126. E.S. Ho, M. Ip and R. Bedford, Transnational Families: Context, Evidence and Prospects with particular reference to Hong Kong Chinese Families in New Zealand, paper presented at the Fifth International Metropolis Conference, Vancouver, 13-17 November 2000, present new information on astronauts which indicates the importance of young children: that where entire Chinese families migrate to New Zealand, there are fewer astronauts; that migrant families with younger children also have fewer astronauts; and that after a number of years or upon retirement, astronauts tend to reunify with their families in New Zealand. Further, there is ample anecdotal evidence that the young children soon adapt to school, wish to speak English at home, forget much of their Chinese language, prefer New Zealand food and agitate to stay in (or return to) this country. They form perhaps the most important anchor securing a family to New Zealand.
127. S.H. Ng, J.H. Liu, C.S.F. Long, and A. Weatherall, Links across Generations among New Zealand Chinese, School of Psychology, Victoria University, Wellington, 2000, found that young Kiwi Chinese still significantly retain respect for, and obligations toward family elders.
We have 1 guest online
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4431
|
__label__cc
| 0.620867
| 0.379133
|
Carlyle Group L.P.
10-K
x ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
¨ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO
The Carlyle Group L.P.
incorporation or organization)
Common units representing limited partner interests The NASDAQ Global Select Market
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ¨ No x
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein and will not be contained, to the best of the Registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act
Large accelerated filer x Accelerated filer ¨
Non-accelerated filer ¨ (do not check if a smaller reporting company) Smaller reporting company ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ¨ No x
The aggregate market value of the common units of the Registrant held by non-affiliates as of June 30, 2013 was $1,177,272,171.
The number of the Registrant’s common units representing limited partner interests outstanding as of February 20, 2014 was 50,292,165.
PART I.
ITEM 1. BUSINESS 3
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS 27
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS 78
ITEM 2. PROPERTIES 78
ITEM 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS 78
ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES 80
ITEM 5. MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES
ITEM 6. SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA 83
ITEM 7A. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK 173
ITEM 8. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA 176
ITEM 9. CHANGES AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH ACCOUNTANTS ON ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE
ITEM 9A. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES 255
ITEM 9B. OTHER INFORMATION 256
PART III.
ITEM 10. DIRECTORS, EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE 257
ITEM 11. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION 264
ITEM 12. SECURITY OWNERSHIP OF CERTAIN BENEFICIAL OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS
ITEM 13. CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS, AND DIRECTOR INDEPENDENCE 276
ITEM 14. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING FEES AND SERVICES 283
PART IV.
EXHIBITS, FINANCIAL STATEMENT SCHEDULES 284
This report may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which reflect our current views with respect to, among other things, our operations and financial performance. You can identify these forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “outlook,” “believe,” “expect,” “potential,” “continue,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “seek,” “approximately,” “predict,” “intend,” “plan,” “estimate,” “anticipate” or the negative version of these words or other comparable words. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, there are or will be important factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. We believe these factors include, but are not limited to, those described under “Risk Factors” in this report, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our periodic filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), which are accessible on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements that are included in this report and in our other periodic filings. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as required by law.
Prior to the reorganization on May 2, 2012 in connection with our initial public offering, our business was owned by four holding entities: TC Group, L.L.C., TC Group Cayman, L.P., TC Group Investment Holdings, L.P. and TC Group Cayman Investment Holdings, L.P. We refer to these four holding entities collectively as the “Parent Entities.” The Parent Entities were under the common ownership and control of our senior Carlyle professionals and two strategic investors that owned minority interests in our business — entities affiliated with Mubadala Development Company, an Abu-Dhabi based strategic development and investment company (“Mubadala”), and California Public Employees’ Retirement System (“CalPERS”). Unless the context suggests otherwise, references in this report to “Carlyle,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer (1) prior to the consummation of our reorganization into a holding partnership structure to Carlyle Group, which was comprised of the Parent Entities and their consolidated subsidiaries and (2) after our reorganization into a holding partnership structure, to The Carlyle Group L.P. and its consolidated subsidiaries. In addition, certain individuals engaged in our businesses own interests in the general partners of our existing carry funds. Certain of these individuals contributed a portion of these interests to us as part of the reorganization. We refer to these individuals, together with the owners of the Parent Entities prior to the reorganization and our initial public offering, collectively as our “pre-IPO owners.”
When we refer to the “partners of The Carlyle Group L.P.,” we are referring specifically to the common unitholders and our general partner and any others who may from time to time be partners of that specific Delaware limited partnership. When we refer to our “senior Carlyle professionals,” we are referring to the partner-level personnel of our firm. Senior Carlyle professionals, together with CalPERS and Mubadala, were the owners of our Parent Entities prior to the reorganization. References in this report to the ownership of the senior Carlyle professionals include the ownership of personal planning vehicles of these individuals.
“Carlyle funds,” “our funds” and “our investment funds” refer to the investment funds and vehicles advised by Carlyle. Our “carry funds” refer to those investment funds that we advise, including the buyout funds, growth capital funds, real estate funds, infrastructure funds, certain energy funds and distressed debt and mezzanine funds (but excluding our structured credit funds, hedge funds, fund of funds vehicles and the NGP funds), where we receive a special residual allocation of income, which we refer to as a carried interest, in the event that specified investment returns are achieved by the fund. The “NGP management fee funds” refer to those funds advised by NGP Energy Capital Management (together with its affiliates and subsidiaries, “NGP”) from which we only receive management fees. The “NGP carry funds” refer to those funds advised by NGP from which we are entitled to receive a carried interest. Our “fund of funds vehicles” refers to those funds, accounts and vehicles advised by AlpInvest Partners B.V. (“AlpInvest”) and Metropolitan Real Estate Equity Management, LLC (“Metropolitan”).
“Fee-earning assets under management” or “Fee-earning AUM” refer to the assets we manage from which we derive recurring fund management fees. Our Fee-earning AUM generally equals the sum of:
(a) for carry funds and certain co-investment vehicles where the investment period has not expired and for Metropolitan fund of funds vehicles during the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds, the amount of limited partner capital commitments, for AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, the amount of external investor capital commitments during the commitment fee period, and for the NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds, the amount of investor capital commitments before the first investment realization;
(b) for substantially all carry funds and certain co-investment vehicles where the investment period has expired and for Metropolitan fund of funds vehicles after the expiration of the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds, the amount of limited partner capital commitments, the remaining amount of limited partner invested capital, and for the NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds where the first investment has been realized, the amount of partner commitments less realized and written-off investments;
(c) the amount of aggregate Fee-earning collateral balance at par of our CLOs, as defined in the fund indentures (typically exclusive of equities and defaulted positions) as of the quarterly cut-off date for each CLO, and the reference portfolio notional amount of our synthetic CLOs;
(d) the external investor portion of the net asset value (pre-redemptions and subscriptions) of our long/short credit funds, emerging markets, multi-product macroeconomic and other hedge funds;
(e) the gross assets (including assets acquired with leverage), excluding cash and cash equivalents of our business development companies; and
(f) for AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles where the commitment fee period has expired, and certain carry funds where the investment period has expired, the lower of cost or fair value of invested capital.
“Assets under management” or “AUM” refers to the assets we manage. Our AUM equals the sum of the following:
(a) the fair value of the capital invested in our carry funds, co-investment vehicles, fund of funds vehicles and the NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds plus the capital that we are entitled to call from investors in those funds and vehicles (including our commitments to those funds and vehicles and those of senior Carlyle professionals and employees) pursuant to the terms of their capital commitments to those funds and vehicles;
(b) the amount of aggregate collateral balance and principal cash at par of our CLOs (inclusive of all positions) and the reference portfolio notional amount of our synthetic CLOs; and
(c) the net asset value (pre-redemptions and subscriptions) of our long/short credit, emerging markets, multi-product macroeconomic and other hedge funds; and
(d) the gross assets (including assets acquired with leverage) of our business development companies.
We include in our calculation of AUM and Fee-earning AUM certain energy and renewable resources funds that we jointly advise with Riverstone Holdings L.L.C. (“Riverstone”) and certain NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds.
For our carry funds, co-investment vehicles, fund of funds vehicles, NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds, total AUM includes the fair value of the capital invested, whereas Fee-earning AUM includes the amount of capital commitments or the remaining amount of invested capital, depending on whether the investment period for the fund has expired. As such, Fee-earning AUM may be greater than total AUM when the aggregate fair value of the remaining investments is less than the cost of those investments.
Our calculations of AUM and Fee-earning AUM may differ from the calculations of other alternative asset managers. As a result, these measures may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other alternative asset managers. In addition, our calculation of AUM (but not Fee-earning AUM) includes uncalled commitments to, and the fair value of invested capital in, our investment funds from Carlyle and our personnel, regardless of whether such commitments or invested capital are subject to management or performance fees. Our calculations of AUM or Fee-earning AUM are not based on any definition of AUM or Fee-earning AUM that is set forth in the agreements governing the investment funds that we manage.
We are one of the world’s largest and most diversified multi-product global alternative asset management firms. We advise an array of specialized investment funds and other investment vehicles that invest across a range of industries, geographies, asset classes and investment strategies and seek to deliver attractive returns for our fund investors. Since our firm was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1987, we have grown to become a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $189 billion in AUM across 118 funds and 106 fund of funds vehicles as of December 31, 2013. We have more than 1,500 employees, including more than 700 investment professionals in 34 offices across six continents, and we serve more than 1,650 active carry fund investors from 76 countries. Across our Corporate Private Equity and Real Assets segments, we have investments in over 200 portfolio companies that employ more than 600,000 people.
The growth and development of our firm has been guided by several fundamental tenets:
• Excellence in Investing. Our primary goal is to invest wisely and create value for our fund investors. We strive to generate superior investment returns by combining deep industry expertise, a global network of local investment teams who can leverage extensive firm-wide resources and a consistent and disciplined investment process.
• Commitment to our Fund Investors. Our fund investors come first. This commitment is a core component of our firm culture and informs every aspect of our business. We believe this philosophy is in the long-term best interests of Carlyle and its owners, including our common unitholders.
• Investment in the Firm. We have invested, and intend to continue to invest, significant resources in hiring and retaining a deep talent pool of investment professionals and in building the infrastructure of the firm, including our expansive local office network and our comprehensive investor services team, which provides finance, legal and compliance and tax services in addition to other services.
• Expansion of our Platform. We innovate continuously to expand our investment capabilities through the creation or acquisition of new asset-, sector- and regional-focused strategies in order to provide our fund investors a variety of investment options.
• Unified Culture. We seek to leverage the local market insights and operational capabilities that we have developed across our global platform through a unified culture we call “One Carlyle.” Our culture emphasizes collaboration and sharing of knowledge and expertise across the firm to create value. We believe our collaborative approach enhances our ability to analyze investments, deploy capital and improve the performance of our portfolio companies.
There are four primary drivers of the “Carlyle Engine” — fundraising or attracting new capital commitments to our funds; investing; working to create value for our investors or to achieve appreciation of our various investments; and harvesting, selling or otherwise disposing of our carry fund investments. Operational and strategic highlights for 2013 include the following:
• During 2013, we raised more than $22 billion in new commitments across our platform; made equity investments through our carry funds of over $8 billion in more than 200 investments; realized proceeds of over $17 billion through 45 funds; and increased the value of our carry fund portfolio by approximately 20%.
• We bolstered our senior leadership team and also made key hires in several areas. For example, we hired a new head of our Solutions platform, a head of international real estate and a deputy chief investment officer for our Corporate Private Equity business. We hired senior personnel for our investor relations group to further develop our high-net worth and retail fundraising strategies. We also took additional steps to institutionalize our One Carlyle philosophy and dedicated additional resources to further facilitate the collaboration between our investment funds and portfolio companies.
• We took advantage of the favorable capital markets and strengthened our balance sheet through the issuance of $500 million aggregate principal amount of 3.875% Senior Notes due 2023; and the issuance of $400 million aggregate principal amount of 5.625% Senior Notes due 2043.
• We had a successful fundraising year across all of our segments:
• In our CPE segment: We closed our latest vintage US buyout fund at $13 billion, above our original $10 billion target, closed our first Peru fund at $308 million, launched our fourth generation European buyout fund and launched our third generation Japanese buyout fund.
• In our GMS segment: We had a final closing on our third distressed debt fund at $703 million, closed four new collateral loan obligations (CLOs) in the U.S. with a total of $2.1 billion of assets at December 31, 2013, raised our first two CLOs in Europe since the financial crisis with $944 million of assets at December 31, 2013, launched two business development companies and filed to register with the SEC the shares of two mutual funds.
• In our Real Assets segment: We closed our first power fund and a $503 million core managed account in China, established a $181 million opportunistic real estate account focused on warehouse-related assets in China, and launched our seventh U.S. real estate fund, first international energy fund, and second power fund. We raised a $750 million managed account to invest across our natural resources platform and also had a first close in the NGP Agribusiness fund.
• In our Solutions segment: We reached $4.2 billion in the AlpInvest Secondaries Program (ASP), including AlpInvest Secondaries Fund V (ASF V) closing at its hard cap of $750 million, and assumed management of two new managed accounts with $286 million of assets under management on behalf of Indiana state investors.
• We continued to grow our energy platform by adding an international energy team, which significantly expands our ability to invest in a full range of energy assets around the world. Our new international energy team focuses on oil and gas exploration and production (E&P), midstream, oil field services (OFS) and refining and marketing (R&M) in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.
• We took advantage of the favorable market environment to access the public markets and harvest a number of the Corporate Private Equity investments made prior to the financial crisis. Through our Corporate Private Equity funds, our fund investors benefitted from 12 companies going public and generated proceeds for our fund investors in excess of $5 billion in initial public offerings and block trades.
• We invested more than $8 billion globally through 38 carry funds in more than 200 transactions.
• In the United States: We invested $4 billion, primarily in the industrial, energy, consumer and retail and financial services sectors, including Axalta Coatings, a company that develops, manufactures and sells coatings and application tools to the automotive industry, Red Oak Power, a power generation facility located in Sayreville, New Jersey, Beats Electronics, a designer and marketer of premium headphones, speakers and audio accessories and TCW, an investment management company.
• In Europe: We invested $1.1 billion primarily in the industrial and energy industries, including Chesapeake Limited, a global supplier of pharmaceutical and consumer packaging products and Varo, a midstream energy business in northwest Europe.
• In Asia: We invested over $1 billion, primarily through public to private transactions including Focus Media, a Shanghai-based advertising company, and 7 Days Group Holdings Ltd, a Chinese economy hotel chain.
• In MENA: We invested $126 million, primarily in consumer and retail investments, including Al-Nabil Food Industries Co. Ltd,, a premier producer of a broad range of frozen and chilled food products, and Penti, a hosiery manufacturer and retailer of women’s hosiery, lingerie and swimwear in Turkey.
• In real estate: We invested nearly $1.5 billion to acquire or develop real estate properties around the globe across multiple sectors including residential properties in the Northeast United States, student housing centers in the United Kingdom and warehouses in China.
• We expanded the depth and breadth of our Solutions platform:
• In August 2013, we acquired the remaining 40% of AlpInvest. Subsequent to this acquisition, AlpInvest’s management team will continue to exercise independent investment authority.
• In November 2013, we acquired Metropolitan Real Estate Equity Management, a global manager of real estate fund of funds, to expand our expertise and global real estate product offerings.
• In November 2013 we entered into an agreement to acquire Diversified Global Asset Management Corporation (“DGAM”), a global manager of hedge funds, to expand the suite of products available through our Solutions platform and to offer investors the ability to allocate their investments across alternatives in hedge funds, private equity and real estate. This transaction closed on February 3, 2014.
• We further aligned our interests with those of our fund investors in 2013 with Carlyle, our senior Carlyle professionals, operating executives, other professionals and advisors increasing their commitments to our investment funds by over $1 billion.
We operate our business across four segments: (1) Corporate Private Equity, (2) Global Market Strategies, (3) Real Assets and (4) Solutions. Information about our segments should be read together with “Part II. Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”
Although we primarily transact business in the United States and substantially all of our revenues are generated domestically, we have established investment vehicles whose primary focus is making investments in specified geographical locations. Refer to “Information by Geographic Location” in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information on consolidated revenues and assets based on the geographical focus of the associated investment vehicle.
Corporate Private Equity
Our Corporate Private Equity segment, established in 1990 with our first U.S. buyout fund, advises our buyout and growth capital funds, which pursue a wide variety of corporate investments of different sizes and growth potentials. Our 31 active Corporate Private Equity funds are each carry funds. They are organized and operated by geography or industry and are advised by separate teams of local professionals who live and work in the markets where they invest. In our Corporate Private Equity segment we also have 62 active external co-investment entities. We believe this diversity of funds and entities allows us to deploy more targeted and specialized investment expertise and strategies and offers our fund investors the ability to tailor their investment choices.
Our Corporate Private Equity teams have two primary areas of focus:
• Buyout Funds. Our buyout teams advise a diverse group of 23 active funds that invest in transactions that focus either on a particular geography (e.g., United States, Europe, Asia, Japan, MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America) or a particular industry. We continually seek to expand and diversify our buyout portfolio into new areas where we see opportunity for future growth. In 2013, we concluded fundraising for our sixth U.S. buyout fund, raising $13 billion in capital commitments, and launched fundraising for our fourth European buyout fund and third generation Japan buyout fund. We invested $4.3 billion and committed $2.3 billion of additional equity through our buyout funds. As of December 31, 2013, our buyout funds had, in the aggregate, approximately $60 billion in AUM.
Growth Capital Funds. Our 8 active growth capital funds are advised by four regionally focused teams in the United States, Europe and Asia, with each team generally focused on middle-market and growth companies consistent with specific regional investment considerations. The investment mandate for
our growth capital funds is to seek out companies with the potential for growth, strategic redirection and operational improvements. These funds typically do not invest in early stage or venture-type investments. In 2013, we launched fundraising efforts for our fourth European technology fund. As of December 31, 2013, our growth capital funds had, in the aggregate, approximately $5 billion in AUM.
From inception through December 31, 2013, our Corporate Private Equity segment has invested approximately $58 billion in 471 investments. Of that total, we have invested 58% in 230 investments in North and South America, 23% in 107 investments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 19% in 134 investments in the Asia-Pacific region. We have fully realized 308 of these investments, meaning that our funds have completely exited, and no longer own an interest in, those investments.
The following table presents certain data about our Corporate Private Equity segment as of December 31, 2013 (dollar amounts in billions; compound annual growth rate is presented since December 31, 2003; amounts invested include co-investments).
Fee-earning
Amount Invested
Investments Since
34% 20% $43 163 31 $25 262 $58 471
Global Market Strategies
Our Global Market Strategies segment, established in 1999 with our first high yield fund, advises a group of 61 active funds that pursue investment strategies including long/short credit, long/short emerging markets equities, macroeconomic strategies, commodities trading, leveraged loans and structured credit, energy mezzanine opportunities, middle market lending and distressed debt. In 2013, the Global Market Strategies segment continued to expand and grew its AUM from $33 billion at December 31, 2012 to $35 billion at December 31, 2013. This increase was partially due to organic growth in our existing carry and hedge funds, the closings on six new issue CLOs and the launch of two new business development companies. Recently, the Global Market Strategies segment also filed to register with the SEC the shares of two mutual funds.
Primary areas of focus for our Global Market Strategies teams include:
• Structured Credit Funds. Our structured credit funds invest primarily in performing senior secured bank loans through structured vehicles and other investment vehicles. In 2013, we closed four new U.S. CLOs and raised our first two CLOs in Europe since the financial crisis with a total of $2.1 billion and $0.9 billion, respectively, of assets at December 31, 2013. As of December 31, 2013, our structured credit team advised 39 funds in the United States and Europe totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $15.8 billion in AUM.
• Distressed and Corporate Opportunities. Our distressed and corporate opportunities funds generally invest in liquid and illiquid securities and obligations, including secured debt, senior and subordinated unsecured debt, convertible debt obligations, preferred stock and public and private equity of financially distressed companies in defensive and asset-rich industries. In certain investments, our funds may seek to restructure pre-reorganization debt claims into controlling positions in the equity of reorganized companies. As of December 31, 2013, our distressed and corporate opportunities team advised three funds totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $1.4 billion in AUM.
• Middle Market Finance. Our middle market finance business comprises our business development companies (“BDCs”), a CLO consisting of middle market senior, first lien loans, and our corporate mezzanine funds, which invest in the first-lien, second-lien and mezzanine loans of middle-market companies, typically defined as companies with annual EBITDA ranging from $10 million to $100 million that lack access to the broadly syndicated loan and bond markets. As of December 31, 2013, our BDC investment team advised three funds totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $1.8 billion in AUM and our corporate mezzanine team advised two funds totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $0.6 billion in AUM.
• Energy Mezzanine Opportunities. Our energy mezzanine opportunities team invests primarily in privately negotiated mezzanine debt investments in North American energy and power projects and companies. As of December 31, 2013, our energy mezzanine opportunities team advised one fund with approximately $1.8 billion in AUM.
• Long/Short Credit. Claren Road Asset Management LLC (“Claren Road”) advises two long/short credit hedge funds focusing on the global high grade and high yield markets totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $8.0 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2013. Claren Road seeks to profit from market mispricing of long and/or short positions in corporate bonds and loans, and their derivatives, across investment grade, below investment grade (high yield) or distressed companies.
• Emerging Market Equity and Macroeconomic Strategies. Emerging Sovereign Group LLC (“ESG”) advises seven emerging markets equities and macroeconomic hedge funds with approximately $5.2 billion in the aggregate of AUM as of December 31, 2013. ESG’s emerging markets equities funds invest in publicly traded equities across a range of developing countries. ESG’s macroeconomic funds pursue investment strategies in developed and developing countries, and opportunities resulting from changes in the global economic environment.
• Commodities. Vermillion Asset Management, a New York-based commodities investment manager (“Vermillion”) advises four funds totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $0.9 billion of AUM as of December 31, 2013. Vermillion’s investment strategies include relative value, enhanced index and long-biased physical commodities. Vermillion seeks to produce positive, uncorrelated returns, through a liquid, relative-value, low volatility approach to trading both physical commodities and their derivatives.
The following table presents certain data about our Global Market Strategies segment as of December 31, 2013 (dollar amounts in billions; compound annual growth rate is presented since December 31, 2003).
19% 30% $33 61 207
(1) Includes 57 middle-office and back office professionals.
Our Real Assets segment, established in 1997 with our first U.S. real estate fund, advises our 26 active carry funds focused on real estate, infrastructure and energy and natural resources (including power) and also includes the eight NGP management fee funds and one NGP carry fund. This segment pursues investment opportunities across a diverse array of tangible assets, such as office buildings, hotels, retail and residential properties, industrial properties and senior-living facilities, as well as oil and gas exploration and production, midstream, refining and marketing, power generation, pipelines, wind farms, refineries, airports, toll roads, transportation, water utility and agriculture, as well as the companies providing services or otherwise related to them. In 2013, we had a closing on our first international energy fund and closed our power fund.
Our Real Assets teams have two primary areas of focus:
• Real Estate. Our nine active real estate funds pursue real estate investment opportunities in Asia, Europe and the United States and generally focus on acquiring single-property assets rather than large-cap companies with real estate portfolios. Our team of more than 120 real estate investment professionals has made over 570 investments in 186 cities/ metropolitan statistical areas around the world as of December 31, 2013, including office buildings, hotels, retail and residential properties, industrial properties and senior living facilities. As of December 31, 2013, our real estate funds had, in the aggregate, approximately $12 billion in AUM.
Energy and Natural Resources. Our energy and natural resources activities focus on buyouts, growth capital investments and strategic joint ventures in the midstream, upstream, power and oilfield services sectors, the renewable and alternative sectors and the energy and power industries around the world. Historically, we conducted our energy activities jointly with Riverstone, advising five funds with approximately $12 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2013 (we refer to these energy funds as our “Legacy Energy funds”). Currently, we conduct our North American energy investing through our
partnership with NGP Energy Capital Management, an Irving, Texas-based energy investor in which we acquired an equity interest in December 2012. NGP advises nine funds with approximately $12 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2013. Additionally in 2013, we formed a power team to focus on investment opportunities in the North American power generation sector. Leveraging the expertise of the operating professionals at Cogentrix Energy L.L.C., one of our portfolio companies, the team seeks investments where it can obtain direct or indirect operational control to facilitate the implementation of technical enhancements. As of December 31, 2013, the power team managed $497 million in AUM through one fund. In 2013, we also formed an international energy investment team as a part of our growing energy platform, which significantly expands our ability to invest in a full range of energy assets around the world. As of December 31, 2013, the international energy team managed $669 million in AUM through one fund. We also have an infrastructure team that focuses on investments in infrastructure companies and assets. As of December 31, 2013, we advised one infrastructure fund with approximately $1 billion in AUM.
Our Real Assets carry funds, including Carlyle-advised co-investment vehicles, have from inception through December 31, 2013, invested on a global basis approximately $33 billion in a total of 658 investments (including more than 60 portfolio companies). Of that total, we have invested 72% in 496 investments in North and South America, 21% in 113 investments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 7% in 49 investments in the Asia-Pacific region. We have fully realized 298 of these investments, meaning that our funds have completely exited, and no longer own an interest in, those investments.
The following table presents certain data about our Real Assets segment as of December 31, 2013 (dollar amounts in billions; compound annual growth rate is presented since December 31, 2003; amounts invested include co-investments).
Since Inception(2)
Inception(2)
21% 32% $28 360 26 $9 138 $33 658
(1) Excludes Riverstone and NGP employees.
(2) Excludes investment activity of the NGP management fee funds.
(3) Includes the eight NGP management fee funds and one NGP carry fund.
Our Solutions segment primarily operates through AlpInvest and our newly acquired businesses, Metropolitan and DGAM. In August 2013, we acquired the remaining 40% of AlpInvest and now own 100% of the firm. AlpInvest is one of the world’s largest investors in private equity and advises a global private equity fund of funds program and related co-investment and secondary activities. In 2013, our AlpInvest vehicles invested $4.7 billion in fund investments, co-investments and secondary investments. We continued to expand the Solutions platform through the acquisitions of Metropolitan and DGAM. In November 2013, we acquired Metropolitan, one of the largest managers of indirect investments in global real estate, which manages 22 fund of funds vehicles with $2 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2013. Metropolitan’s principal strategic focus is on value add/opportunistic real estate investments through more than 85 highly focused, specialist real estate managers across the globe as of December 31, 2013. On February 3, 2014, we also acquired DGAM, a global manager of hedge funds based in Toronto, Canada, with $6.6 billion in managed and advised assets as of December 31, 2013. DGAM’s historical investor base has been institutional and includes some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated public and private pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds.
Each of these businesses independently seeks to provide best-in-class investment capabilities. We believe that the combination of AlpInvest, Metropolitan and DGAM, on the foundation of our global platform, will represent a significant resource for our investors and clients. We will strive to use this resource to deliver customized solutions to our investors to meet their individual investment goals.
The Solutions platform comprises three core businesses:
• AlpInvest invests primarily through Private Equity Fund Investments, Private Equity Co-Investments and Private Equity Secondary Investments vehicles.
• Private Equity Fund Investments. AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles make investment commitments directly to buyout, growth capital, venture and other alternative asset funds advised by other general partners (“portfolio funds”). As of December 31, 2013, AlpInvest advised 38 fund of funds vehicles totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $32 billion in AUM.
• Private Equity Co-investments. AlpInvest invests alongside other private equity and mezzanine funds in which it typically has a fund investment throughout Europe, North America and Asia (for example, when an investment opportunity is too large for a particular fund, the sponsor of the fund may seek to raise additional “co-investment” capital from sources such as AlpInvest). As of December 31, 2013, AlpInvest’s co-investment programs were conducted through 24 fund of funds vehicles totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $8 billion in AUM.
• Private Equity Secondary Investments. AlpInvest also advises funds that acquire interests in portfolio funds in secondary market transactions. Private equity investors who desire to sell or restructure their pre-existing investment commitments to a fund may negotiate to sell the fund interests to AlpInvest. In this manner, AlpInvest’s secondary investments team provides liquidity and restructuring alternatives for third-party private equity investors. In 2013, the AlpInvest Secondaries Program reached $4.2 billion, including AlpInvest Secondaries Fund V (ASF V) closing at its hard cap of $750 million. As of December 31, 2013, AlpInvest’s secondary investments program was conducted through 22 fund of funds vehicles totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $8 billion in AUM.
• Metropolitan fund of funds vehicles make investment commitments directly to real estate focused portfolio funds. Since inception in 2003 through December 31, 2013, Metropolitan has invested with more than 80 managers. As of December 31, 2013, Metropolitan advised 22 fund of funds vehicles totaling, in the aggregate, approximately $2 billion in AUM.
• DGAM builds and actively manages hedge fund portfolios on behalf of its institutional clients. It invests globally and seeks to source strong managers in attractive strategies while minimizing constraints on investment activity. We acquired DGAM on February 3, 2014. As of December 31, 2013, DGAM managed and advised $6.6 billion through 13 vehicles and 3 separately managed accounts. In addition to assembling hedge fund portfolios, DGAM invests directly through its complex credit, liquid risk premia and trend following funds.
The following table presents certain data about our Solutions segment as of December 31, 2013 (dollar amounts in billions) and excludes DGAM which we acquired on February 3, 2014. See “— Structure and Operation of Our Investment Funds — Incentive Arrangements/Fee Structure” in this Item 1 for a discussion of the arrangements with the historical owners and management of AlpInvest regarding the allocation of carried interest in respect of the historical investments of and the historical and certain future commitments to our fund of funds vehicles.
AUM(1)
Fund of
26% $35 106 $17 98 $48
(1) Under our arrangements with the historical owners and management team of AlpInvest, the management team and employees of AlpInvest are allocated all carried interest in respect of the historical investments and commitments to our fund of funds vehicles that existed as of July 1, 2011 (including any options to increase any such commitments exercised after such date), 85% of the carried interest in respect of commitments from the historical owners of AlpInvest for the period between 2011 and 2020 and 60% of the carried interest in respect of all other commitments (including all future commitments from third parties).
(2) Excludes Metropolitan.
The investment approach of our private equity teams is generally characterized as follows:
• Consistent and Disciplined Investment Process. We believe our successful investment track record is the result in part of a consistent and disciplined application of our investment process. Investment opportunities for our Corporate Private Equity funds are initially sourced and evaluated by one or more of our deal teams. The due diligence and transaction review process places a special emphasis on, among other considerations, the reputation of a target company’s shareholders and management, the company’s size and sensitivity of cash flow generation, the business sector and competitive risks, the portfolio fit, exit risks and other key factors highlighted by the deal team. An investment opportunity must secure final approval from the investment committee of the applicable investment fund. The investment committee approval process involves a detailed overview of the transaction and investment thesis, business, risk factors and diligence issues, as well as financial models.
• Geographic and Industry-Focused. We have developed a global network of local investment teams with deep local insight into the areas in which they invest and have adopted an industry-focused approach to investing. Our extensive network of global investment professionals have the knowledge, experience and relationships on a local level that allow them to identify and take advantage of opportunities which may be unavailable to firms who do not have our global reach and resources. We also have particular industry expertise in aerospace, defense and government services, consumer and retail, financial services, healthcare, industrial, technology and business services, telecommunications and media and transportation. As a result, we believe that our in-depth knowledge of specific industries improves our ability to source and create transactions, conduct effective and more informed due diligence, develop strong relationships with management teams and use contacts and relationships within such industries to identify potential buyers as part of a coherent exit strategy.
• Variable Deal Sizes and Creative Structures. Our teams are staffed not only to effectively pursue large transactions, but also other transactions of varying sizes. We often invest in smaller companies and this has allowed us to obtain greater diversity across our entire portfolio. Additionally, we may undertake large, strategic minority investments with certain control elements or private investment in public equity (PIPE) transactions in large companies with a clear exit strategy. In certain jurisdictions around the world, we may make investments with little or no debt financing and seek alternative structures to opportunistically pursue transactions. We generally seek to obtain board representation and typically appoint our investment professionals and operating executives to represent us on the boards of the companies in which we invest. Where our funds, either alone or as part of a consortium, are not the controlling investor, we typically, subject to applicable regulatory requirements, acquire significant voting and other control rights with a view to securing influence over the conduct of the business.
• Driving Value Creation. Our Corporate Private Equity teams seek to make investments in portfolio companies in which our particular strengths and resources may be employed to their best advantage. Typically, as part of a Corporate Private Equity investment, Carlyle’s investment teams will prepare and execute a value creation plan that is developed during a thorough due diligence effort and draws on the deep resources available across our global platform, specifically relying on:
• Reach: Our global team and global presence that enables us to support international expansion efforts and global supply chain initiatives.
• Expertise: Our investment professionals and our industry specialists, who provide extensive sector-specific knowledge and local market expertise.
• Insight: Our 26 operating executives, primarily consisting of deeply experienced former CEOs, who work with our investment teams during due diligence, provide board-level governance and support and advise our portfolio company CEOs together with our extensive pool of consultants and advisors who provide special expertise to support specific value creation initiatives.
• Data: The goal of our research function is to extract as much information from the portfolio as possible about the current state of the economy and its likely evolution over the near-to-medium term. Our CPE investment portfolio includes over 150 active portfolio companies as of December 31, 2013, across a diverse range of industries and geographies that each generate multiple data points (e.g., orders, shipments, production volumes, occupancy rates, bookings). By evaluating these data on a systematic basis, we work to identify the data with the highest correlation with macroeconomic data and map observed movements in the portfolio to anticipated variation in the economy, including changes in growth rates across industries and geographies.
• Pursuing Best Exit Alternatives. In determining when to exit an investment, our private equity teams consider whether a portfolio company has achieved its objectives, the financial returns and the appropriate timing in industry cycles and company development to strive for the optimal value. The fund’s investment committee approves all exit decisions.
The investment approach of our Global Market Strategies credit-focused funds is generally characterized as follows:
• Source Investment Opportunities. Our Global Market Strategies teams source investment opportunities from both the primary and secondary markets through our global network and strong relationships with the financial community. We typically target portfolio companies that have a demonstrated track record of profitability, market leadership in their respective niche, predictability of cash flow, a definable competitive advantage and products or services that are value added to its customer base.
• Conduct Fundamental Due Diligence and Perform Capital Structure Analyses. After an opportunity is identified, our Global Market Strategies teams conduct fundamental due diligence to determine the relative value of the potential investment and capital structure analyses to determine the credit worthiness. Our due diligence approach typically incorporates meetings with management, company facility visits, discussions with industry analysts and consultants and an in-depth examination of financial results and projections.
• Evaluation of Macroeconomic Factors. Our Global Market Strategies teams evaluate technical factors such as supply and demand, the market’s expectations surrounding a company and the existence of short- and long-term value creation or destruction catalysts. Inherent in all stages of credit evaluation is a determination of the likelihood of potential catalysts emerging, such as corporate reorganizations, recapitalizations, asset sales, changes in a company’s liquidity and mergers and acquisitions.
• Risk Minimization. Our Global Market Strategies teams seek to make investments in capital structures to enable companies to both expand and weather downturns and/or below-plan performance. They work to structure investments with strong financial covenants, frequent reporting requirements and board representation, if possible. Through board representation or observation rights, our Global Market Strategies teams work to provide a consultative, interactive approach to equity sponsors and management partners as part of the overall portfolio management process.
The investment approach of our Global Market Strategies hedge funds is generally characterized as follows:
• Premium on Liquidity. Our hedge funds generally run liquid portfolios that place an emphasis on maintaining tradable assets in their respective funds. Additionally, they generally employ long and short positions and construct their portfolios to produce returns largely uncorrelated to broad market movements.
• Unique, Actionable Idea Generation. The public markets are thoroughly analyzed by the numerous competitors in asset management. However, due to technical factors or general investor sentiment, securities can become over or undervalued quickly relative to their intrinsic value. Our hedge fund managers separate their research teams into industry-, geography- and commodity-specific analysts in order to develop in-depth coverage on companies and sectors to generate proprietary research.
• Strong Risk Management Oversight. A well-controlled risk profile is an important part of our Global Market Strategies investment methodology. Our risk officers constantly assess the portfolios of our hedge funds in light of market movements. In addition, Global Market Strategies has a separate team which has developed a rigorous risk management system to analyze the concentration risk, liquidity risk, historical scenario risk, counterparty risk and value at risk of our various funds on a daily basis.
Our Real Assets business includes investments in real estate assets, infrastructure and energy and natural resources (including power) companies and projects. The investment approach of the teams advising the international energy, power and infrastructure funds is similar to that of our Corporate Private Equity funds.
Generally, the investment approach of our real estate teams is characterized as follows:
• Pursue an Opportunistic Strategy. In general, our real estate funds have focused on single asset transactions, using an opportunistic real estate investment strategy. We follow this approach because we believe that pursuing single assets enables us to better underwrite the factors that contribute to the fundamental value of each property, mitigate concentration risk, establish appropriate asset-by-asset capital structures and maintain governance over major property-level decisions. In addition, direct ownership of assets typically enables us to effectively employ an active asset management approach and reduce financing and operating risk, while increasing the visibility of factors that affect the overall returns of the investment.
• Seek out Strong Joint Venture Partners or Managers. Where appropriate, we seek out joint venture partners or managers with significant operational expertise. For each joint venture, we design structures and terms that provide situationally appropriate incentives, often including, for example, the subordination of the joint venture partner’s equity and profits interest to that of a fund, claw back provisions and/or profits escrow accounts in favor of a fund and exclusivity. We also typically structure positions with control or veto rights over major decisions.
• Source Deals Directly. Our teams endeavor to establish “market presence” in our target geographies where we have a history of operating in local markets and benefit from extensive long-term relationships with developers, corporate real estate owners, institutional investors and private owners. Such relationships have resulted in our ability to source a large number of investments on a direct negotiated basis.
• Focus on Sector-Specific Strategies. Our real estate funds focus on specific sectors and markets in areas where we believe the fundamentals are sound and dynamic capital markets allow for identification of assets whose value is not fully recognized. The real estate funds we advise have invested according to strategies established in several main sectors: office, hotel, retail, residential, industrial and senior living.
• Actively Manage our Real Estate Investments. Our real estate investments often require active management to uncover and create value. Accordingly, we have put in place experienced local asset management teams. These teams add value through analysis and execution of capital expenditure programs, development projects, lease negotiations, operating cost reduction programs and asset dispositions. The asset management teams work closely with the other real estate professionals to effectively formulate and implement strategic management plans.
• Manage the Exit of Investments. We believe that “exit management” is as important as traditional asset management in order to take full advantage of the typically short windows of opportunity created by temporary imbalances in capital market forces that affect real estate. In determining when to exit an investment, our real estate teams consider whether an investment has fulfilled its strategic plan, the depth of the market and generally prevailing industry conditions.
Our energy and natural resources activities primarily focus on three areas: international energy, North American energy and power.
International Energy Investing. Our international energy team pursues investment opportunities in oil and gas exploration and production, midstream, oil field services and refining and marketing in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Seeking to take advantage of the lack of capital in the international energy market, we pursue transactions where we have a distinctive competitive advantage and can create tangible
value for companies in which we invest, through industry specialization, deployment of human capital and access to our global network. In seeking to build a geographically diverse international energy portfolio, we focus on cash generating opportunities, with a particular focus on proven reserves and production, and strategically seek to enhance the efficiency of the portfolio through exploration or infrastructure improvements.
• North American Energy Investing. We conduct our current North American energy investing through our partnership with NGP Energy Capital Management, an Irving, Texas-based energy investment firm that focuses on investments across a range of energy and natural resource assets, including oil and gas resources, oilfield services, pipelines and processing, as well as agricultural investments and properties. NGP seeks to align itself with “owner-managers” who are invested in the enterprise, have a top-tier technical team and who have a proprietary edge that differentiates their business plan. NGP strives to establish a portfolio of platform companies to grow through acquisitions and development and provides financial and strategic support and access to additional capital at the lowest cost. The existing NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds are advised by NGP, and we do not control or manage such funds. NGP is managed by its founders and other senior members of NGP.
• Power Investing. Our power team focuses on investment opportunities in the North American power generation sector. Leveraging the expertise of the investment professionals at Cogentrix Energy L.L.C., one of our portfolio companies, the team seeks investments where it can obtain direct or indirect operational control to facilitate the implementation of technical enhancements. We seek to capitalize on secular trends and to identify assets where engineering and technical expertise, in addition to a strong management team, can facilitate performance.
Our Solutions team aims to apply a wide array of capabilities to help clients meet their investment objectives. We accomplish this through the design and management of portfolios of Carlyle products, non-Carlyle products, and combinations thereof. The investment approach of our Solutions platform is generally characterized as follows:
• Solution-Oriented Approach. We believe that portfolio construction and management must begin with the specific goals and constraints of each individual client. Our broad set of investment capabilities and our mandate to invest in both Carlyle-and non-Carlyle-managed funds enable us to pursue the optimal outcome for each client on a customized basis.
• Depth of Investment Expertise. Solutions has dedicated teams for each area of focus, which facilitate the attraction and retention of talent with the required skill-set for each strategy. Solutions professionals have trading, operational, portfolio and risk management expertise. From a top-down perspective, investment professionals seek to position the Solutions business to capitalize on market opportunities through focused research and allocation of resources. From a bottom-up perspective, they seek to build deep relationships with underlying fund managers that are strengthened by the investment professionals’ relevant experience in the broader financial markets.
• Discipline. Solutions professionals focus on diversification, risk management and downside protection. Its processes include the analysis and interpretation of macrodevelopments in the global economy and the assessment of a wide variety of issues that can influence the emphasis placed on sectors, geographies, asset classes and strategies when constructing investment portfolios. After making an investment commitment, the investment portfolios are subject to at least semi-annual reviews conducted by the respective investment team responsible for each investment.
• Innovation. Solutions professionals seek to leverage the intellectual capital within their organization and strategy-focused investment teams to take advantage of synergies that exist within other areas of the firm to identify emerging trends, market anomalies and new investment technologies to facilitate the formation of new strategies, as well as to set the direction for exiting strategies. This market intelligence provides them with an additional feedback channel for the development of new investment products.
Our Family of Funds
The following chart presents the name (acronym), total capital commitments (in the case of our carry funds, structured credit funds, fund of funds vehicles, NGP management fee funds, and the NGP carry fund), assets under management (in the case of our hedge funds), gross assets (in the case of our business development companies), and vintage year of the active funds in each of our segments, as of December 31, 2013. We present total capital commitments (as opposed to assets under management) for our closed-end investment funds because we believe this metric provides the most useful information regarding the relative size and scale of such funds. In the case of our hedge funds, which are open-ended and accordingly do not have permanent committed capital, we believe the most useful metric regarding relative size and scale is assets under management.
Note: All funds are closed-end and amounts shown represent total capital commitments as of December 31, 2013, unless otherwise noted.
(1) Open-ended funds. Amounts represent AUM as of December 31, 2013.
(2) Amounts represent gross assets as of December 31, 2013.
(3) Includes NGPC, NGP ETP I, NGP M&R, NGP ETP II, NGP VII, NGP VIII and NGP IX.
The simplified diagram below depicts our organizational structure. Ownership information in the diagram below is presented as of December 31, 2013. The diagram does not depict all of our subsidiaries, including intermediate holding companies through which certain of the subsidiaries depicted are held. As discussed in greater detail below, The Carlyle Group L.P. holds, through wholly owned subsidiaries, a number of Carlyle Holdings partnership units that is equal to the number of common units that The Carlyle Group L.P. has issued and benefits from the income of Carlyle Holdings to the extent of its equity interests in the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. While the holders of common units of The Carlyle Group L.P. are entitled to all of the economic rights in The Carlyle Group L.P., the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships, like the wholly owned subsidiaries of The Carlyle Group L.P., hold Carlyle Holdings partnership units that entitle them to economic rights in Carlyle Holdings to the extent of their equity interests in the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. Public investors do not directly hold equity interests in the Carlyle Holdings partnerships.
(1) The Carlyle Group L.P. common unitholders have only limited voting rights and have no right to remove our general partner or, except in limited circumstances, elect the directors of our general partner. TCG Carlyle Global Partners L.L.C., an entity wholly owned by our senior Carlyle professionals, holds a special voting unit in The Carlyle Group L.P. that entitles it, on those few matters that may be submitted for a vote of The Carlyle Group L.P. common unitholders, to participate in the vote on the same basis as the common unitholders and provides it with a number of votes that is equal to the aggregate number of vested and unvested partnership units in Carlyle Holdings held by the limited partners of Carlyle Holdings on the relevant record date.
(2) Certain individuals engaged in our business own interests directly in selected subsidiaries, including, in certain instances, entities that receive management fees from funds that we advise. See “— Structure and Operation of Our Investment Funds — Incentive Arrangements/Fee Structure” in this Item 1 for additional information.
The Carlyle Group L.P. conducts all of its material business activities through Carlyle Holdings. Each of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships was formed to hold our interests in different businesses. Carlyle Holdings I L.P. owns all of our U.S. fee-generating businesses and many of our non-U.S. fee-generating businesses, as well as our carried interests (and other investment interests) that derive income that we believe is not qualifying income for purposes of the U.S. federal income tax publicly-traded partnership rules and certain of our carried interests (and other investment interests) that do not relate to investments in stock of corporations or in debt, such as equity
investments in entities that are pass-through for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Carlyle Holdings II L.P. holds a variety of assets, including our carried interests in many of the investments by our carry funds in entities that are treated as domestic corporations for U.S. federal income tax purposes and in certain non-U.S. entities. Certain of our non-U.S. fee-generating businesses, as well as our non-U.S. carried interests (and other investment interests) that derive income that we believe is not qualifying income for purposes of the U.S. federal income tax publicly-traded partnership rules and certain of our non-U.S. carried interests (and other investment interests) that do not relate to investments in stock of corporations or in debt, such as equity investments in entities that are pass-through for U.S. federal income tax purposes are held by Carlyle Holdings III L.P. At the time of our IPO, certain pre-IPO owners of the firm, including our inside directors and executive officers, held a beneficial interest in investments in or alongside our funds that were funded by such persons indirectly through consolidated entities. As part of the reorganization we undertook in connection with our IPO, in order to minimize the extent of third-party ownership interests in firm assets, we (i) distributed a portion of these interests (approximately $127.7 million) to the beneficial owners so that they are held directly by such persons and are no longer consolidated in our financial statements and (ii) restructured the remainder of these interests (approximately $64.1 million) so that they are reflected as non-controlling interests in our financial statements.
The Carlyle Group L.P. has wholly owned subsidiaries that serve as the general partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships: Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc. (a Delaware corporation that is a domestic corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes), Carlyle Holdings II GP L.L.C. (a Delaware limited liability company that is a disregarded entity and not an association taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes) and Carlyle Holdings III GP L.P. (a Québec société en commandite that is a foreign corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes) serve as the general partners of Carlyle Holdings I L.P., Carlyle Holdings II L.P. and Carlyle Holdings III L.P., respectively. Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc. and Carlyle Holdings III GP L.P. serve as the general partners of Carlyle Holdings I L.P. and Carlyle Holdings III L.P., respectively, through wholly owned subsidiaries that are disregarded for federal income tax purposes. We refer to Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc., Carlyle Holdings II GP L.L.C. and Carlyle Holdings III GP L.P. collectively as the “Carlyle Holdings General Partners.”
Holding Partnership Structure
The Carlyle Group L.P. is treated as a partnership and not as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes, although our partnership agreement does not restrict our ability to take actions that may result in our being treated as an entity taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal (and applicable state) income tax purposes. An entity that is treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes is not a taxable entity and incurs no U.S. federal income tax liability. Instead, each partner is required to take into account its allocable share of items of income, gain, loss and deduction of the partnership in computing its U.S. federal income tax liability, whether or not cash distributions are made. Each holder of our common units is a limited partner of The Carlyle Group L.P., and accordingly, is generally required to pay U.S. federal income taxes with respect to the income and gain of The Carlyle Group L.P. that is allocated to such holder, even if The Carlyle Group L.P. does not make cash distributions. We believe that the Carlyle Holdings partnerships should also be treated as partnerships and not as corporations for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Accordingly, the holders of partnership units in Carlyle Holdings, including The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries, incur U.S. federal, state and local income taxes on their proportionate share of any net taxable income of Carlyle Holdings.
Each of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships has an identical number of partnership units outstanding, and we use the terms “Carlyle Holdings partnership unit” or “partnership unit in/of Carlyle Holdings” to refer collectively to a partnership unit in each of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. The Carlyle Group L.P. holds, through wholly owned subsidiaries, a number of Carlyle Holdings partnership units equal to the number of common units that The Carlyle Group L.P. has issued. The Carlyle Holdings partnership units that are held by The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries are economically identical to the Carlyle Holdings partnership units that are held by the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. Accordingly, the income of Carlyle Holdings benefits The Carlyle Group L.P. to the extent of its equity interest in Carlyle Holdings.
The Carlyle Group L.P. is managed and operated by our general partner, Carlyle Group Management L.L.C., to whom we refer as “our general partner,” which is in turn wholly owned by our senior Carlyle professionals. Our general partner does not have any business activities other than managing and operating us. We reimburse our general partner and its affiliates for all costs incurred in managing and operating us, and our partnership agreement provides that our general partner determines the expenses that are allocable to us. Although there are no ceilings on the expenses for which we will reimburse our general partner and its affiliates, the expenses to which they may be entitled to reimbursement from us, such as director fees, historically have not been, and are not expected to be, material.
Our diverse and sophisticated investor base includes more than 1,650 active carry fund investors located in 76 countries. Included among our many longstanding fund investors are pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and high net worth individuals in the United States and around the world, including significant institutional investors in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America.
We strive to maintain a systematic fundraising approach to support growth and serve our investor needs. This approach to fundraising has been critical in raising over $22 billion in 2013. We work for our fund investors and continuously seek to strengthen and expand our relationships with them through frequent investor engagement and by cross-selling products across our diverse platform. We have a dedicated in-house LP relations group, which includes 23 geographically focused professionals with extensive investor relations and fundraising experience, supported by 12 product and client segment specialists and 21 support staff operating on a global basis and drawing upon a worldwide network of relationships. We continued to add personnel to our LP relations team in 2013, including eight professionals focused on high net worth distribution, a market that we believe has significant growth potential, and others focused on new client acquisition. While our entire investor relations team is focused on serving our investors, we have three professionals who are specifically focused on new investor development. Our LP relations professionals are in constant dialogue with our fund investors, which enables us to monitor client preferences and tailor future fund offerings to meet investor demand. We strive to secure a first-mover advantage with key investors, often by establishing a local presence and providing a broad and diverse range of investment opportunities.
As of December 31, 2013, approximately 91% of commitments to our active carry funds (by dollar amount) were from investors who are committed to more than one active carry fund, and approximately 64% of commitments to our active carry funds (by dollar amount) were from investors who are committed to more than five active carry funds, an increase from 50% as of December 31, 2006. We believe the loyalty of our fund investor base, as evidenced by our substantial number of multi-fund relationships, enhances our ability to raise new funds and successor funds in existing strategies.
We have a team of over 600 investor services professionals worldwide. The investor services group performs a range of functions to support our investment teams and our LP relations group and provides an important control function, ensures that transactions are structured pursuant to the partnership agreements and assists in global regulatory compliance requirements. Our investor services professionals assist with investor reporting and enable investors to easily monitor the performance of their investments. We have devoted substantial resources to creating comprehensive and timely investor reports, which are increasingly important to our investor base. The investor services group also works closely with each fund’s lifecycle, from fund formation and investments to portfolio monitoring and fund liquidation. We maintain an internal global legal and compliance team, which includes 30 professionals and a government relations group with a presence around the globe, which includes 11 professionals as of December 31, 2013. We intend to continue to build and invest in our legal, regulatory and compliance functions to enable our investment teams to better serve our investors.
Structure and Operation of Our Investment Funds
We conduct the sponsorship and management of our carry funds and other investment vehicles primarily through a partnership structure in which limited partnerships organized by us accept commitments and/or funds for investment from institutional investors and high net worth individuals. Each investment fund that is a limited partnership, or “partnership” fund, has a general partner that is responsible for the management and administration of the fund’s affairs and makes all policy and investment decisions relating to the conduct of the investment fund’s business. The limited partners of such funds take no part in the conduct or control of the business of such funds, have no right or authority to act for or bind such funds and have no influence over the voting or disposition of the securities or other assets held by such funds, although such limited partners may vote on certain partnership matters including the removal of the general partner or early liquidation of the partnership by simple majority vote, as discussed below. In the case of certain separately managed accounts advised by us, the investor, rather than us, may control the asset or the investment decisions related thereto or certain investment vehicles or entities that hold or have custody of such assets.
Each investment fund and in the case of our separately managed accounts, the client, engages an investment adviser. Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C. (“CIM”) serves as an investment adviser for most of our funds and is registered under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the “Advisers Act”). Our investment advisers or one of their affiliates are generally entitled to a management fee from each investment fund for which they serve as investment advisers. For a discussion of the management fees to which our investment advisers are entitled across our various types of investment funds, see “— Incentive Arrangements / Fee Structure” below.
Our carry funds and hedge funds themselves do not register as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”), in reliance on Section 3(c)(7) or Section 7(d) thereof or, typically in the case of funds formed prior to 1997, Section 3(c)(1) thereof. Section 3(c)(7) of the 1940 Act exempts from the 1940 Act’s registration requirements investment funds privately placed in the United States whose securities are owned exclusively by persons who, at the time of acquisition of such securities, are “qualified purchasers” as defined under the 1940 Act and purchase their interests in a private placement. Section 3(c)(1) of the 1940 Act exempts from the 1940 Act’s registration requirements privately placed investment funds whose securities are beneficially owned by not more than 100 persons and purchase their interests in a private placement. In addition, under certain current interpretations of the SEC, Section 7(d) of the 1940 Act exempts from registration any non-U.S. investment fund all of whose outstanding securities are beneficially owned either by non-U.S. residents or by U.S. residents that are qualified purchasers and purchase their interests in a private placement.
The governing agreements of the vast majority of our investment funds provide that, subject to certain conditions, a majority in interest (based on capital commitments) of third-party investors in those funds have the right to remove the general partner of the fund for cause and/or to accelerate the liquidation date of the investment fund without cause. In addition, the governing agreements of many of our investment funds generally require investors in those funds to vote to continue the investment period by a vote of a simple majority in interest (based on capital commitments) of the investors in the event that certain “key persons” in our investment funds do not provide the specified time commitment to the fund or our firm, cease to control the general partner (or similar managing entity) or the investment adviser or cease to hold a specified percentage of the economic interests in the general partner.
Our carry funds, fund of funds vehicles, business development companies, NGP management fee funds, and NGP carry funds are closed-ended funds. In a closed-ended fund structure, once an investor makes an investment, the investor is generally not able to withdraw or redeem its interest, except in very limited circumstances. Furthermore, each limited partnership contains restrictions on an investor’s ability to transfer its interest in the fund. In the open-ended funds we advise, investors are usually locked-up for a period of time after which they may generally redeem their interests on a quarterly basis.
With respect to our carry funds, investors generally agree to fund their commitment over a period of time. For our private equity funds, the commitment period generally runs until the earlier of (i) the sixth anniversary of the initial closing date or the fifth anniversary of the final closing date of the fund; (ii) the date the general partner cancels such obligation due to changes in applicable laws or when at least a significant portion (which may range between 85% and 90%) of the capital commitments to the fund have been invested, committed or reserved for investments; (iii) the date a supermajority in interest (based on capital commitments) of investors vote to terminate the commitment period; or (iv) the failure of certain key persons to devote a specified amount of time to such fund or Carlyle, to control the general partner or the investment adviser or to hold a specified percentage of the economic interests in the general partner, unless upon any of these events the investors vote to continue the investment period. Following the termination of the commitment period, an investor generally will be released from any further obligation with respect to its undrawn capital commitment except to the extent necessary to pay partnership expenses and management fees, fund outstanding borrowings and guarantees, complete investments with respect to transactions committed to prior to the end of the commitment period and make follow-on investments in existing companies. Generally, an investor’s obligation to fund follow-on investments extends for a period of three years following the end of the commitment period, provided that an investor is generally not required to fund more than a certain percentage (generally 15% to 20%) of such investor’s capital commitment in such follow-on investments.
Investors in the latest generation of our real estate funds generally commit to fund their investment for a period of four (Asia and Europe) or five (United States) years from the final closing date, provided that the general partner may unilaterally extend such expiration date for one year and may extend it for another year with the consent of a majority of the limited partners or the investment advisory committee for that fund. Investors in the latest generation of our real estate funds are also obligated to continue to make capital contributions with respect to follow-on investments and to repay indebtedness for a period of time after the original expiration date of the commitment period, as well as to fund partnership expenses and management fees during the life of the fund.
The term of each of the Corporate Private Equity, Real Assets, and Global Market Strategies carry funds generally will end 10 years from the initial closing date, or in some cases, from the final closing date, but such termination date may be earlier in certain limited circumstances or later if extended by the general partner (in many instances with the consent of a majority in interest (based on capital commitments) of the investors or the investment advisory committee) for successive one-year periods, typically up to a maximum of two years.
The term of each of the fund of funds vehicles generally will end 10 to 12 years from the initial closing date, or in some cases, the termination date may be later if extended by the general partner (in many instances with the consent of a majority in interest (based on capital commitments) of the investors or the investment advisory committee) for successive up to two-year periods, potentially up to a maximum of four years.
Incentive Arrangements / Fee Structure
Fund Management Fees. The investment adviser of each of our carry funds generally receives an annual management fee that ranges from 1.0% to 2.0% of the investment fund or vehicle’s capital commitments during the investment period. Following the expiration or termination of the investment period of such carry funds, the management fees generally step-down to between 0.6% and 2.0% of contributions for unrealized investments. The management fees that we receive from our carry funds typically are payable semi-annually in advance. The investment adviser of our fund of funds vehicles generally receives an annual management fee that ranges from 0.3% to 1.0% of the vehicle’s capital commitments during the commitment fee period of the relevant fund or the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds. Following the expiration of the commitment fee period or weighted-average investment period of such fund of funds vehicles, the management fees generally range from 0.3% to 1.0% on the lower of cost or fair value of the capital invested or the net asset value for unrealized investments. The management fees we receive from our fund of funds vehicles typically are payable quarterly in advance. The investment adviser of our hedge funds generally receives management fees that range from 1.5% to 2.0% of net asset value per year. The investment adviser of each of our CLOs generally receives an annual management fee of 0.25% to 0.65% on the total par amount of assets per annum. The investment adviser will receive management fees for the CLOs until redemption of the securities issued by the CLOs, which is generally five to ten years after issuance. Open-ended funds typically do not have stated termination dates.
With respect to Claren Road, ESG and Vermillion, we retain a specified percentage of the earnings of those businesses based on our 55% ownership in the management companies of those entities. The management fees received by our Claren Road, ESG and Vermillion funds have similar characteristics, except that such funds often afford investors increased liquidity through annual, semi-annual, quarterly, or monthly withdrawal or redemption rights in certain cases following the expiration of a specified period of time when capital may not be withdrawn and the amount of management fees to which the investment adviser is entitled with respect thereto will proportionately increase as the net asset value of each investor’s capital account grows and will proportionately decrease as the net asset value of each investor’s capital account decreases. Our equity interest in NGP entitles us to an allocation of income equal to 47.5% (which will increase to 55% no later than May 11, 2017, subject to the receipt of certain approvals) of the management fee-related revenues of the NGP entities that serve as advisors to the NGP management fee funds. For AlpInvest, following our acquisition in August 2013 of the remaining 40% equity interest, and for Metropolitan, following our acquisition in November 2013, we retain all earnings of those businesses based on our 100% ownership in the management companies of those entities.
The general partners or investment advisers to our carry funds from time to time receive customary transaction fees upon consummation of many of our funds’ acquisition transactions, receive monitoring fees from many of their portfolio companies following acquisition and may from time to time receive other fees in connection with their activities. The ongoing monitoring fees that they receive are generally calculated as a percentage of a specified financial metric of a particular portfolio company. The transaction fees which they receive are generally calculated as a percentage (that generally ranges up to 1%, but may exceed 1% in certain circumstances) of the total enterprise value or capitalization of the investment. The management fees charged to limited partner investors are generally reduced by 50% to 100% of such transaction fees and certain other fees that are received by the general partners and their affiliates.
Performance Fees. The general partner of each of our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles also receives carried interest from the carry fund or fund of funds vehicle. Carried interest entitles the general partner to a special residual allocation of profit on third-party capital. In the case of our carry funds, carried interest is generally calculated on a “realized gain” basis, and each general partner is generally entitled to a carried interest equal to 20% (or 10% to 20% on external coinvestment vehicles, with some earning no carried interest, or approximately 2% to 10% in the case of most of our fund of funds vehicles) of the net realized profit (generally taking into account unrealized
losses) generated by third-party capital invested in such fund. Net realized profit or loss is not netted between or among funds. Our senior Carlyle professionals and other personnel who work in these operations also own interests in the general partners of our carry funds and we allocate a portion of any carried interest that we earn to these individuals in order to better align their interests with our own and with those of the investors in the funds. For most carry funds, the carried interest is subject to an annual preferred return of 8% or 9%, subject to a catch-up allocation to the general partner. If, as a result of diminished performance of later investments in the life of a carry fund or fund of funds vehicle, the carry fund or fund of funds vehicle does not achieve investment returns that (in most cases) exceed the preferred return threshold or (in almost all cases) the general partner receives in excess of 20% (or 10% to 20% on external coinvestment vehicles, with some earning no carried interest, or approximately 2% to 10% in the case of most of our fund of funds vehicles) of the net profits on third-party capital over the life of the fund, we will be obligated to repay the amount by which the carried interest that was previously distributed to us exceeds amounts to which we are ultimately entitled. This obligation, which is known as a “giveback” obligation, operates with respect to a given carry fund’s own net investment performance only and is typically capped at the after tax amount of carried interest received by the general partner. Each recipient of carried interest distributions is individually responsible for his or her proportionate share of any giveback obligation; however, we may guarantee the full amount of such “giveback” obligation in respect of amounts received by Carlyle and certain other amounts. In 2014, individuals who previously received carried interest may pay giveback obligations with respect to one of our smaller funds. Our ability to generate carried interest is an important element of our business and carried interest has historically accounted for a significant portion of our income.
The timing of receipt of carried interest in respect of investments of our carry funds is dictated by the terms of the partnership agreements that govern such funds, which generally allow for carried interest distributions in respect of an investment upon a realization event after satisfaction of obligations relating to the return of capital from all realized investments, any realized losses, allocable fees and expenses and the applicable annual preferred return. Carried interest is ultimately realized and distributed when: (i) an underlying investment is profitably disposed of, (ii) certain costs borne by the limited partner investors have been reimbursed, (iii) the investment fund’s cumulative returns are in excess of the preferred return and (iv) we have decided to collect carry rather than return additional capital to limited partner investors. Distributions to eligible senior Carlyle professionals in respect of such carried interest are generally made shortly thereafter. Our decision to realize carry considers such factors as the level of embedded valuation gains, the portion of the fund invested, the portion of the fund returned to limited partner investors, and the length of time the fund has been in carry, as well as other qualitative measures. Although Carlyle has seldom been obligated to pay a giveback obligation, such obligation, if any, in respect of previously realized carried interest, is generally determined and due upon the winding up or liquidation of a carry fund pursuant to the terms of the fund’s partnership agreement although in certain cases the giveback is calculated at prior intervals.
In addition to the carried interest from our carry funds, we are also entitled to receive incentive fees or allocations from certain of our Global Market Strategies funds when the return on AUM exceeds previous calendar-year ending or date-of-investment high-water marks. Our hedge funds generally pay annual incentive fees or allocations equal to 20% of the fund’s profits for the year, subject to a high-water mark. The high-water mark is the highest historical NAV attributable to a fund investor’s account on which incentive fees were paid and means that we will not earn incentive fees with respect to such fund investor for a year if the NAV of such investor’s account at the end of the year is lower that year than any prior year-end NAV or the NAV at the date of such fund investor’s investment, generally excluding any contributions and redemptions for purposes of calculating NAV. In these arrangements, incentive fees are recognized when the performance benchmark has been achieved based on the hedge funds’ then-current fair value and are included in performance fees in our consolidated statements of operations. These incentive fees are a component of performance fees in our consolidated financial statements and are treated as accrued until paid to us.
With respect to our arrangements with NGP, we have acquired future interests in the general partners of certain future funds advised by NGP that will entitle us to an allocation of income equal to 7.5% of the carried interest received by such fund general partners. In addition, we have options to purchase (i) interests in the general partner of the NGP X fund entitling us to an allocation of income equal to 40% of the carried interest received by such fund general partner and (ii) interests in the general partners of all future carry funds advised by NGP entitling us to an additional income allocation equal to 40% of the carried interest received by such fund general partners.
Under our arrangements with the historical owners and management team of AlpInvest, the management team and employees of AlpInvest are allocated all carried interest in respect of the historical investments and commitments to the fund of funds vehicles that existed as of July 1, 2011 (including any options to increase any
such commitments exercised after such date), 85% of the carried interest in respect of commitments from the historical owners of AlpInvest for the period between 2011 and 2020 and 60% of the carried interest in respect of all other commitments (including all future commitments from third parties). Under our arrangements with the historical owners and management team of Metropolitan, the management team and employees are allocated all carried interest in respect of the historical investments and commitments to the fund of funds vehicles that have had a final closing on or prior to July 31, 2013, and 45% of the carried interest in respect of all other commitments (including all future commitments from third parties).
As noted above, in connection with raising new funds or securing additional investments in existing funds, we negotiate terms for such funds and investments with existing and potential investors. The outcome of such negotiations could result in our agreement to terms that are materially less favorable to us than for prior funds we have advised or funds advised by our competitors. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Business Operations — Our investors in future funds may negotiate to pay us lower management fees and the economic terms of our future funds may be less favorable to us than those of our existing funds, which could adversely affect our revenues.”
Capital Invested in and Alongside Our Investment Funds
To further align our interests with those of investors in our investment funds, we have invested our own capital and that of our senior Carlyle professionals in and alongside the investment funds we sponsor and advise. We intend to have Carlyle commit to fund approximately 1-2% of the capital commitments to our future carry funds. We also intend to make investments in our open-end funds and our CLO vehicles. In addition, certain affiliates of our senior Carlyle professionals (including friends and family members) are permitted, subject to certain restrictions, to invest alongside the investment funds we sponsor and advise.
Minimum general partner capital commitments to our investment funds are determined separately with respect to each investment fund. We may, from time to time, exercise our right to purchase additional interests in our investment funds that become available in the ordinary course of their operations. See “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations— Liquidity and Capital Resources” for more information regarding our minimum general partner capital commitments to our funds. Our general partner capital commitments are funded with cash and not with carried interest or through a management fee waiver program.
Certain investors may also receive the opportunity to make additional “co-investments” alongside the investment funds. Co-investments are investments arranged by us that are made by our limited partner investors (and other investors in certain instances) in vehicles that invest in portfolio companies or other assets, generally on substantially the same terms and conditions as those of the applicable fund. In certain cases, such co-investments may involve additional fees or carried interest.
Carlyle and its employees and officers have the right to co-invest with each of the investment funds on a deal-by-deal basis, typically in an amount up to 5% of the investment opportunity (on top of our base commitment).
We are committed to the principle that building a better business means investing responsibly. In September 2008, Carlyle developed a set of responsible investment guidelines that consider the environmental, social and governance implications of certain investments we make. These guidelines were integral to shaping the corporate social responsibility guidelines later adopted by the members of the Private Equity Growth Capital Council. We have worked to integrate these guidelines into our investment decision-making process for controlling, corporate investments. We also educate portfolio companies in which we have a controlling interest on the guidelines and encourage them to review the guidelines at the board level on an annual basis.
Building on these principles, Carlyle has established a working relationship with Environmental Defense Fund (“EDF”). Through this partnership (and in collaboration with The Payne Firm Inc., an international environmental consulting firm), Carlyle and EDF jointly developed a new due diligence framework for the alternative asset management sector called the “EcoValuScreen.” This framework goes beyond the traditional focus of risk mitigation by identifying opportunities for operational enhancements that will lead to better environmental and financial performance during the early stages of the investment process. This process enables Carlyle professionals to more effectively evaluate the operations of a target company, identify the most promising environmental management opportunities and incorporate them into the post-investment management, governance and reporting plans of our portfolio companies.
We are a member of the British Venture Capital Association and seek to ensure that our U.K.-based portfolio companies are compliant, on a voluntary basis, with the Walker Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency when such companies become subject to these guidelines. Further, we are also a member of the Bundesverband Deutscher Kapitalbeteiligungsgesellschaften (the “BVK”), the German private equity and venture capital trade association. We believe that we are compliant with the BVK Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency and seek to ensure that our German portfolio companies comply with these guidelines when they are required to do so.
AlpInvest is a signatory of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment and has adopted the UN Global Compact as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework to evaluate fund managers and portfolio companies. AlpInvest has fully integrated CSR into its investment process and actively engages with fund managers and other stakeholders in the private equity markets to promote sustainability and improved corporate governance as an investment consideration. In addition, AlpInvest seeks opportunities to invest in sustainability solutions.
Information technology is essential for Carlyle to conduct investment activities, manage internal administration activities and connect a global enterprise. As part of our technology strategy and governance processes, we develop and routinely refine our technology architecture to leverage solutions that will best serve the needs of our investors. Our systems, data, network and infrastructure are continuously monitored and administered by formal controls and risk management processes that also help protect the data and privacy of our employees and investors. Our business continuity plan is designed to allow all critical business functions to continue in an orderly manner in the event of an emergency.
As a global alternative asset manager, we compete with a broad array of regional and global organizations for both investors and investment opportunities. Generally, our competition varies across business lines, geographies and financial markets. We believe that our competition for investors is based primarily on investment performance, business relationships, the quality of services provided to investors, reputation and brand recognition, pricing and the relative attractiveness of the particular opportunity in which a particular fund intends to invest. To stay competitive, we believe it is also important to be able to offer fund investors a customized suite of investment products which enable them to tailor their investments across alternatives in hedge funds, private equity and real estate. We believe that competition for investment opportunities varies across business lines, but is generally based on industry expertise and potential for value-add, pricing, terms and the structure of a proposed investment and certainty of execution.
We generally compete with sponsors of public and private investment funds across all of our segments. Within our Corporate Private Equity segment, we also compete with business development companies and operating companies acting as strategic acquirers. In our Global Market Strategies segment, we compete with private credit strategies, hedge funds, business development companies, distressed debt funds, mezzanine funds and other CLO issuers. In our Real Assets segment, we also compete with real estate development companies. In our Solutions segment, we generally compete with other fund of funds managers and/or with advisers that are turning their business models towards discretionary investment advisory services.
In addition to these traditional competitors within the global alternative asset management industry, we have increasingly faced competition from local and regional firms, financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, family offices and agencies and instrumentalities of governments in the various countries in which we invest. This trend has been especially apparent in emerging markets, where local firms tend to have more established relationships with the companies in which we are attempting to invest. In addition, large institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds have begun to develop their own in-house investment capabilities and may compete against us for investment opportunities. Furthermore, in some cases, large institutional investors have reduced allocations to “fund of funds” vehicles and turned instead to private equity and hedge fund advisory firms that assist with direct investments. Greater reliance on advisory firms or in-house investment management may reduce fund of funds’ appeal to large institutional investors.
Some of the entities that we compete with as an alternative asset manager are substantially larger and have greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources and more personnel than we do. Several of our competitors also have recently raised or are expected to raise, significant amounts of capital and many of them have investment objectives similar to us, which may create additional competition for investment opportunities and investor capital. Some of these competitors may also have a lower cost of capital and access to funding sources that are not available to us, which may create competitive disadvantages for us when sourcing investment opportunities. In addition, some of these competitors may have higher risk tolerances, different risk assessments or lower return thresholds, which could allow them to consider a wider range of investments and to bid more aggressively than us for investments. Strategic buyers may also be able to achieve synergistic cost savings or revenue enhancements with respect to a targeted portfolio company, which we may not be able to achieve through our own portfolio, and this may provide them with a competitive advantage in bidding for such investments.
We believe that one of the strengths and principal reasons for our success is the quality and dedication of our people. As of December 31, 2013, we employed more than 1,500 individuals, including more than 700 investment professionals, located in 34 offices across six continents.
Regulatory and Compliance Matters
Our businesses, as well as the financial services industry generally, are subject to extensive regulation in the United States and elsewhere. The SEC, CFTC and other regulators around the globe have in recent years significantly increased their regulatory activities with respect to alternative asset management firms.
Certain of our subsidiaries are registered as investment advisers with the SEC. Registered investment advisers are subject to the requirements and regulations of the Advisers Act. Such requirements relate to, among other things, fiduciary duties to advisory clients, maintaining an effective compliance program, solicitation agreements, conflicts of interest, recordkeeping and reporting requirements, disclosure requirements, limitations on agency cross and principal transactions between an adviser and advisory clients and general anti-fraud prohibitions. In addition, our registered investment advisers are subject to routine periodic examinations by the staff of the SEC. In accordance with our efforts to enhance our compliance program and in response to recommendations received from the SEC in the course of routine examinations, certain additional policies and procedures have been put into place, but no material changes to our registered investment advisers’ operations have been made. Our registered investment advisers also have not been subject to any regulatory or disciplinary actions by the SEC. Additionally, certain of our U.S. investment advisers are registered with, and subject to oversight by, applicable state securities regulators, rather than the SEC. Finally, certain of our non-U.S. investment advisers are subject to limited SEC disclosure requirements as “exempt reporting advisers.”
TCG Securities, L.L.C., the affiliate entity through which we conduct U.S.-based marketing and fundraising activities, is registered as a limited purpose broker/dealer with the SEC, and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”), and is also registered as a broker/dealer in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Additionally, TCG Securities operates under the international broker/dealer exemption in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. In October 2013, TCG Securities filed an application with FINRA to broaden the scope of its existing license for private placements to encompass the sale of interests in securitized products (including the equity tranche of the collateralized commodity obligations and securitized vehicles with commodity-related underlyings). Later this year, TCG Securities intends to submit an application with FINRA to further expand its license and approved business activities to engage in mutual fund retailing and active distribution. Our broker/dealer is subject to regulation and examination by the SEC, as well as by the state securities regulatory agencies. Additionally, FINRA, a self- regulatory organization that is subject to SEC oversight, maintains regulatory authority over all securities firms doing business in the United States (including our broker/dealer) adopts and enforces rules governing the activities of its member firms and conducts cycle examinations and targeted sweep inquiries on issues of immediate concern, among other roles and responsibilities.
Broker/dealers are subject to rules relating to transactions on a particular exchange and/or market, and rules relating to the internal operations of the firms and their dealings with customers including, but not limited to the form or organization of the firm, qualifications of associated persons, officers and directors, net capital and customer
protection rules, books and records and financial statements and reporting. In particular, as a result of its registered status, our broker/dealer is subject to the SEC’s uniform net capital rule, Rule 15c3-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which specifies both the minimum level of net capital a broker/dealer must maintain relative to the scope of its business activities and net capital liquidity parameters. The SEC and FINRA require compliance with key financial responsibility rules including maintenance of adequate funds to meet expenses and contractual obligations, as well as early warning rules that compel notice to the regulators via accelerated financial reporting anytime a firm’s capital falls below the minimum required level. The uniform net capital rule limits the amount of qualifying subordinated debt that is treated as equity to a specific percentage under the debt-to-equity ratio test, and further limits the withdrawal of equity capital, which is subject to specific notice provisions. Finally, compliance with net capital rules may also limit a firm’s ability to expand its operations, particularly to those activities that require the use of capital.
In 2013, we launched two BDCs which entities are subject to all relevant provisions under the 1940 Act as registered investment companies. We expect to launch a mutual fund platform comprising two separate investment series of a Delaware statutory trust. These mutual funds will also be subject to all relevant provisions under the 1940 Act as a registered investment companies. The 1940 Act and the rules thereunder regulate the relationship between a registered investment company and its investment adviser and prohibit or severely restrict principal transactions and joint transactions.
Pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) obtained regulatory jurisdiction over certain derivative instruments, including swaps. As such, certain of our or our subsidiaries’ risk management or other commodities interest-related activities may be subject to CFTC oversight. Consequently, certain CFTC rules expose alternative asset managers, such as us, to increased registration and reporting requirements in connection with transactions in futures, swaps and other derivatives regulated by CFTC. Operators of such private funds are generally required to become members of the National Futures Association (“NFA”) and register with the CFTC as commodity pool operators (“CPOs”) and commodity trading advisors (“CTAs”). Each of DGAM, ESG, Emerging Sovereign Partners LLC (“ESP”), and Vermillion are NFA members and are registered with the CFTC as CPOs and CTAs. Certain personnel were each required to register with the CFTC and the NFA as Principals of ESG, ESP and DGAM. The requirement to register as a Principal was triggered by the fact that, as a result of the acquisition, we and our three founders each hold more than ten percent of a class of securities of such entities. These regulations have required us to reassess certain business practices related to our pooled vehicles, consider registration of additional entities with the CFTC or file for additional exemptions from such registration requirements.
In addition, many Carlyle vehicles are subject to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”) IRS tax regulations intended to address tax compliance issues associated with U.S. taxpayers with foreign accounts. FATCA requires “foreign financial institutions” to report to the IRS information about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers and imposes withholding, documentation and reporting requirements on such entities. Final regulations were issued by the IRS on January 17, 2013, with the earliest effective dates beginning in July 2014. In many instances, however, the precise nature of what needs to be implemented will be governed by bilateral Intergovernmental Agreements (“IGAs”) between the United States and the countries in which Carlyle does business. Many of these IGAs have yet to be finalized. FATCA could cause Carlyle to incur significant administrative and compliance costs and subject investors within certain Carlyle funds to incur additional tax withholding.
United Kingdom and the European Union
CECP Advisors LLP, one our subsidiaries, is authorized in the United Kingdom under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the “FSMA”) and has permission to engage in a number of corporate finance activities regulated under FSMA, including advising on, and arranging deals in relation to certain types of, investments. CECP is in the process of registering a branch office in Ireland in connection with Carlyle’s investment activities in that country. CELF Advisors LLP, another one of our subsidiaries, is authorized in the United Kingdom under FSMA and has permission to engage in a number of activities regulated under FSMA including advising on, managing and arranging deals in relation to certain types of investments, dealing in investments as agent and arranging safeguarding and administration of assets. FSMA and related rules govern most aspects of investment businesses, including sales, research and trading practices, provision of investment advice, corporate finance, use and safekeeping of client funds and securities, regulatory capital, record keeping, margin practices and procedures, approval standards for individuals, anti-money laundering, periodic reporting and settlement procedures. The Financial Conduct Authority is responsible for administering these requirements and compliance with them. Violations of these requirements may result in censures, fines, imposition of additional requirements, injunctions,
restitution orders, revocation or modification of permissions or registrations, the suspension or expulsion from certain “controlled functions” within the financial services industry of officers or employees performing such functions or other similar consequences.
The AIFMD, which became effective on July 21, 2011, was implemented as required by many EU member states by July 22, 2013, pursuant to the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations 2013. The AIFMD regulates certain managers of, and service providers to, certain investment funds that are domiciled and marketed in the EU. The AIFMD also regulates the marketing within the EU of certain investment funds, including those domiciled outside the EU. In general, the AIFMD has a staged implementation between mid-2013 and 2018. Compliance with the AIFMD’s requirements may restrict Carlyle’s fund marketing strategy and will place additional compliance obligations in the form of remuneration policies, capital requirements, reporting requirements, leverage oversight, valuation and liquidity management.
Additionally, during 2013, certain aspects of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation were implemented, imposing requirements relating to risk mitigation and reporting of certain data regarding uncleared derivatives transactions. Further requirements are scheduled to follow, including transaction reporting in relation to exchange-traded and OTC derivatives transactions, the central clearing of OTC derivatives and rules on equivalence with other derivatives reporting and clearing regimes. Given the global scale of the derivatives activity of various Carlyle entities, the various regulatory regimes to which Carlyle is subject could result in duplication of administration and increased transaction costs related to such derivatives activities.
Certain of our subsidiaries are subject to registration and compliance with laws and regulations of non-U.S. governments, their respective agencies and/or various self-regulatory organizations or exchanges relating to, among other things, investment advisory services and the marketing of investment products and any failure to comply with these regulations could expose us to liability and/or damage our reputation. Certain of our private funds are also required to comply with the trading and disclosure rules and regulations of non-U.S. securities regulators.
Carlyle Hong Kong Equity Management Limited is licensed by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to carry on Type 1 (dealing in securities) regulated activity in respect of professional investors.
Carlyle Japan Asset Management YK is registered as an investment adviser with the Japan Financial Services Agency.
Carlyle Mauritius Investment Advisor Limited and Carlyle Mauritius CIS Investment Management Limited are licensed providers of investment management services in the Republic of Mauritius and are subject to applicable Mauritian securities laws and the oversight of the Financial Services Commission. In addition, Carlyle Mauritius Investment Advisor Limited holds a “Foreign Institutional Investor” license from the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which entitles this entity to engage in limited activities in India.
Carlyle Australia Equity Management Pty Limited is licensed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission as an Australian financial services licensee and is authorized to carry on a financial services business to provide advice on and deal in financial products (managed investment schemes and securities) for wholesale clients.
Carlyle MENA Investment Advisors Limited, a company limited by shares in the Dubai Financial Centre, holds a Category 3C license issued by the Dubai Financial Services Authority and is authorized to arrange credit or deal in investments, advise on financial products or credit and manage collective investment funds.
Carlyle Real Estate SGR S.p.A. holds an authorization from the Bank of Italy to carry on fund management and real estate activities.
Carlyle Singapore Investment Advisers Pte Limited holds a registration with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to carry on fund management and dealing in securities activities in respect of institutional and accredited investors.
Carlyle South Africa Advisors (Proprietary) Limited, a limited company incorporated in the Republic of South Africa, is licensed as a Category 1 Authorised Financial Services Provider under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act (No. 37 of 2002) and is thereby regulated by the Financial Services Board in South Africa.
Claren Road Asia Limited is licensed by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to carry on Type 9 (asset management) regulated activity in respect of professional investors.
Diversified Global Asset Management is licensed by Ontario Securities Commission as an exempt market dealer, as an adviser in the category of portfolio manager and as an investment fund manager and by the Autorité des Marchés Financier in Québec as an adviser in the category of portfolio manager and as an investment fund manager.
Vermillion Shanghai is licensed as a registered commodities trading company in the Free Trade Zone in Shanghai, China. Pursuant to this registration, Vermillion Shanghai is permitted to import and export physical commodities, partake in onshore and bonded physical commodities market and trade commodity derivatives on China’s domestic exchanges, including but not limited to the Shanghai Futures Exchange, Zhengzhou Commodities Exchange, and the Dalian Commodities Exchange.
TCG Gestor is licensed by the Securities & Exchange Commission of Brazil as an investment adviser.
In addition, we and/or our affiliates and subsidiaries may become subject to additional regulatory demands in the future to the extent we expand our investment advisory business in existing and new jurisdictions. There are also a number of pending or recently enacted legislative and regulatory initiatives in the United States and around the world that could significantly impact our business. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors—Risks Related to our Company— Extensive regulation in the United States and abroad affects our activities and creates the potential for significant liabilities and penalties,” “—Regulatory changes in the United States could adversely affect our business and the possibility of increased regulatory focus could result in additional burdens and expenses on our business” and “—Recent regulatory changes in jurisdictions outside the United States could adversely affect our business.”
Our businesses have operated for many years within a framework that requires our being able to monitor and comply with a broad range of legal and regulatory developments that affect our activities and we take our obligation to comply all such laws, regulations and internal policies seriously. Our reputation depends on the integrity and business judgment of our employees and we strive to maintain a culture of compliance throughout the firm. We have developed, and adhere to, compliance policies and procedures such as codes of conduct, compliance systems, education and communication of compliance matters. These policies focus on matters such as insider trading, anti-corruption, document retention, conflicts of interest and other matters. Our legal and compliance team monitors our compliance with all of the legal and regulatory requirements to which we are subject and manages our compliance policies and procedures. Our legal and compliance team also monitors the information barriers that we maintain to restrict the flow of confidential information, including material nonpublic information, across our business. Our enterprise risk management function analyzes our operations and investment strategies to identify key risks facing the firm and works closely with the legal and compliance team to address them. The firm also has an independent and objective internal audit department that employs a risk-based audit approach that focuses on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, enterprise risk management functions and other areas of perceived risk and aims to give management and the board of directors of our general partner reasonable assurance that our risks are well managed and controls are appropriate and effective.
Website and Availability of SEC Filings
Our website address is www.carlyle.com. We make available free of charge on our website or provide a link on our website to our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act, as soon as reasonably practicable after those reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. To access these filings, go to the “Financial Information” portion of our “Public Investors” page on our website, and then click on “SEC Filings.” You may also read and copy any document we file at the SEC’s public reference room located at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20549. Call the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330 for further information on the public reference room. In addition these reports and the other documents we file with the SEC are available at a website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov.
We use our website (www.carlyle.com), our corporate Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Carlyle-Group/103519702981?rf=110614118958798) and our corporate Twitter account (@OneCarlyle) as channels of distribution of material company information. For example, financial and other material information regarding our company is routinely posted on and accessible at www.carlyle.com. Accordingly, investors should monitor these channels, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings and
public conference calls and webcasts. In addition, you may automatically receive email alerts and other information about Carlyle when you enroll your email address by visiting the “Email Alert Subscription” section at http://ir.carlyle.com/alerts.cfm?. The contents of our website and social media channels are not, however, a part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and are not incorporated by reference herein.
The Carlyle Group L.P. was formed in Delaware on July 18, 2011. Our principal executive offices are located at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20004-2505.
Risks Related to Our Company
Adverse economic and market conditions could negatively impact our business in many ways, including by reducing the value or performance of the investments made by our investment funds, reducing the ability of our investment funds to raise or deploy capital, and impacting our liquidity position, any of which could materially reduce our revenue and cash flow and adversely affect our financial condition.
Our business is materially affected by conditions in the global financial markets and economic conditions or events throughout the world that are outside of our control, including but not limited to changes in interest rates, availability of credit, inflation rates, economic uncertainty, changes in laws (including laws relating to taxation and regulations on alternative asset managers), trade barriers, commodity prices, currency exchange rates and controls and national and international political circumstances (including wars, terrorist acts or security operations). These factors may affect the level and volatility of securities prices and the liquidity and the value of investments, and we may not be able to or may choose not to manage our exposure to these market conditions and/or other events. In the event of a market downturn, each of our businesses could be affected in different ways.
For example, the unprecedented turmoil in the global financial markets during 2008 and 2009 provoked significant volatility of securities prices, contraction in the availability of credit and the failure of a number of companies, including leading financing institutions, and had a significant material adverse effect on our Corporate Private Equity, Real Assets and Global Market Strategies businesses. During that period, many economies around the world, including the U.S. economy, experienced significant declines in employment, household wealth and lending. The lack of credit in 2008 and 2009 hindered the initiation of new, large-sized transactions for our Corporate Private Equity and Real Assets segments and adversely impacted our operating results in those periods. While the adverse effects of that period have abated to a significant degree, global financial markets have experienced volatility at various times since, including in response to the downgrade by Standard & Poor’s in August 2011 of the long-term credit rating of U.S. Treasury debt from AAA to AA+ and the May 2013 suggestion that the Federal Reserve could slow the pace of asset purchases in the coming months. Although credit spreads are inside of historical averages and all-in financing costs are below those prevailing prior to the recession, there is concern that the favorability of market conditions may be dependent on continued monetary policy accommodation from central banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve. Additional reductions in the pace of U.S. Federal Reserve asset purchases (i.e. “tapering”) could have unpredictable consequences for credit markets, which may create adverse consequences for deal finance conditions and negatively impact our business. Economic activity and employment in developed economies remain below levels implied by pre-recession trends and financial institutions have not provided debt financing in amounts and on terms commensurate with that provided prior to 2008, particularly in Europe. Continued weakness could result in lower returns than we anticipated at the time certain of our investments were made.
Interest rates have been at historically low levels for the last few years. These rates may remain relatively low or rise in the future and a period of sharply rising interest rates could have an adverse impact on our business. To address the near-term potential impact from an increase in rates, our portfolio companies have been refinancing and extending their debt when possible.
In 2013, we invested over $8 billion through our carry funds in more than 200 transactions. In the event that our investment pace slows, it could have an adverse impact on our ability to generate future performance fees and fully invest the capital in our funds. Our funds may also be affected by reduced opportunities to exit and realize value from their investments via a sale or merger due to a general slowdown in corporate M&A activity. Additionally, we may not be able to find suitable investments for the funds to effectively deploy capital and these factors could adversely affect the timing of and our ability to raise new funds.
During periods of difficult market conditions or slowdowns (which may be across one or more industries or geographies), our funds’ portfolio companies may experience adverse operating performance, decreased revenues, financial losses, difficulty in obtaining access to financing and increased funding costs. Negative financial results in our funds’ portfolio companies may result in lower returns in our funds, which could materially and adversely affect our ability to raise new funds as well as our operating results and cash flow. During such periods of weakness, our funds’ portfolio companies may also have difficulty expanding their businesses and operations or meeting their debt service obligations or other expenses as they become due, including expenses payable to us. Furthermore, such negative market conditions could potentially result in a portfolio company entering bankruptcy proceedings, or in the case of certain Real Assets funds, the abandonment or foreclosure of investments, thereby potentially resulting in a complete loss of the fund’s investment in such portfolio company or real assets and a significant negative impact to the fund’s performance and consequently our operating results and cash flow, as well as to our reputation. In addition, negative market conditions would also increase the risk of default with respect to investments held by our funds that have significant debt investments, such as our Global Market Strategies funds.
Our operating performance may also be adversely affected by our decentralized business model. Over the past twenty-six years, we have developed a global employee base with 34 offices around the world servicing multiple investor funds and investor needs. The costs and expenses of our business model may be greater than our peers with more centralized business models. In addition, while fundraising activity has improved compared to the period during the financial crisis in 2008-2009, the time required to raise a fund and costs involved in raising a fund have increased. In order to reduce expenses in the face of a difficult economic environment, we may need to cut back or eliminate the use of certain services or service providers, or terminate the employment of a significant number of our personnel that, in each case, could be important to our business and without which our operating results could be adversely affected.
Finally, during periods of difficult market conditions or slowdowns, our fund investment performance could suffer, resulting in, for example, the payment of less or no performance fees to us. The payment of less or no carried interest could cause our cash flow from operations to significantly decrease, which could materially and adversely affect our liquidity position and the amount of cash we have on hand to conduct our operations and to distribute to our unitholders. Having less cash on hand could in turn require us to rely on other sources of cash (such as the capital markets which may not be available to us on acceptable terms) to conduct our operations, which include, for example, funding significant general partner and co-investment commitments to our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles. Furthermore, during adverse economic and market conditions, we might not be able to renew or refinance all or part of our credit facility or find alternate financing on commercially reasonable terms. As a result, our uses of cash may exceed our sources of cash, thereby potentially affecting our liquidity position.
Changes in the debt financing markets could negatively impact the ability of certain of our funds and their portfolio companies to obtain attractive financing or re-financing for their investments and could increase the cost of such financing if it is obtained, which could lead to lower-yielding investments and potentially decreasing our net income.
Any recurrence of the significant contraction in the market for debt financing that occurred in 2008 and 2009 or other adverse change to us relating to the terms of such debt financing with, for example, higher rates, higher equity requirements and/or more restrictive covenants, particularly in the area of acquisition financings for leveraged buyout and real assets transactions, could have a material adverse impact on our business. In the event that certain of our funds are unable to obtain committed debt financing for potential acquisitions or can only obtain debt at an increased interest rate or on unfavorable terms, certain of our funds may have difficulty completing otherwise profitable acquisitions or may generate profits that are lower than would otherwise be the case, either of which could lead to a decrease in the income earned by us. Similarly, our funds’ portfolio companies regularly utilize the corporate debt markets in order to obtain financing for their operations. To the extent that the credit markets render such financing difficult to obtain or more expensive, this may negatively impact the operating performance of those portfolio companies and, therefore, the investment returns of our funds. In addition, to the extent that the markets make it difficult or impossible to refinance debt that is maturing in the near term, some of our portfolio companies may be unable to repay such debt at maturity and may be forced to sell assets, undergo a recapitalization or seek bankruptcy protection.
Our use of leverage to finance our business and our use of earn-out payments to fund acquisitions may expose us to substantial risks.
We expect to use indebtedness as part of the means to finance our business operations as a public company and have used contingently payable consideration, including earn-out payments, in several of our firm acquisitions. In January 2013, we issued $500 million aggregate principal amount of ten-year senior notes at a rate of 3.875% and in March 2013, we issued $400 million aggregate principal amount of thirty-year senior notes at a rate of 5.625%. From time to time, we may access the capital markets, including through the issuance of additional debt securities. Using leverage to finance our business exposes us to risks associated with indebtedness. In order for us to utilize leverage to finance our business, we are dependent on financial institutions such as global banks extending credit to us on reasonable terms. There is no guarantee that such institutions will continue to extend credit to us or will renew any existing credit agreements we may have with them, or that we will be able to refinance our outstanding notes when they mature. In addition, the incurrence of additional debt in the future could result in downgrades of our existing corporate credit ratings, which could limit the availability of future financing and/or increase our cost of borrowing. We have a credit facility that provides for a term loan (of which $25.0 million was outstanding as of December 31, 2013) and revolving credit borrowings that has a final maturity date of August 9, 2018. As borrowings under the facility or any other indebtedness mature, we may be required to either refinance them by entering into a new facility, which could result in higher borrowing costs, issuing additional debt or possibly issuing equity, which would dilute existing unitholders. We could also repay them by using cash on hand, cash provided by our continuing operations or cash from the sale of our assets, which could reduce distributions to our unitholders. We could have difficulty entering into new facilities or issuing debt or equity securities in the future on attractive terms, or at all.
As part of the consideration for several of the new businesses we have acquired, we expect to incur future expenses related to these acquisitions including amortization of acquired intangibles, cash- and equity-based earn-out payments and fair value adjustments on contingent consideration issued. For example, we have used earn-out payments in our recent acquisitions to better align the interests of the managers of the acquired businesses with our interests. We have substantial earn-out payments due over the next several years in connection with our strategic investment in NGP and acquisitions of Claren Road, ESG, Vermillion, Metropolitan, and DGAM. Refer to Note 3, Note 6, Note 9, and Note 20 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
Our revenue, net income and cash flow are variable, which may make it difficult for us to achieve steady earnings growth on a quarterly basis.
Our revenue, net income and cash flow are variable. For example, our cash flow fluctuates due to the fact that we receive carried interest from our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles only when investments are realized and achieve a certain preferred return. In addition, transaction fees received by our carry funds can vary from quarter to quarter. We may also experience fluctuations in our results, including our revenue and net income, from quarter to quarter due to a number of other factors, including changes in the carrying values and performance of our funds’ investments that can result in significant volatility in the carried interest that we have accrued (or as to which we have reversed prior accruals) from period to period, as well as changes in the amount of distributions, gains, dividends or interest paid in respect of investments, changes in our operating expenses, the degree to which we encounter competition and general economic and market conditions. For instance, during the 2008 and 2009 economic downturn, we recorded significant reductions in the carrying values of many of the investments of the investment funds we advise. The carrying value of fund investments may be more variable during times of market volatility. Such variability in the timing and amount of our accruals and realizations of carried interest and transaction fees may lead to volatility in the trading price of our common units and cause our results and cash flow for a particular period not to be indicative of our performance in a future period. We may not achieve steady growth in net income and cash flow on a quarterly basis, which could in turn lead to adverse movements in the price of our common units or increased volatility in our common unit price generally.
During periods in which a significant portion of our AUM is attributable to carry funds and fund of funds vehicles or their investments that are in the fundraising or investment periods which precede harvesting, as has been the case from time to time, we may receive substantially lower distributions. Moreover, even if an investment proves to be profitable, it may be several years before any profits can be realized in cash (or other proceeds). A downturn in the equity markets also makes it more difficult to exit investments by selling equity securities. If we were to have a realization event in a particular quarter, the event may have a significant impact on our quarterly results and cash flow for that particular quarter which may not be replicated in subsequent quarters. We cannot predict precisely
when, or if, realizations of investments will occur, where a fund will be in its lifecycle when the realizations occur or whether a fund will realize carried interest. For example, in 2013 and 2012 as compared to 2011, several of our portfolio companies engaged in recapitalization transactions, thereby returning capital to the investors in those companies. Many of these transactions, however, did not produce realized carried interest.
We recognize revenue on investments in our investment funds based on our allocable share of realized and unrealized gains (or losses) reported by such investment funds, and a decline in realized or unrealized gains, or an increase in realized or unrealized losses, would adversely affect our revenue, which could further increase the volatility of our quarterly results and cash flow. Because our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles have preferred investor return thresholds that need to be met prior to us receiving any carried interest, declines in, or failures to increase sufficiently the carrying value of, the investment portfolios of a carry fund or fund of funds vehicle may delay or eliminate any carried interest distributions paid to us in respect of that fund or vehicle, since the value of the assets in the fund or vehicle would need to recover to their aggregate cost basis plus the preferred return over time before we would be entitled to receive any carried interest from that fund or vehicle.
The timing and receipt of realized carried interest also varies with the life cycle of our carry funds and there is often a difference between the time we start accruing carried interest for financial reporting purposes and the realization and distribution of such carried interest. However, performance fees are ultimately realized when (i) an investment is profitably disposed of, (ii) certain costs borne by the limited partner investors have been reimbursed, (iii) the investment fund’s cumulative net returns are in excess of the preferred return and (iv) we have decided to collect carry rather than return additional capital to limited partner investors. Our decision to realize carry considers such factors as the level of embedded valuation gains, the portion of the fund invested, the portion of the fund returned to limited partner investors, and the length of time the fund has been in carry, as well as other qualitative measures. When a fund enters into a position to take carried interest, we are generally entitled to a disproportionate “catch-up” level of profit allocation for a period before the amount of profit allocation to which we are entitled returns to a more normalized level. For example, for financial reporting purposes, we started accruing carried interest in respect of CP V in 2011, which resulted in a cumulative catch-up of carried interest. Throughout 2012 and 2013, CP V remained in a carry position, but profits were allocated to us in respect of this fund at a more normalized rate (i.e. 20%). In order to maintain a sufficient level of reserves and reduce the risk of potential future giveback obligations, we did not realize any carried interest from CP V until the fourth quarter of 2013. For our hedge funds, absolute positive performance and relative outperformance and lower volatility versus their respective benchmarks may be among the considerations taken into account in an investor’s decision to increase or maintain allocations to our funds.
With respect to certain of the investment funds and vehicles that we advise, we are entitled to incentive fees that are paid annually, semi-annually or quarterly if the net asset value of a fund has increased. These funds also have “high-water mark” provisions whereby if the funds have experienced losses in prior periods, we will not be able to earn incentive fees with respect to an investor’s account until the net asset value of the investor’s account exceeds the highest period end value on which incentive fees were previously paid. The incentive fees we earn are therefore dependent on the net asset value of these funds or vehicles, which could lead to volatility in our quarterly results and cash flow.
Our fee revenue may also depend on the pace of investment activity in our funds. In many of our carry funds, the base management fee may be reduced when the fund has invested substantially all of its capital commitments or the aggregate fair market value of a fund’s investments is below its cost. We may receive a lower management fee from such funds if there has been a decline in value or after the investing period and during the period the fund is harvesting its investments. As a result, the variable pace at which many of our carry funds invest capital and dispose of investments may cause our management fee revenue to vary from one quarter to the next.
Furthermore, the investment period of a fund may expire prior to the raising of a successor fund. Where appropriate, we may work with our limited partners to extend the investment period, which gives us the opportunity to invest any capital that remains in the fund. In general, the end of the original investment period (regardless of whether it is extended) will trigger a change in the capital base on which management fees are calculated from committed capital to invested capital at cost. In some cases, a step-down in the applicable rate used to calculate management fees may also occur.
Our management fee revenues will be reduced by these step-downs in management fee rates or market value declines, as well as by any reduction of Fee-earning AUM resulting from successful realization activity in our carry funds. For example, the investment periods for many of our large carry funds expired in 2013, which resulted
and will continue to result in a reduction of the management fees that we receive from those funds. We have in most cases raised (or are in the process of raising) successor funds to replace these funds with expired investment periods. However, to the extent that a successor fund is smaller than the predecessor fund, has less attractive management fee terms or there is a gap between the expiration of the investment period of a predecessor fund and the commencement of management fees for a successor fund, our total management fees for that fund family may decline. For example, during 2013, we had several funds move out of their investment period at the same time as we were raising successor funds, which caused a gap period of generating fees. This had a negative impact on our fund management fees, particularly in Corporate Private Equity where such fees declined $24.6 million versus 2012. Our failure to successfully replace and grow Fee-earning AUM through the integration of recent acquisitions and anticipated new fundraising initiatives could have an adverse effect on our management fee revenue.
We depend on our founders and other key personnel, and the loss of their services or investor confidence in such personnel could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We depend on the efforts, skill, reputations and business contacts of our senior Carlyle professionals, including our founders, Messrs. Conway, D’Aniello and Rubenstein, and other key personnel, including members of our executive group, our management committee, the investment committees of our investment funds and senior investment teams, the information and deal flow they and others generate during the normal course of their activities and the synergies among the diverse fields of expertise and knowledge held by our professionals. As part of our succession planning and to enhance our capabilities, we have recently hired and anticipate that we will continue to hire senior professionals in key leadership positions throughout the firm. Accordingly, our success will depend on the continued service of these individuals. Our founders have no immediate plans to cease providing services to our firm, but our founders and other key personnel are not obligated to remain employed with us. In addition, all of the Carlyle Holdings partnership units received by our founders and a portion of the Carlyle Holdings partnership units that other key personnel have received in the reorganization, as described in “Part I. Item 1. Business,” are fully vested. Several key personnel have left the firm in the past and others may do so in the future, and we cannot predict the impact that the departure of any key personnel will have on our ability to achieve our investment objectives. The loss of the services of any of them could have a material adverse effect on our revenues, net income and cash flow and could harm our ability to maintain or grow AUM in existing funds or raise additional funds in the future. Under the provisions of the partnership agreements governing most of our carry funds, the departure of various key Carlyle personnel could, under certain circumstances, relieve fund investors of their capital commitments to those funds, if such an event is not cured to the satisfaction of the relevant fund investors within a certain amount of time. We have historically relied in part on the interests of these professionals in the investment funds’ carried interest and incentive fees to discourage them from leaving the firm. However, to the extent our investment funds perform poorly, thereby reducing the potential for carried interest and incentive fees, their interests in carried interest and incentive fees become less valuable to them and may become a less effective retention tool.
Our senior Carlyle professionals and other key personnel possess substantial experience and expertise and have strong business relationships with investors in our funds and other members of the business community. As a result, the loss of these personnel could jeopardize our relationships with investors in our funds and members of the business community and result in the reduction of AUM or fewer investment opportunities. For example, if any of our senior Carlyle professionals were to join or form a competing firm, that action could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. Furthermore, to the extent investors in certain of our hedge funds have the ability to redeem their investment, the loss of a key manager could trigger redemptions and thus adversely impact the business.
Recruiting and retaining professionals may be more difficult in the future, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Our most important asset is our people, and our continued success is highly dependent upon the efforts of our senior and other professionals. Our future success and growth depends to a substantial degree on our ability to retain and motivate our senior Carlyle professionals and other key personnel and to strategically recruit, retain and motivate new talented personnel, including new senior Carlyle professionals. However, we may not be successful in our efforts to recruit, retain and motivate the required personnel as the market for qualified investment professionals is extremely competitive.
If legislation were to be enacted by the U.S. Congress or any state or local governments to treat carried interest as ordinary income rather than as capital gain for tax purposes, such legislation would materially increase the amount of taxes that we and possibly our unitholders would be required to pay, thereby adversely affecting our ability to recruit, retain and motivate our current and future professionals. See “— Risks Related to U.S. Taxation—
Our structure involves complex provisions of U.S. federal income tax law for which no clear precedent or authority may be available. Our structure also is subject to potential legislative, judicial or administrative change and differing interpretations, possibly on a retroactive basis” and “— Although not enacted, the U.S. Congress has considered legislation that would have: (i) in some cases after a ten-year transition period, precluded us from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or required us to hold carried interest through taxable subsidiary corporations; and (ii) taxed certain income and gains at increased rates. If any similar legislation were to be enacted and apply to us, the after tax income and gain related to our business, as well as our distributions to common unitholders and the market price of our common units, could be reduced.” Moreover, the value of the deferred restricted common units we may issue our senior Carlyle professionals at any given time may subsequently fall (as reflected in the market price of our common units), which could counteract the intended incentives.
All of the Carlyle Holdings partnership units received by our pre-IPO owners in exchange for their interests in carried interest owned at the fund level relating to investments made by our carry funds prior to the date of Reorganization are fully vested. Of the remaining Carlyle Holdings partnership units received as part of the Reorganization by our pre-IPO owners, 38.8% are fully vested and 61.2% are unvested as of December 31, 2013. The unvested Carlyle Holdings units will generally vest over the next 4 years on each anniversary of our initial public offering. At the time of the initial public offering, we granted 17,056,935 deferred restricted common units to our employees under our Equity Incentive Plan and 362,875 phantom deferred restricted common units. These deferred restricted common units and phantom units issued to employees at the time of our initial public offering generally vest over a period of six years on each anniversary date of the offering. As these units vest, we expect to issue additional equity to retain our employees.
As a result of the foregoing, in order to recruit and retain existing and future senior Carlyle professionals and other key personnel, we may need to increase the level of compensation that we pay to them. Accordingly, as we promote or hire new senior Carlyle professionals and other key personnel over time or attempt to retain the services of certain of our key personnel, we may increase the level of compensation we pay to these individuals, which could cause our total employee compensation and benefits expense as a percentage of our total revenue to increase and adversely affect our profitability. The issuance of equity interests in our business in the future to our senior Carlyle professionals and other personnel would also dilute our unitholders. In 2013, we incurred equity compensation expenses of $322.4 million and we expect these costs to materially increase in the future as we increase the use of deferred restricted common units to attract, retain and compensate our employees. For example, in February 2014, we granted approximately 5.6 million deferred restricted common units across a significant number of our employees. The total estimated grant-date fair value of these awards was approximately $172 million. The awards vest over a period of up to six years.
We strive to maintain a work environment that reinforces our culture of collaboration, motivation and alignment of interests with investors. If we do not continue to develop and implement the right processes and tools to manage our changing enterprise and maintain this culture, our ability to compete successfully and achieve our business objectives could be impaired, which could negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Given the priority we afford the interests of our fund investors and our focus on achieving superior investment performance, we may reduce our AUM, restrain its growth, reduce our fees or otherwise alter the terms under which we do business when we deem it in the best interest of our fund investors— even in circumstances where such actions might be contrary to the near term interests of common unitholders.
In pursuing the interests of our fund investors, we may take actions that could reduce the profits we could otherwise realize in the short term. While we believe that our commitment to our fund investors and our discipline in this regard is in the long-term interest of us and our common unitholders, our common unitholders should understand this approach may have an adverse impact on our short-term profitability, and there is no guarantee that it will be beneficial in the long term. One of the means by which we seek to achieve superior investment performance in each of our strategies might include limiting the AUM in our strategies to an amount that we believe can be invested appropriately in accordance with our investment philosophy and current or anticipated economic and market conditions. Additionally, we may voluntarily reduce management fee rates and terms for certain of our funds or strategies when we deem it appropriate, even when doing so may reduce our short-term revenue. For instance, in connection with the extension of the investment period for CEP III through 2013, we ceased charging management fees based on capital commitments at the end of 2012 and invested capital will be the basis for management fees starting from the end of 2012 forward. In prioritizing the interests of our fund investors, we may also take other actions that could adversely impact our short-term results of operations when we deem such action appropriate. For
example, in 2009, we decided to shut down one of our Real Assets funds and guaranteed to reimburse investors of the fund for capital contributions made for investments and fees to the extent investment proceeds did not cover such amounts. We have also waived management fees on certain leveraged finance vehicles at various times to improve returns. Furthermore, we typically delay the realization of carried interest to which we are otherwise entitled if we determine (based on a variety of factors, including the stage of the fund’s life-cycle and the extent of fund profits accrued to date) that there would be an unacceptably high risk of potential future giveback obligations. Any such delay could result in a deferral of realized carried interest to a subsequent period.
We may not be successful in expanding into new investment strategies, markets and businesses, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Our growth strategy focuses on the expansion of our platform both through the development of, and investment in, our existing lines of business to foster organic growth and strategic investment in or acquisition of, alternative asset management businesses or other businesses complementary to our existing business. This growth strategy involves a number of risks, including that the expected synergies from an investment in an organic growth strategy or an acquisition or strategic alliance will not be realized, that the expected results will not be achieved or that the investment process, controls and procedures that we have developed around our existing platform will prove insufficient or inadequate in the new investment strategy or line of business. We may also incur significant charges in connection with such growth initiatives and they may also potentially result in significant losses and costs. To the extent we issue equity in connection with our growth initiatives, we would dilute our unitholders.
Our organic growth strategy focuses on providing resources to foster the development of new product offerings and business strategies by our investment professionals. Given our diverse platform, these initiatives could create conflicts of interests with existing products, increase our costs and expose us to new legal and regulatory requirements. For example, our recently developed and planned business initiatives include offering registered investment products and creating investment products open to retail investors. These activities will impose additional compliance burdens on us, subject us to enhanced regulatory scrutiny and expose us to greater reputation and litigation risk.
The success of our organic growth strategy will depend on, among other things:
• the diversion of management’s time and attention from our existing businesses to development, and integration matters;
• our ability to properly manage conflicts of interests;
• our ability to obtain requisite approvals and licenses from the relevant governmental authorities and to comply with applicable laws and regulations without incurring undue costs and delays; and
• our ability to successfully negotiate and enter into beneficial arrangements with our counterparties.
In some instances, we may determine that growth in a specific area is best achieved through the acquisition of an existing business or a smaller scale lift out of an investment team to enhance our platform. Our ability to execute on our acquisition strategy will depend on our ability to identify and value potential acquisition opportunities accurately and successfully compete for these businesses against companies that may have greater financial resources. Even if we are able to identify and successfully negotiate and complete an acquisition, these transactions can be complex and we may encounter unexpected difficulties or incur unexpected costs.
In addition to the concerns noted above, the success of our acquisition growth strategy will depend, on among other things:
• difficulties and costs associated with the integration of operations and systems;
• difficulties integrating the acquired business’s internal controls and procedures into our existing control structure;
• difficulties and costs associated with the assimilation of employees; and
• the risk that a change in ownership will negatively impact the relationship between an acquiree and the investors in its investment vehicles.
Each acquisition transaction presents unique challenges and if a new venture developed internally or by acquisition is unsuccessful, we may decide to wind-down the new line of business. The wind-down could expose us to additional expenses, including impairment charges, could negatively impact our relationships with fund investors in those businesses and could subject us to litigation or regulatory inquiries.
Our organizational documents do not limit our ability to enter into new lines of business, and we intend to, from time to time, expand into new investment strategies, geographic markets and businesses, each of which may result in additional risks and uncertainties in our businesses.
We intend, to the extent that market conditions warrant, to seek to grow our businesses and expand into new investment strategies, geographic markets and businesses. Moreover, our organizational documents do not limit us to the asset management business. To the extent that we make strategic investments or acquisitions in new geographic markets or businesses, undertake other related strategic initiatives or enter into a new line of business, we may face numerous risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with the following:
• the required investment of capital and other resources;
• the possibility that we have insufficient expertise to engage in such activities profitably or without incurring inappropriate amounts of risk;
• the combination or integration of operational and management systems and controls; and
• the broadening of our geographic footprint, including the risks associated with conducting operations in certain foreign jurisdictions where we currently have no presence.
Further, entry into certain lines of business may subject us to new laws and regulations with which we are not familiar or from which we are currently exempt, and may lead to increased liability and litigation and regulatory risk. If a new business generates insufficient revenue or if we are unable to efficiently manage our expanded operations, our results of operations may be adversely affected.
Our strategic initiatives may include joint ventures, which may subject us to additional risks and uncertainties in that we may be dependent upon, and subject to liability, losses or reputational damage relating to, systems, controls and personnel that are not under our control. We currently participate in several joint advisory arrangements and may elect to participate in additional joint venture opportunities in the future if we believe that operating in such a structure is in our best interests. There can be no assurances that our current joint advisory arrangements will continue in their current form, or at all, in the future or that we will be able to identify acceptable joint venture partners in the future or that our participation in any additional joint venture opportunities will be successful.
Although not enacted, the U.S. Congress has considered legislation that would have: (i) in some cases after a ten-year transition period, precluded us from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or required us to hold carried interest through taxable subsidiary corporations; and (ii) taxed certain income and gains at increased rates. If any similar legislation were to be enacted and apply to us, the after tax income and gain related to our business, as well as our distributions to common unitholders and the market price of our common units, could be reduced.
Over the past several years, a number of legislative and administrative proposals have been introduced and, in certain cases, have been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would have, in general, treated income and gains now treated as capital gains, including gain on disposition of interests, attributable to an investment services partnership interest (“ISPI”) as income subject to a new blended tax rate that is higher than the capital gains rate applicable to such income under current law, except to the extent such ISPI would have been considered under the legislation to be a qualified capital interest. Common unitholders’ interest in us, our interest in Carlyle Holdings II L.P. and the interests that Carlyle Holdings II L.P. holds in entities that are entitled to receive carried interest may have been classified as ISPIs for purposes of this legislation. It is unclear when or whether the U.S. Congress will vote on this legislation or what provisions will be included in any legislation, if enacted.
The most recent legislative proposals provided that, for taxable years beginning ten years after the date of enactment, income derived with respect to an ISPI that is not a qualified capital interest and that is subject to the rules discussed above would not meet the qualifying income requirements under the publicly traded partnership rules. Therefore, if similar legislation is enacted, following such ten-year period, we would be precluded from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or be required to hold all such ISPIs through corporations, possibly U.S. corporations. If we were taxed as a U.S. corporation or required to hold all ISPIs through corporations, our effective tax rate would increase significantly. The federal statutory rate for corporations is currently 35%. In addition, we could be subject to increased state and local taxes. Furthermore, common unitholders could be subject to tax on our conversion into a corporation or any restructuring required in order for us to hold our ISPIs through a corporation.
The Obama administration proposed policies similar to Congress that would tax income and gain, now treated as capital gains, including gain on disposition of interests, attributable to an ISPI at rates higher than the capital gains rate applicable to such income under current law, except to the extent such ISPI would be considered to be a qualified capital interest. The proposal would also characterize certain income and gain in respect of ISPIs as non-qualifying income under the publicly traded partnership rules after a ten-year transition period from the effective date, with an exception for certain qualified capital interests. The Obama administration’s published revenue proposals for 2013 and prior years contained similar proposals.
On February 26, 2014, Representative Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, released a discussion draft summarizing proposed legislation that would, among other things (1) generally treat publicly traded partnerships (other than those deriving 90 percent of their income from activities relating to mining and natural resources) as taxable corporations for tax years beginning after 2016 and (2) recharacterize a portion of capital gain from certain partnership interests held in connection with the performance of services as ordinary income for tax years beginning after 2014.
States and other jurisdictions have also considered legislation to increase taxes with respect to carried interest. For example, New York considered legislation under which common unitholders, even if a nonresident, could be subject to New York state income tax on income in respect of our common units as a result of certain activities of our affiliates in New York. This legislation would have been retroactive to January 1, 2010. It is unclear when or whether similar legislation will be enacted. In addition, states and other jurisdictions have considered legislation to increase taxes involving other aspects of our structure. In addition, states and other jurisdictions have considered and enacted legislation which could increase taxes imposed on our income and gain. For example, the District of Columbia has recently passed legislation that could expand the portion of our income that could be subject to District of Columbia income tax.
Additional proposed changes in the U.S. taxation of businesses could adversely affect us.
The Obama administration has announced other proposals for potential reform to the U.S. federal income tax rules for businesses, including reducing the deductibility of interest for corporations, reducing the top marginal rate on corporations and subjecting entities currently treated as partnerships for tax purposes to an entity-level income tax similar to the corporate income tax. Several proposals for reform if enacted could adversely affect us. It is unclear what any actual legislation would provide, when it would be proposed or what its prospects for enactment would be.
Representative Camp has recently proposed the migration of the United States from a “worldwide” system of taxation, pursuant to which U.S. corporations are taxed on their worldwide income, to a territorial system where U.S. corporations are taxed only on their U.S. source income (subject to certain exceptions for income derived in low-tax jurisdictions from the exploitation of tangible assets) at a top corporate tax rate that would be 25%. The territorial tax system proposals envisage a revenue neutral result and consequently include revenue raisers to offset the reduction in the tax rate and base which may or may not be detrimental to us. Senator Baucus recently proposed a similar territorial U.S. tax system, but with more expansive U.S. taxation of the foreign profits of non-U.S. subsidiaries of U.S. corporations. The Baucus proposal would also eliminate the withholding tax exemption on portfolio interest debt obligations for investors residing in non-treaty jurisdictions. Whether these proposals will be enacted by the government and in what form is unknown, as are the ultimate consequences of the proposed legislation.
The requirements of being a public entity and sustaining our growth may strain our resources.
As a public entity, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), and requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”). These requirements may place a strain on our systems and resources. The Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and financial condition, and provide an annual assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial
reporting as required by the Exchange Act, significant resources and management oversight are required. We have implemented and continue to implement additional procedures and processes for the purpose of addressing the standards and requirements applicable to public companies. If we are not able to implement or maintain the necessary procedures and processes, we may be unable to report our financial information on a timely basis and thereby could subject us to adverse regulatory consequences, including sanctions by the SEC or violations of applicable stock exchange listing rules, and could result in a breach of the covenants under the agreements governing any of our financing arrangements. There could also be a negative reaction in the financial markets due to a loss of investor confidence in us and the reliability of our financial statements.
As we acquire new businesses around the world, we will need to continue to implement and oversee procedures and processes to integrate such operations into our internal control structure. In addition, sustaining our growth also requires us to commit additional management, operational, and financial resources to identify new professionals to join the firm and to maintain appropriate operational and financial systems to adequately support expansion. These activities may divert management’s attention from other business concerns, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. We have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant additional annual expenses related to these steps and, among other things, additional directors and officers’ liability insurance, director fees, reporting requirements of the SEC, transfer agent fees, hiring additional accounting, legal and administrative personnel, increased auditing and legal fees and similar expenses.
We currently do not include the controls at Urbplan in our assessment of internal controls over financial reporting and we may need to implement additional processes and procedures to accurately and timely prepare our financial statements as a result of the inclusion of Urbplan.
Pursuant to a transition period for new acquisitions, management’s assessment of the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting does not include the internal control over financial reporting of Urbplan Desenvolvimento Urbano S.A. (“Urbplan”, formerly Scopel Desenvolvimento Urbano S.A.), a Brazilian residential subdivision and land development company. As described in Note 17 to the audited consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the Partnership began consolidating Urbplan into its condensed consolidated financial statements as of September 30, 2013. We are currently in the process of reviewing Urbplan’s internal controls over financial reporting. We may be required to implement additional procedures and processes to ensure that we can accurately and timely prepare our financial statements.
Operational risks may disrupt our businesses, result in losses or limit our growth.
We rely heavily on our financial, accounting, information and other data processing systems. We face various security threats, including cyber security attacks to our information technology infrastructure that are intended to gain access to our proprietary information, destroy data or disable, degrade or sabotage our systems. These security threats could originate from a wide variety of sources, including unknown third parties outside the company. Although we have not yet been subject to cyber-attacks or other cyber incidents which, individually or in the aggregate, have materially affected our operations or financial condition, there can be no assurance that the various procedures and controls we utilize to mitigate these threats will be sufficient to prevent disruptions to our systems. If any of these systems do not operate properly or are disabled for any reason or if there is any unauthorized disclosure of data, whether as a result of tampering, a breach of our network security systems, a cyber-incident or attack or otherwise, we could suffer substantial financial loss, increased costs, a disruption of our businesses, liability to our funds and fund investors, regulatory intervention or reputational damage. In addition, we operate in businesses that are highly dependent on information systems and technology. Our information systems and technology may not continue to be able to accommodate our growth, and the cost of maintaining such systems may increase from its current level. Such a failure to accommodate growth, or an increase in costs related to such information systems, could have a material adverse effect on us.
Furthermore, we depend on our headquarters in Washington, D.C., where most of our administrative and operations personnel are located, and our office in Arlington, Virginia, which houses our treasury, tax and finance functions, for the continued operation of our business. A disaster or a disruption in the infrastructure that supports our businesses, including a disruption involving electronic communications or other services used by us or third parties with whom we conduct business, or directly affecting our headquarters, could have a material adverse impact on our ability to continue to operate our business without interruption. Our disaster recovery programs may not be sufficient to mitigate the harm that may result from such a disaster or disruption. In addition, insurance and other safeguards might only partially reimburse us for our losses, if at all. Sustaining our growth will also require us to
commit additional management, operational and financial resources to identify new professionals to join our firm and to maintain appropriate operational and financial systems to adequately support expansion. Due to the fact that the market for hiring talented professionals is competitive, we may not be able to grow at the pace we desire.
Extensive regulation in the United States and abroad affects our activities, increases the cost of doing business and creates the potential for significant liabilities and penalties.
Our business is subject to extensive regulation, including periodic examinations, by governmental agencies and self-regulatory organizations in the jurisdictions in which we operate around the world. Many of these regulators, including U.S. and foreign government agencies and self-regulatory organizations and state securities commissions in the United States, are empowered to conduct investigations and administrative proceedings that can result in fines, suspensions of personnel or other sanctions, including censure, the issuance of cease-and-desist orders or the suspension or expulsion of a broker-dealer or investment adviser from registration or memberships. Even if an investigation or proceeding does not result in a sanction or the sanction imposed against us or our personnel by a regulator were small in monetary amount, the adverse publicity relating to the investigation, proceeding or imposition of these sanctions could harm our reputation and cause us to lose existing fund investors or fail to gain new investors or discourage others from doing business with us. Some of our investment funds invest in businesses that operate in highly regulated industries, including in businesses that are regulated by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and U.S. federal and state banking authorities. The regulatory regimes to which such businesses are subject may, among other things, condition our funds’ ability to invest in those businesses upon the satisfaction of applicable ownership restrictions or qualification requirements. Moreover, our failure to obtain or maintain any regulatory approvals necessary for our funds to invest in such industries may disqualify our funds from participating in certain investments or require our funds to divest themselves of certain assets. In addition, we regularly rely on exemptions from various requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), the Exchange Act, the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the “1940 Act”), and the U.S. Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (“ERISA”), in conducting our asset management activities in the United States. Similarly, in conducting our asset management activities outside the United States, we rely on available exemptions from the regulatory regimes of various foreign jurisdictions. These exemptions from regulation within the United States and abroad are sometimes highly complex and may, in certain circumstances, depend on compliance by third parties whom we do not control. If for any reason these exemptions were to become unavailable to us, we could become subject to regulatory action or third-party claims and our business could be materially and adversely affected. For example, the SEC recently amended Rule 506 of Regulation D under the Securities Act to impose “bad actor” disqualification provisions which ban an issuer from offering or selling securities pursuant to the safe harbor in Rule 506 if the issuer, or any other “covered person”, is the subject of a criminal, regulatory or court order or other “disqualifying event” under the rule which has not been waived by the SEC. The definition of “covered person” under the rule includes an issuer’s directors, general partners, managing members and executive officers; affiliates who are also issuing securities in the offering; beneficial owners of 20% or more of the issuer’s outstanding equity securities; and promoters and persons compensated for soliciting investors in the offering. Accordingly, our ability to rely on Rule 506 to offer or sell securities would be impaired if we or any “covered person” is the subject of a disqualifying event under the rule and we are unable to obtain a waiver. Moreover, the requirements imposed by our regulators are designed primarily to ensure the integrity of the financial markets and to protect investors in our funds and are not designed to protect our common unitholders. Consequently, these regulations often serve to limit our activities and impose burdensome compliance requirements. See “Business —Regulatory and Compliance Matters.”
We may become subject to additional regulatory and compliance burdens as we expand our product offerings and investment platform. In 2013, we launched two business development companies that are investment companies under the 1940 Act and subject to the rules thereunder, which, among other things, regulate the relationship between a registered investment company and its investment adviser and prohibit or severely restrict principal transactions and joint transactions. Similarly, we expect to launch a series of mutual fund offerings in 2014, and such mutual funds will also be subject to the rules and regulations applicable to investment companies under the 1940 Act. These entities are required to file periodic and annual reports with the SEC and certain of these entities may be required to comply with the applicable provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. These requirements may expose us to liabilities and penalties if we fail to comply with the applicable rules and regulations.
Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has indicated that investment advisors who receive transaction-based compensation for investment banking or acquisition activities relating to fund portfolio companies may be required to register as broker-dealers. Specifically, the Staff has noted that if a firm receives fees from a fund portfolio company in connection with the acquisition, disposition or recapitalization of such portfolio
company, such management could raise broker-dealer concerns under applicable regulations related to broker dealers. To the extent we receive such transaction fees and the SEC takes the position that such activities render us a “broker” under the applicable rules and regulations of the Exchange Act, we could be subject to additional regulation. If receipt of transaction fees from a portfolio company is determined to require a broker-dealer license, receipt of such transaction fees in the past or in the future during any time when we did not or do not have a broker-dealer license could subject us to liability for fines, penalties or damages.
In addition, the Iran Threat Reduction and Syrian Human Rights Act of 2012 (“ITRA”) expands the scope of U.S. sanctions against Iran and Section 219 of the ITRA amended the Exchange Act to require companies subject to SEC reporting obligations under Section 13 of the Exchange Act to disclose in their periodic reports specified dealings or transactions involving Iran or other individuals and entities targeted by certain sanctions promulgated by the Office Foreign Assets Control engaged in by the reporting company or any of its affiliates during the period covered by the relevant periodic report. In some cases, ITRA requires companies to disclose transactions even if they were permissible under U.S. law. The ITRA also expanded the scope of U.S. sanctions by requiring foreign entities majority owned or controlled by a U.S. person to abide by U.S. sanctions against Iran to the same extent as a U.S. person. Previously, foreign entities were not directly bound by U.S. sanctions against Iran even if they were subsidiaries of U.S. companies. Applus Servicios Technologicos, S.L.U., which may be considered our affiliate, has informed us that it has engaged in the activities that are described on Exhibit 99.2 to this report, which disclosure is hereby incorporated by reference herein.
We are required to separately file with the SEC a notice that such activities have been disclosed in this report, and the SEC is required to post this notice of disclosure on its website and send the report to the U.S. President and certain U.S. Congressional committees. The U.S. President thereafter is required to initiate an investigation and, within 180 days of initiating such investigation, to determine whether sanctions should be imposed. Disclosure of such activity, even if such activity is not subject to sanctions under applicable law, and any sanctions actually imposed on us or our affiliates as a result of these activities, could harm our reputation and have a negative impact on our business.
Regulatory changes in the United States could adversely affect our business and the possibility of increased regulatory focus could result in additional burdens and expenses on our business.
As a result of the financial crisis and highly publicized financial scandals, investors have exhibited concerns over the integrity of the U.S. financial markets and the domestic regulatory environment in which we operate in the United States. There has been an active debate over the appropriate extent of regulation and oversight of private investment funds and their managers. We may be adversely affected as a result of new or revised legislation or regulations imposed by the SEC or other U.S. governmental regulatory authorities or self-regulatory organizations that supervise the financial markets. We also may be adversely affected by changes in the interpretation or enforcement of existing laws and rules by these governmental authorities and self-regulatory organizations. Regulatory focus on our industry is likely to intensify if, as has happened from time to time, the alternative asset management industry falls into disfavor in popular opinion or with state and federal legislators, as the result of negative publicity or otherwise.
On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”), which imposes significant new regulations on almost every aspect of the U.S. financial services industry, including aspects of our business. Among other things, the Dodd-Frank Act includes the following provisions, which could have an adverse impact on our ability to conduct our business:
The Dodd-Frank Act establishes the Financial Stability Oversight Council (the “FSOC”), an interagency body acting as the financial system’s systemic risk regulator with the authority to review the activities of nonbank financial companies predominantly engaged in financial activities are designate those companies determined to be “systemically important” for supervision by the Federal Reserve. Such designation is applicable to companies where material financial distress could pose risk to the financial stability of the United States or if the nature, scope, size, scale, concentration, interconnectedness or mix of their activities could pose a threat to U.S. financial stability. On April 3, 2012, the FSOC issued a final rule and interpretive guidance regarding the process by which it will designate nonbank financial companies as systemically important. The final rule and interpretive guidance detail a three-stage process, with the level of scrutiny increasing at each stage. During Stage 1, the FSOC will apply a broad set of uniform quantitative metrics to screen out financial companies that do not warrant additional review. The FSOC will consider whether a company has at least $50 billion in total consolidated assets and whether it meets
other thresholds relating to credit default swaps outstanding, derivative liabilities, total debt outstanding, a threshold leverage ratio of total consolidated assets (excluding separate accounts) to total equity of 15 to 1, and a short-term debt ratio of debt (with maturities of less than 12 months) to total consolidated assets (excluding separate accounts) of 10%. A company that meets or exceeds both the asset threshold and one of the other thresholds will be subject to additional review. Although it is unlikely that we would be designated as systemically important under the process outlined in the final rule and interpretive guidance, the designation criteria could, and is expected to, evolve over time. While the FSOC will use the Stage 1 thresholds in identifying nonbank financial companies for further evaluation, it may initially evaluate any nonbank financial company based on other firm-specific quantitative or qualitative factors, irrespective of whether such company meets the thresholds in Stage 1. If the FSOC were to determine that we were a systemically important nonbank financial company, we would be subject to a heightened degree of regulation, which could include a requirement to adopt heightened standards relating to capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management, credit exposure reporting and concentration limits, restrictions on acquisitions and being subject to annual stress tests by the Federal Reserve. On July 8, 2013 and September 19, 2013, respectively, the FSOC made its first designations of three nonbank financial companies for Federal Reserve supervision. As expected, we were not among such companies.
• The Dodd-Frank Act, under what has become known as the “Volcker Rule,” generally prohibits depository institution holding companies (including foreign banks with U.S. branches and insurance companies with U.S. depository institution subsidiaries), insured depository institutions and subsidiaries and affiliates of such entities (collectively, “banking entities”) from investing in or sponsoring private equity funds or hedge funds. When the Volcker Rule became effective on July 21, 2012, it kicked off a two-year conformance period, which was set to expire on July 21, 2014. However, on December 10, 2013, the Federal Reserve and other federal regulatory agencies issued the long-awaited final rules implementing the Volcker rule, including an order granting an industry-wide, one-year extension to all banking entities. As a result, banking entities are required to have wound down, sold, transferred or otherwise conformed their investments and sponsorship activities to the Volcker Rule by July 21, 2015, absent an extension to the conformance period by the Federal Reserve or an exemption for certain “permitted activities.”
• The Dodd-Frank Act requires many private equity and hedge fund advisers to register as investment advisors with the SEC under the Advisers Act, to maintain extensive records and to file reports with information that the regulators identify as necessary for monitoring systemic risk. Although a Carlyle subsidiary has been registered as an investment adviser for over 15 years, the Dodd-Frank Act will affect our business and operations, including increasing regulatory costs, imposing additional burdens on our staff and potentially requiring the disclosure of sensitive information.
• The Dodd-Frank Act authorizes federal regulatory agencies to review and, in certain cases, prohibit compensation arrangements at financial institutions that give employees incentives to engage in conduct deemed to encourage inappropriate risk taking by covered financial institutions. Such restrictions could limit our ability to recruit and retain investment professionals and senior management executives.
• The Dodd-Frank Act requires public companies to adopt and disclose policies requiring, in the event the company is required to issue an accounting restatement, the clawback of any related incentive compensation from current and former executive officers.
• The Dodd-Frank Act amends the Exchange Act to compensate and protect whistleblowers who voluntarily provide original information to the SEC and establishes a fund to be used to pay whistleblowers who will be entitled to receive a payment equal to between 10% and 30% of certain monetary sanctions imposed in a successful government action resulting from the information provided by the whistleblower.
Many of these provisions are subject to further rulemaking and to the discretion of regulatory bodies, such as the FSOC and the Federal Reserve.
In June 2010, the SEC approved Rule 206(4)-5 under the Advisers Act regarding “pay to play” practices by investment advisers involving campaign contributions and other payments to government clients and elected officials able to exert influence on such clients. The rule prohibits investment advisers from providing advisory services for compensation to a government client for two years, subject to very limited exceptions, after the investment adviser, its senior executives or its personnel involved in soliciting investments from government entities make contributions to certain candidates and officials in position to influence the hiring of an investment adviser by
such government client. Advisers are required to implement compliance policies designed, among other matters, to track contributions by certain of the adviser’s employees and engagement of third parties that solicit government entities and to keep certain records in order to enable the SEC to determine compliance with the rule. Any failure on our part to comply with the rule could expose us to significant penalties, loss of fees, and reputational damage. In addition, there have been similar rules on a state-level regarding “pay to play” practices by investment advisers. For example, in May 2009, we reached resolution with the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York (the “NYAG”) regarding its inquiry into the use of placement agents by various asset managers, including Carlyle, to solicit New York public pension funds for private equity and hedge fund investment commitments. We made a $20 million payment to New York State as part of this resolution in November 2009 and agreed to adopt the NYAG’s Public Pension Fund Reform Code of Conduct.
In September 2010, California enacted legislation requiring placement agents who solicit funds from the California state retirement systems, such as CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, to register as lobbyists. In addition to increased reporting requirements, the legislation prohibits placement agents from receiving contingent compensation for soliciting investments from California state retirement systems. New York City has recommended similar measures that require asset management firms and their employees that solicit investments from New York City’s five public pension systems to register as lobbyists. Like the California legislation, the New York City recommendations impose significant compliance obligations on registered lobbyists and their employers, including annual registration fees, periodic disclosure reports and internal recordkeeping, and also prohibit the acceptance of contingent fees. North Carolina is considering similar requirements compelling placement agents to register as lobbyists. Other states or municipalities may consider similar legislation or adopt regulations or procedures with similar effect. These types of measures could materially and adversely impact our business.
It is difficult to determine the full extent of the impact on us of any new laws, regulations or initiatives that may be proposed or whether any of the proposals will become law. Any changes in the regulatory framework applicable to our business, including the changes described above, may impose additional costs on us, require the attention of our senior management or result in limitations on the manner in which we conduct our business. Moreover, as calls for additional regulation have increased, there may be a related increase in regulatory investigations of the trading and other investment activities of alternative asset management funds, including our funds. Compliance with any new laws or regulations could make compliance more difficult and expensive, affect the manner in which we conduct our business and adversely affect our profitability.
The short-term and long-term impact of the new Basel III capital standards is uncertain.
In June 2011, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, an international body comprised of senior representatives of bank supervisory authorities and central banks from 27 countries, including the United States, announced the final framework for a comprehensive set of capital and liquidity standards, commonly referred to as “Basel III,” for internationally active banking organizations. These new standards, which will be fully phased in by 2019, will require banks to hold more capital, predominantly in the form of common equity, than under the current capital framework. Implementation of Basel III will require implementing regulations and guidelines by member states. In July 2013, the U.S. federal banking regulators announced the adoption of final regulations to implement Basel III for U.S. banking organizations, subject to various transition periods. Compliance with the Basel III standards may result in significant costs to banking organizations, which in turn may result in higher borrowing costs for the private sector and reduced access to certain types of credit.
Recent regulatory changes in jurisdictions outside the United States could adversely affect our business.
Similar to the environment in the United States, the current environment in jurisdictions outside the United States in which we operate, in particular Europe, has become subject to further regulation. Governmental regulators and other authorities in Europe have proposed or implemented a number of initiatives and additional rules and regulations that could adversely affect our business.
In October 2010, the EU Council of Ministers adopted a directive to amend the revised Capital Requirements Directive (“CRD III”), which, among other things, requires European Union (“EU”) member states to introduce stricter control on remuneration of key employees and risk takers within specific credit institutions and investment firms. The Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) in the United Kingdom has implemented CRD III by amending its remuneration code although the extent of the regulatory impact will differ depending on a firm’s size and the nature of its activities.
In December 2011, China’s National Development and Reform Commission issued a new circular regulating the activities of private equity funds established in China. The circular includes new rules relating to the establishment, fundraising and investment scope of such funds; risk control mechanisms; basic responsibilities and duties of fund managers; information disclosure systems; and record filing. Compliance with these requirements may impose additional expense.
The EU’s Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (“AIFMD”), which became effective on July 21, 2011, and the deadline for the transposition of the Directive into national law within the member states of the EU was July 22, 2013. The AIFMD regulates certain managers of, and service providers to, certain investment funds that are domiciled and marketed in the EU. The Directive also requires suitable co-operation agreements to be in place as between, on the one hand, the regulator in the jurisdiction of the AIFM and the AIF and, on the other, the regulator in each EU member state in which interests in the AIF are being marketed, the absence of which will potentially restrict the ability of the AIFM to offer interests in the AIF to investors in the such EU member states. The AIFMD also regulates the marketing within the EU of certain investment funds, including those domiciled outside the EU. Specifically, the AIFMD applies to (i) alternative investment fund managers (“AIFM”) established in the EU who manage EU or non-EU alternative investment funds (“AIF”), (ii) non-EU AIFMs who manage EU AIFs, and (iii) non-EU AIFMs which market their AIFs within the EU. The AIFMD took effect at a national level within EU member states in July 2013. The AIFMD imposes new operating requirements on EU AIFMs, and, to a lesser extent, non-EU AIFMs seeking to market an AIF within the EU. The full scope of the AIFMD may also, from October 2015 at the earliest, be extended to non-EU AIFMs who wish to market an AIF within the EU pursuant to a pan-European marketing passport instead of under national private placement regimes. The operating requirements imposed by the AIFMD include, among other things, rules relating to the remuneration of certain personnel, minimum regulatory capital requirements, restrictions on use of leverage, restrictions on early distributions (“asset stripping” rules), disclosure and reporting requirements to both investors and home state regulators, and independent valuation of an AIF’s assets. The AIFMD also imposes stricter marketing rules and reporting requirements. As a result, the AIFMD could in the future have an adverse effect on us and/or our investment funds by, among other things, increasing the regulatory burden and costs of raising money and doing business in EU member states, imposing extensive disclosure obligations on portfolio companies located in EU member states, significantly restricting marketing activities within the EU, potentially requiring us to change its compensation structures for key personnel, thereby affecting its ability to recruit and retain these personnel, and disadvantaging our investment funds as bidders for and potential owners of private companies located in EU member states when compared to non-AIF/AIFM competitors which may not be subject to the requirements of the AIFMD.
Our investment businesses are subject to the risk that similar measures might be introduced in other countries in which our funds currently have investments or plan to invest in the future, or that other legislative or regulatory measures that negatively affect their respective portfolio investments might be promulgated in any of the countries in which they invest. The reporting related to such initiatives may divert the attention of our personnel and the management teams of our portfolio companies. Moreover, sensitive business information relating to us or our portfolio companies could be publicly released.
See “Risks Related to Our Business Operations —Our funds make investments in companies that are based outside of the United States, which may expose us to additional risks not typically associated with investments in companies that are based in the United States” and “Business — Regulatory and Compliance Matters” for more information.
Rapidly changing regulations regarding derivatives and commodity interest transactions could adversely impact various aspects of our business.
The regulation of derivatives and commodity interest transactions in the United States and other countries is a rapidly changing area of law and is subject to ongoing modification by governmental and judicial action. We and our affiliates enter into derivatives and commodity interest transactions for various purposes, including to manage the financial risks related to our business. Accordingly, the impact of this evolving regulatory regime on our business is difficult to predict, but it could be substantial and adverse.
Among other things, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) adopted certain amendments to its existing rules that subject certain of our affiliated entities to potential registration, reporting and recordkeeping obligations in connection with derivatives transactions (including for hedging/risk management purposes). As such, our business may incur increased ongoing costs associated with monitoring compliance with the CFTC registration and exemption obligations across platforms and complying with the various reporting and recordkeeping requirements.
In addition, derivatives regulations in the United States and Europe are effectively transforming an over-the-counter market in which parties negotiate directly with each other into a regulated market in which a majority of swap transactions are executed on registered exchanges and cleared through central counterparties. These regulations could significantly increase the cost of entering into derivative contracts (including through requirements to post collateral which could adversely affect our available liquidity), materially alter the terms of derivative contracts, reduce the availability of derivatives to protect against risks that we encounter, reduce our ability to restructure our existing derivative contracts, and increase our exposure to less creditworthy counterparties. If we reduce our use of derivatives as a result of such regulations (and any new regulations), our results of operations may become more volatile and our cash flows may be less predictable, which could adversely affect our ability to satisfy our debt obligations or plan for and fund capital expenditures.
Furthermore, the CFTC has proposed rules relating to position limits on derivatives (including futures, options and swaps) with certain underlying reference assets. The CFTC has also proposed rules relating to the aggregation of derivative positions among commonly owned or controlled entities and exemptions from such aggregation. The finalization of these rules and our ability to rely on any exemption thereunder may affect the size and types of investments we may make. Moreover, in order to avoid exceeding position limits, it is possible that we and our affiliates may need to significantly alter our business processes related to such trading, including by modifying trading strategies and instructions.
We are subject to substantial litigation risks and may face significant liabilities and damage to our professional reputation as a result of litigation allegations and negative publicity.
The investment decisions we make in our asset management business and the activities of our investment professionals on behalf of portfolio companies of our carry funds may subject them and us to the risk of third-party litigation arising from investor dissatisfaction with the performance of those investment funds, the activities of our portfolio companies and a variety of other litigation claims and regulatory inquiries and actions. From time to time we and our portfolio companies have been and may be subject to regulatory actions and shareholder class action suits relating to transactions in which we have agreed to acquire public companies.
For example, on February 14, 2008, a private class action lawsuit challenging “club” bids and other alleged anti-competitive business practices was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain private equity firms, including Carlyle, violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (the “Sherman Act”) by forming multi-sponsor consortiums for the purpose of bidding collectively in corporate buyout auctions in certain going private transactions, which the plaintiffs allege constitutes a “conspiracy in restraint of trade.” Plaintiffs are seeking damages as provided for in Section 4 of the Clayton Act, including the statutorily mandated award of treble actual damages, and an injunction against such conduct in restraint of trade in the future. It is difficult to determine what impact, if any, this litigation (and any future related litigation), together with any increased governmental scrutiny or regulatory initiatives, will have on the private equity industry generally or on us and our funds specifically. As a result, the foregoing could have an adverse impact on us or otherwise impede our ability to effectively achieve our asset management objectives. See “Part I. Item 3. Legal Proceedings” for more information on this and other proceedings.
In addition, to the extent that investors in our investment funds suffer losses resulting from fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct or other similar misconduct, investors may have remedies against us, our investment funds, our principals or our affiliates. Even in the absence of misconduct, we may be exposed to litigation or other adverse consequences where investments perform poorly and investors in or alongside our funds experience losses. For example, as described in Note 17 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, Urbplan, a portfolio investment of certain Carlyle real estate investment funds that we consolidate as of September 30, 2013, began facing serious liquidity problems in late 2012 and required additional capital infusions to continue operations. If Urbplan fails to complete its construction projects, customers or other creditors in certain circumstances might seek to assert claims against us under certain consumer protection or other laws. The general partners and investment advisers to our investment funds, including their directors, officers, other employees and affiliates, are generally indemnified with respect to their conduct in connection with the management of the business and affairs of our private equity funds. For example, we have agreed to indemnify directors and officers of Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited in connection with the matters involving that fund discussed under “Part I. Item 3. Legal Proceedings.” However, such indemnity generally does not extend to actions determined to have involved fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct or other similar misconduct.
If any lawsuits were brought against us and resulted in a finding of substantial legal liability, the lawsuit could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition or cause significant reputational harm to us, which could materially impact our business. We depend to a large extent on our business relationships and our reputation for integrity and high-caliber professional services to attract and retain investors and to pursue investment opportunities for our funds. As a result, allegations of improper conduct by private litigants (including investors in or alongside our funds) or regulators, whether the ultimate outcome is favorable or unfavorable to us, as well as negative publicity and press speculation about us, our investment activities or the private equity industry in general, whether or not valid, may harm our reputation, which may be more damaging to our business than to other types of businesses.
In addition, with a workforce composed of many highly paid professionals, we face the risk of litigation relating to claims for compensation, which may, individually or in the aggregate, be significant in amount. The cost of settling any such claims could negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Employee misconduct could harm us by impairing our ability to attract and retain investors in our funds and subjecting us to significant legal liability and reputational harm. Fraud and other deceptive practices or other misconduct at our portfolio companies could similarly subject us to liability and reputational damage and also harm performance.
There is a risk that our employees could engage in misconduct that adversely affects our business. Our ability to attract and retain investors and to pursue investment opportunities for our funds depends heavily upon the reputation of our professionals, especially our senior Carlyle professionals. We are subject to a number of obligations and standards arising from our asset management business and our authority over the assets managed by our asset management business. The violation of these obligations and standards by any of our employees would adversely affect us and our investment funds and fund investors. Our business often requires that we deal with confidential matters of great significance to companies in which our funds may invest. If our employees were to use or disclose confidential information improperly, we could suffer serious harm to our reputation, financial position and current and future business relationships, as well as face potentially significant litigation. It is not always possible to detect or deter employee misconduct, and the extensive precautions we take to detect and prevent this activity may not be effective in all cases. If any of our employees were to engage in misconduct or were to be accused of such misconduct, whether or not substantiated, our business and our reputation could be adversely affected and a loss of investor confidence could result, which would adversely impact our ability to raise future funds.
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) and the SEC have devoted greater resources to enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”). In addition, the United Kingdom has significantly expanded the reach of its anti-bribery laws. While we have developed and implemented policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance by us and our personnel with the FCPA, such policies and procedures may not be effective in all instances to prevent violations. Any determination that we have violated the FCPA or other applicable anticorruption laws could subject us to, among other things, civil and criminal penalties, material fines, profit disgorgement, injunctions on future conduct, securities litigation and a general loss of investor confidence, any one of which could adversely affect our business prospects, financial position or the market value of our common units.
In addition, we will also be adversely affected if there is misconduct by personnel of portfolio companies in which our funds invest. For example, failures by personnel at our portfolio companies to comply with anti-bribery, trade sanctions or other legal and regulatory requirements could adversely affect our business and reputation. Such misconduct might also undermine any due diligence efforts with respect to such companies and could negatively affect the valuation of a fund’s investments.
Certain policies and procedures implemented to mitigate potential conflicts of interest and address certain regulatory requirements may reduce the synergies across our various businesses and inhibit our ability to maintain our collaborative culture.
We consider our “One Carlyle” philosophy and the ability of our professionals to communicate and collaborate across funds, industries and geographies one of our significant competitive strengths. As a result of the
expansion of our platform into various lines of business in the alternative asset management industry, our acquisition of new businesses, and the growth of our managed account business, we are subject to a number of actual and potential conflicts of interest and subject to greater regulatory oversight than that to which we would otherwise be subject if we had just one line of business. In addition, as we expand our platform, the allocation of investment opportunities among our investment funds is expected to become more complex. In addressing these conflicts and regulatory requirements across our various businesses, we have and may continue to implement certain policies and procedures (for example, information barriers). As a practical matter, the establishment and maintenance of such information barriers means that collaboration between our investment professionals across various platforms or with respect to certain investments may be limited, reducing potential synergies that we cultivate across these businesses through our “One Carlyle” approach. For example, although we maintain ultimate control over AlpInvest, we have erected an information barrier between the management teams at AlpInvest, DGAM and Metropolitan and the rest of Carlyle. See “— Risks Related to Our Business Operations— Our Solutions business is subject to additional risks.” In addition, we may come into possession of material non-public information with respect to issuers in which we may be considering making an investment. As a consequence, we may be precluded from providing such information or other ideas to our other businesses that could benefit from such information.
Risks Related to Our Business Operations
Poor performance of our investment funds would cause a decline in our revenue, income and cash flow, may obligate us to repay carried interest previously paid to us, and could adversely affect our ability to raise capital for future investment funds.
In the event that any of our investment funds were to perform poorly, our revenue, income and cash flow could decline. In some of our funds, such as our hedge funds, a reduction in the value of our AUM in such funds could result in a reduction in management fees and incentive fees we earn. In other funds managed by us, such as our private equity funds, a reduction in the value of the portfolio investments held in such funds could result in a reduction in the carried interest we earn or a reduction in our management fees. Moreover, we could experience losses on our investments of our own capital as a result of poor investment performance by our investment funds. Furthermore, if, as a result of poor performance of later investments in a carry fund’s or fund of funds vehicle’s life, the fund does not achieve certain investment returns for the fund over its life, we will be obligated to repay the amount by which carried interest that was previously distributed to us exceeds the amount to which we are ultimately entitled. These repayment obligations may be related to amounts previously distributed to our senior Carlyle professionals prior to the completion of our initial public offering, with respect to which our common unitholders did not receive any benefit. See “— We may need to pay “giveback” obligations if and when they are triggered under the governing agreements with our investors.”
Poor performance of our investment funds could make it more difficult for us to raise new capital. Investors in carry funds and fund of funds vehicles might decline to invest in future investment funds we raise and investors in hedge funds or other investment funds might withdraw their investments as a result of the poor performance of the investment funds in which they are invested. Investors and potential investors in our funds continually assess our investment funds’ performance, and our ability to raise capital for existing and future investment funds and avoid excessive redemption levels will depend on our investment funds’ continued satisfactory performance. Accordingly, poor fund performance may deter future investment in our funds and thereby decrease the capital invested in our funds and ultimately, our management fee income. Alternatively, in the face of poor fund performance, investors could demand lower fees or fee concessions for existing or future funds which would likewise decrease our revenue or require us to record an impairment of intangible assets and/or goodwill in the case of an acquired business.
Our asset management business depends in large part on our ability to raise capital from third-party investors. If we are unable to raise capital from third-party investors, we would be unable to collect management fees or deploy their capital into investments and potentially collect transaction fees or carried interest, which would materially reduce our revenue and cash flow and adversely affect our financial condition.
Our ability to raise capital from third-party investors depends on a number of factors, including certain factors that are outside our control. Certain factors, such as the performance of the stock market, the pace of distributions from our funds and from the funds of other asset managers or the asset allocation rules or regulations or investment policies to which such third-party investors are subject, could inhibit or restrict the ability of third-party investors to make investments in our investment funds. Third-party investors in private equity, real assets and venture capital funds typically use distributions from prior investments to meet future capital calls. In cases where valuations of existing investments fall and the pace of distributions slows, investors may be unable to make new
commitments to third-party management investment funds such as those advised by us. Although many investors have increased the amount of commitments they are making to alternative investment funds and aggregate fundraising totals approach levels last seen in 2008, there can be no assurance that this will continue. For example, there has been a recent shift from defined benefit pension plans to defined contributions plans, which could reduce the amount of assets available for us to manage on behalf of certain of our clients. Investors may also seek to consolidate their investments with a smaller number of alternative asset managers, which could impact the amount of allocations they make to our funds. Moreover, as some existing investors cease or significantly curtail making commitments to alternative investment funds, we may need to identify and attract new investors in order to maintain or increase the size of our investment funds. For example, we are currently working to create avenues through which we expect to attract a new base of individual investors. There can be no assurances that we can find or secure commitments from those new investors. Our ability to raise new funds could similarly be hampered if the general appeal of private equity and alternative investments were to decline.
An investment in a private equity fund is more illiquid and the returns on such investment may be more volatile than an investment in securities for which there is a more active and transparent market. Private equity and alternative investments could fall into disfavor as a result of concerns about liquidity and short-term performance. Such concerns could be exhibited, in particular, by public pension funds, which have historically been among the largest investors in alternative assets. Concerns with liquidity could cause such public pension funds to reevaluate the appropriateness of alternative investments.
Unlike our closed-end investment funds, our hedge funds are subject to quarterly redemptions and investors can generally decide to exit their fund investments at any time. In 2013, in the aggregate, subscriptions exceeded redemptions in our hedge funds by $992 million but there is no guarantee that this trend will continue. In addition, the evolving preferences of our fund investors may necessitate that alternatives to the traditional investment fund structure, such as managed accounts, smaller funds and co-investment vehicles, become a larger part of our business going forward. This could increase our cost of raising capital at the scale we have historically achieved. The failure to successfully raise capital commitments to new investment funds may also expose us to credit risk in respect of financing that we may provide such funds. When existing capital commitments to a new investment fund are insufficient to fund in full a new investment fund’s participation in a transaction, we may lend money to or borrow money from financial institutions on behalf of such investment funds to bridge this difference and repay this financing with capital from subsequent investors to the fund. Our inability to identify and secure capital commitments from new investors to these funds may expose us to losses (in the case of money that we lend directly to such funds) or adversely impact our ability to repay such borrowings or otherwise have an adverse impact on our liquidity position. Finally, if we seek to expand into other business lines, we may also be unable to raise a sufficient amount of capital to adequately support such businesses. The failure of our investment funds to raise capital in sufficient amounts could result in a decrease in our AUM as well as management fee and transaction fee revenue, or could result in a decline in the rate of growth of our AUM and management fee and transaction fee revenue, any of which could have a material adverse impact on our revenues and financial condition. Our past experience with growth of AUM provides no assurance with respect to the future.
Growing investor demands may also increase our expenses. To address the evolving needs of our investor base, we have expanded our investor relations team, deepened our relationships with intermediaries and made investments in our investor services and information technology departments. These advances have increased our operating expenses and may continue to do so.
Some of our fund investors may have concerns about our status as a publicly traded partnership, including concerns that being a public partnership we will shift our focus from the interests of our fund investors to those of our common unitholders. Some of our fund investors may believe that as a publicly-traded entity we will strive for near-term profit instead of superior risk-adjusted returns for our fund investors over time or grow our AUM for the purpose of generating additional management fees without regard to whether we believe there are sufficient investment opportunities to effectively deploy the additional capital. There can be no assurance that we will be successful in our efforts to address such concerns or to convince fund investors that our status as a public partnership will not affect our longstanding priorities or the way we conduct our business. A decision by a significant number of our fund investors not to commit additional capital to our funds or to cease doing business with us altogether could inhibit our ability to achieve our investment objectives and could have a material adverse effect on our business and financial condition.
Our investors in future funds may negotiate to pay us lower management fees and the economic terms of our future funds may be less favorable to us than those of our existing funds, which could adversely affect our revenues.
In connection with raising new funds or securing additional investments in existing funds, we negotiate terms for such funds and investments with existing and potential investors. The outcome of such negotiations could result in our agreement to terms that are materially less favorable to us than the terms of prior funds we have advised or funds advised by our competitors. Such terms could restrict our ability to raise investment funds with investment objectives or strategies that compete with existing funds, reduce fee revenues we earn, reduce the percentage of profits on third-party capital that we share in or add expenses and obligations for us in managing the fund or increase our potential liabilities, all of which could ultimately reduce our profitability. For instance, we have received and expect to continue to receive requests from a variety of investors and groups representing investors to increase the percentage of transaction fees we share with our investors (or to decline to receive any transaction fees from portfolio companies owned by our funds). To the extent we accommodate such requests, it could result in a decrease in the amount of fee revenue we earn. Moreover, certain institutional investors have publicly criticized certain fund fee and expense structures, including management fees. We have received and expect to continue to confront requests from a variety of investors and groups representing investors to decrease fees and to modify our carried interest and incentive fee structures, which could result in a reduction in or delay in the timing of receipt of the fees and carried interest and incentive fees we earn. Any modification of our existing fee or carry arrangements or the fee or carry structures for new investment funds could adversely affect our results of operations. See “— The alternative asset management business is intensely competitive.”
In addition, certain institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds and public pension funds, have demonstrated an increased preference for alternatives to the traditional investment fund structure, such as managed accounts, smaller funds and co-investment vehicles. There can be no assurance that such alternatives will be as efficient as the traditional investment fund structure, or as to the impact such a trend could have on the cost of our operations or profitability if we were to implement these alternative investment structures. Moreover, certain institutional investors are demonstrating a preference to in-source their own investment professionals and to make direct investments in alternative assets without the assistance of private equity advisers like us. Such institutional investors may become our competitors and could cease to invest in our funds.
Valuation methodologies for certain assets in our funds can involve subjective judgments, and the fair value of assets established pursuant to such methodologies may be incorrect, which could result in the misstatement of fund performance and accrued performance fees.
There are often no readily ascertainable market prices for a substantial majority of illiquid investments of our investment funds. We determine the fair value of the investments of each of our investment funds at least quarterly based on the fair value guidelines set forth by generally accepted accounting principles in the United States. The fair value measurement accounting guidance establishes a hierarchal disclosure framework that ranks the observability of market inputs used in measuring financial instruments at fair value. The observability of inputs is impacted by a number of factors, including the type of financial instrument, the characteristics specific to the financial instrument and the state of the marketplace, including the existence and transparency of transactions between market participants. Financial instruments with readily available quoted prices, or for which fair value can be measured from quoted prices in active markets, will generally have a higher degree of market price observability and a lesser degree of judgment applied in determining fair value.
Investments for which market prices are not observable include, but are not limited to illiquid investments in operating companies, real estate, energy ventures and structured vehicles, and encompass all components of the capital structure, including equity, mezzanine, debt, preferred equity and derivative instruments such as options and warrants. Fair values of such investments are determined by reference to the market approach (i.e., multiplying a key performance metric of the investee company or asset, such as EBITDA, by a relevant valuation multiple observed in the range of comparable public entities or transactions, adjusted by management as appropriate for differences between the investment and the referenced comparables), the income approach (i.e., discounting projected future cash flows of the investee company or asset and/or capitalizing representative stabilized cash flows of the investee company or asset) and other methodologies such as prices provided by reputable dealers or pricing services, option pricing models and replacement costs.
The determination of fair value using these methodologies takes into consideration a range of factors including but not limited to the price at which the investment was acquired, the nature of the investment, local
market conditions, the multiples of comparable securities, current and projected operating performance and financing transactions subsequent to the acquisition of the investment. These valuation methodologies involve a significant degree of management judgment. For example, as to investments that we share with another sponsor, we may apply a different valuation methodology than the other sponsor does or derive a different value than the other sponsor has derived on the same investment, which could cause some investors to question our valuations.
Because there is significant uncertainty in the valuation of, or in the stability of the value of, illiquid investments, the fair values of such investments as reflected in an investment fund’s net asset value do not necessarily reflect the prices that would be obtained by us on behalf of the investment fund when such investments are realized. Realizations at values significantly lower than the values at which investments have been reflected in prior fund net asset values would result in reduced earnings or losses for the applicable fund, the loss of potential carried interest and incentive fees and in the case of our hedge funds, management fees. Changes in values attributed to investments from quarter to quarter may result in volatility in the net asset values and results of operations that we report from period to period. Also, a situation where asset values turn out to be materially different than values reflected in prior fund net asset values could cause investors to lose confidence in us, which could in turn result in difficulty in raising additional funds.
The historical returns attributable to our funds, including those presented in this report, should not be considered as indicative of the future results of our funds or of our future results or of any returns expected on an investment in our common units.
We have presented in this report information relating to the historical performance of our investment funds. The historical and potential future returns of the investment funds that we advise are not directly linked to returns on our common units. Therefore, any continued positive performance of the investment funds that we advise will not necessarily result in positive returns on an investment in our common units. However, poor performance of the investment funds that we advise would cause a decline in our revenue from such investment funds, and could therefore have a negative effect on our performance, our ability to raise future funds and in all likelihood the returns on an investment in our common units.
Moreover, with respect to the historical returns of our investment funds:
• the rates of returns of our carry funds reflect unrealized gains as of the applicable measurement date that may never be realized, which may adversely affect the ultimate value realized from those funds’ investments;
• unitholders will not benefit from any value that was created in our funds prior to our becoming a public company to the extent such value was previously realized;
• in recent years, there has been increased competition for private equity investment opportunities resulting from the increased amount of capital invested in alternative investment funds, high liquidity in debt markets and strong equity markets, and the increased competition for investments may reduce our returns in the future;
• the rates of returns of some of our funds in certain years have been positively influenced by a number of investments that experienced rapid and substantial increases in value following the dates on which those investments were made, which may not occur with respect to future investments;
• our investment funds’ returns in some years have benefited from investment opportunities and general market conditions that may not repeat themselves (including, for example, particularly favorable borrowing conditions in the debt markets during 2005, 2006 and early 2007), and our current or future investment funds might not be able to avail themselves of comparable investment opportunities or market conditions; and
• we may create new funds in the future that reflect a different asset mix and different investment strategies, as well as a varied geographic and industry exposure as compared to our present funds, and any such new funds could have different returns than our existing or previous funds.
In addition, future returns will be affected by the applicable risks described elsewhere in this report, including risks related to the industries and businesses in which our funds may invest. See “Part II. Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations— Segment Analysis — Fund Performance Metrics” for additional information.
Dependence on significant leverage in investments by our funds could adversely affect our ability to achieve attractive rates of return on those investments.
Many of our carry funds’ and fund of funds vehicles’ investments rely heavily on the use of leverage, and our ability to achieve attractive rates of return on investments will depend on our ability to access sufficient sources of indebtedness at attractive rates. For example, in many private equity investments, indebtedness may constitute and historically has constituted up to 70% or more of a portfolio company’s or real estate asset’s total debt and equity capitalization, including debt that may be incurred in connection with the investment, whether incurred at or above the investment-level entity. The absence of available sources of sufficient debt financing for extended periods of time could therefore materially and adversely affect our Corporate Private Equity and Real Assets businesses. In addition, an increase in either the general levels of interest rates or in the risk spread demanded by sources of indebtedness would make it more expensive to finance those investments thereby reducing returns. Increases in interest rates could also make it more difficult to locate and consummate private equity investments because other potential buyers, including operating companies acting as strategic buyers, may be able to bid for an asset at a higher price due to a lower overall cost of capital or their ability to benefit from a higher amount of cost savings following the acquisition of the asset. In addition, a portion of the indebtedness used to finance private equity investments often includes high-yield debt securities issued in the capital markets. Availability of capital from the high-yield debt markets is subject to significant volatility, and there may be times when we might not be able to access those markets at attractive rates, or at all, when completing an investment. Certain investments may also be financed through borrowings on fund-level debt facilities, which may or may not be available for a refinancing at the end of their respective terms. Finally, the interest payments on the indebtedness used to finance our carry funds’ and fund of funds vehicles’ investments are generally deductible expenses for income tax purposes, subject to limitations under applicable tax law and policy. Any change in such tax law or policy to eliminate or substantially limit these income tax deductions, as has been discussed from time to time in various jurisdictions, would reduce the after-tax rates of return on the affected investments, which may have an adverse impact on our business and financial results. See “— Our funds make investments in companies that are based outside of the United States, which may expose us to additional risks not typically associated with investing in companies that are based in the United States.”
Investments in highly leveraged entities are also inherently more sensitive to declines in revenue, increases in expenses and interest rates and adverse economic, market and industry developments. Furthermore, the incurrence of a significant amount of indebtedness by an entity could, among other things:
• subject the entity to a number of restrictive covenants, terms and conditions, any violation of which could be viewed by creditors as an event of default and could materially impact our ability to realize value from the investment;
• allow even moderate reductions in operating cash flow to render the entity unable to service its indebtedness, leading to a bankruptcy or other reorganization of the entity and a loss of part or all of the equity investment in it;
• give rise to an obligation to make mandatory prepayments of debt using excess cash flow, which might limit the entity’s ability to respond to changing industry conditions to the extent additional cash is needed for the response, to make unplanned but necessary capital expenditures or to take advantage of growth opportunities;
• limit the entity’s ability to adjust to changing market conditions, thereby placing it at a competitive disadvantage compared to its competitors that have relatively less debt;
• limit the entity’s ability to engage in strategic acquisitions that might be necessary to generate attractive returns or further growth; and
• limit the entity’s ability to obtain additional financing or increase the cost of obtaining such financing, including for capital expenditures, working capital or other general corporate purposes.
As a result, the risk of loss associated with a leveraged entity is generally greater than for companies with comparatively less debt. For example, a number of investments consummated by private equity sponsors during
2005, 2006 and 2007 that utilized significant amounts of leverage subsequently experienced severe economic stress and, in certain cases, defaulted on their debt obligations due to a decrease in revenue and cash flow precipitated by the subsequent downturn during 2008 and 2009. Similarly, the leveraged nature of the investments of our Real Assets funds increases the risk that a decline in the fair value of the underlying real estate or tangible assets will result in their abandonment or foreclosure.
When our private equity funds’ existing portfolio investments reach the point when debt incurred to finance those investments matures in significant amounts and must be either repaid or refinanced, those investments may materially suffer if they have not generated sufficient cash flow to repay maturing debt and there is insufficient capacity and availability in the financing markets to permit them to refinance maturing debt on satisfactory terms, or at all. If a limited availability of financing for such purposes were to persist for an extended period of time, when significant amounts of the debt incurred to finance our Corporate Private Equity and Real Assets funds’ existing portfolio investments came due, these funds could be materially and adversely affected.
Many of our Global Market Strategies funds may choose to use leverage as part of their respective investment programs and regularly borrow a substantial amount of their capital. The use of leverage poses a significant degree of risk and enhances the possibility of a significant loss in the value of the investment portfolio. A fund may borrow money from time to time to purchase or carry securities or may enter into derivative transactions (such as total return swaps) with counterparties that have embedded leverage. The interest expense and other costs incurred in connection with such borrowing may not be recovered by appreciation in the securities purchased or carried and will be lost, and the timing and magnitude of such losses may be accelerated or exacerbated, in the event of a decline in the market value of such securities. Gains realized with borrowed funds may cause the fund’s net asset value to increase at a faster rate than would be the case without borrowings. However, if investment results fail to cover the cost of borrowings, the fund’s net asset value could also decrease faster than if there had been no borrowings. Increases in interest rates could also decrease the value of fixed-rate debt investment that our investment funds make.
Any of the foregoing circumstances could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition and cash flow.
A decline in the pace or size of investments by our carry funds or fund of funds vehicles could result in our receiving less revenue from transaction fees.
The transaction fees that we earn are driven in part by the pace at which our funds make investments and the size of those investments. Any decline in that pace or the size of such investments could reduce our transaction fees and could make it more difficult for us to raise capital on our anticipated schedule. Many factors could cause such a decline in the pace of investment, including:
• the inability of our investment professionals to identify attractive investment opportunities;
• competition for such opportunities among other potential acquirers;
• decreased availability of capital on attractive terms; and
• our failure to consummate identified investment opportunities because of business, regulatory or legal complexities and adverse developments in the U.S. or global economy or financial markets.
In addition, we have confronted and expect to continue to confront requests from a variety of investors and groups representing investors to increase the percentage of transaction fees we share with our fund investors (or to decline to receive transaction fees from portfolio companies held by our funds). To the extent we accommodate such requests, it would result in a decrease in the amount of fee revenue we earn. For example, in our latest U.S. buyout fund, fund investors are entitled to receive 80% of any transaction fees we generate. See “— Our investors in future funds may negotiate to pay us lower management fees and the economic terms of our future funds may be less favorable to us than those of our existing funds, which could adversely affect our revenues.”
The alternative asset management business is intensely competitive.
The alternative asset management business is intensely competitive, with competition based on a variety of factors, including investment performance, business relationships, quality of service provided to investors, investor liquidity and willingness to invest, fund terms (including fees), brand recognition and business reputation. Our alternative asset management business competes with a number of private equity funds, specialized investment funds, hedge funds, corporate buyers, traditional asset managers, real estate companies, commercial banks, investment banks and other financial institutions (as well as sovereign wealth funds). For instance, Carlyle and Riverstone have mutually decided not to pursue another jointly managed fund as co-sponsors. Accordingly, we expect that our future energy funds (including any new funds advised by NGP, with which we have formed a partnership and in which we acquired an equity interest in December 2012, as described in “Part I. Item 1. Business”) will compete with Riverstone, among other alternative asset managers, for investment opportunities and fund investors in the energy and renewable space. A number of factors serve to increase our competitive risks:
• a number of our competitors in some of our businesses have greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources and more personnel than we do;
• some of our funds may not perform as well as competitors’ funds or other available investment products;
• several of our competitors have significant amounts of capital, and many of them have similar investment objectives to ours, which may create additional competition for investment opportunities and may reduce the size and duration of pricing inefficiencies that otherwise could be exploited;
• some of these competitors may also have a lower cost of capital and access to funding sources that are not available to us, which may create competitive disadvantages for us with respect to investment opportunities;
• some of our competitors may have higher risk tolerances, different risk assessments or lower return thresholds than us, which could allow them to consider a wider variety of investments and to bid more aggressively than us for investments that we want to make;
• some of our competitors may be subject to less regulation and accordingly may have more flexibility to undertake and execute certain businesses or investments than we do and/or bear less compliance expense than we do;
• some of our competitors may have more flexibility than us in raising certain types of investment funds under the investment management contracts they have negotiated with their investors;
• some of our competitors may have better expertise or be regarded by investors as having better expertise in a specific asset class or geographic region than we do;
• our competitors that are corporate buyers may be able to achieve synergistic cost savings in respect of an investment, which may provide them with a competitive advantage in bidding for an investment;
• there are relatively few barriers to entry impeding the formation of new alternative asset management firms, and the successful efforts of new entrants into our various businesses, including former “star” portfolio managers at large diversified financial institutions as well as such institutions themselves, is expected to continue to result in increased competition;
• some investors may prefer to invest with an asset manager that is not publicly traded or is smaller with only one or two investment products that it manages; and
• other industry participants may, from time to time, seek to recruit our investment professionals and other employees away from us.
We may lose investment opportunities in the future if we do not match investment prices, structures and terms offered by our competitors. Alternatively, we may experience decreased rates of return and increased risks of loss if we match investment prices, structures and terms offered by our competitors. Moreover, if we are forced to compete with other alternative asset managers on the basis of price, we may not be able to maintain our current fund
fee and carried interest terms. We have historically competed primarily on the performance of our funds, and not on the level of our fees or carried interest relative to those of our competitors. However, there is a risk that fees and carried interest in the alternative asset management industry will decline, without regard to the historical performance of a manager. Fee or carried interest income reductions on existing or future funds, without corresponding decreases in our cost structure, would adversely affect our revenues and profitability. See “— Our investors in future funds may negotiate to pay us lower management fees and the economic terms of our future funds may be less favorable to us than those of our existing funds, which could adversely affect our revenues.”
In addition, the attractiveness of our investment funds relative to investments in other investment products could decrease depending on economic conditions. This competitive pressure could adversely affect our ability to make successful investments and limit our ability to raise future investment funds, either of which would adversely impact our business, revenue, results of operations and cash flow. See “— Our investors in future funds may negotiate to pay us lower management fees and the economic terms of our future funds may be less favorable to us than those of our existing funds, which could adversely affect our revenues.”
The due diligence process that we undertake in connection with investments by our investment funds may not reveal all facts that may be relevant in connection with an investment.
Before making private equity and other investments, we conduct due diligence that we deem reasonable and appropriate based on the facts and circumstances applicable to each investment. The objective of the due diligence process is to identify attractive investment opportunities based on the facts and circumstances surrounding an investment and, in the case of private equity investments, prepare a framework that may be used from the date of an acquisition to drive operational achievement and value creation. When conducting due diligence, we may be required to evaluate important and complex business, financial, regulatory, tax, accounting, environmental and legal issues. Outside consultants, legal advisors, accountants and investment banks may be involved in the due diligence process in varying degrees depending on the type of investment. Nevertheless, when conducting due diligence and making an assessment regarding an investment, we rely on the resources available to us, including information provided by the target of the investment and, in some circumstances, third-party investigations and analysis. The due diligence process may at times be subjective with respect to newly-organized companies for which only limited information is available. Accordingly, we cannot be certain that the due diligence investigation that we carry out with respect to any investment opportunity will reveal or highlight all relevant facts that may be necessary or helpful in evaluating such investment opportunity. Instances of fraud, accounting irregularities and other improper, illegal or deceptive practices can be difficult to detect, and fraud and other deceptive practices can be widespread in certain jurisdictions. Several of our funds invest in emerging market countries that may not have established laws and regulations that are as stringent as in more developed nations, or where existing laws and regulations may not be consistently enforced. For example, our funds invest throughout jurisdictions that have material perceptions of corruption according to international rating standards (such as “Transparency International” and “Corruption Perceptions Index”) such as China, India, Indonesia, Latin America, MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Due diligence on investment opportunities in these jurisdictions is frequently more complicated because consistent and uniform commercial practices in such locations may not have developed. Fraud, accounting irregularities and deceptive practices can be especially difficult to detect in such locations. For example, two Chinese companies in which we have minority investments are the subject of internal investigations within the relevant company and regulatory enquiry in connection with allegations of financial or accounting irregularities, and a purported class action has been brought against one of the Chinese companies and certain of its present and former officers and directors, including a Carlyle employee who is a former director of such entity. We do not have sufficient information at this time to give an assessment of the likely outcome of these matters or as to the ultimate impact these allegations, if true, may have on the value of our investments. In addition, investment opportunities may arise in companies that have historic and/or unresolved regulatory, tax, fraud or accounting related investigations, audits or enquiries and/or have been subjected to public accusations of improper behavior. However, even heightened and specific due diligence and investigations with respect to such matters may not reveal or highlight all relevant facts that may be necessary or helpful in evaluating such investment opportunity and/or will be able to accurately identify, assess and quantify settlements, enforcement actions and judgments that may arise and which could have a material adverse effect on the portfolio company’s business, financial condition and operations, as well potential significant harm to the portfolio company’s reputation and prospects. We cannot be certain that our due diligence investigations will result in investments being successful or that the actual financial performance of an investment will not fall short of the financial projections we used when evaluating that investment. Failure to identify risks associated with our investments could have a material adverse effect on our business.
Our funds invest in relatively high-risk, illiquid assets, and we may fail to realize any profits from these activities for a considerable period of time or lose some or all of our principal investments.
Many of our investment funds invest in securities that are not publicly traded. In many cases, our investment funds may be prohibited by contract or by applicable securities laws from selling such securities for a period of time. Our investment funds will not be able to sell these securities publicly unless their sale is registered under applicable securities laws, or unless an exemption from such registration is available. The ability of many of our investment funds, particularly our private equity funds, to dispose of investments is heavily dependent on the public equity markets. For example, the ability to realize any value from an investment may depend upon the ability to complete an initial public offering of the portfolio company in which such investment is held. Even if the securities are publicly traded, large holdings of securities can often be disposed of only over a substantial length of time, exposing the investment returns to risks of downward movement in market prices during the intended disposition period. Accordingly, under certain conditions, our investment funds may be forced to either sell securities at lower prices than they had expected to realize or defer, potentially for a considerable period of time, sales that they had planned to make. We have made and expect to continue to make significant principal investments in our current and future investment funds. Contributing capital to these investment funds is subject to significant risks, and we may lose some or all of the principal amount of our investments.
The investments of our private equity funds are subject to a number of inherent risks.
Our results are highly dependent on our continued ability to generate attractive returns from our investments. Investments made by our private equity funds involve a number of significant risks inherent to private equity investing, including the following:
• we advise funds that invest in businesses that operate in a variety of industries that are subject to extensive domestic and foreign regulation, such as the telecommunications industry, the aerospace, defense and government services industry and the healthcare industry (including companies that supply equipment and services to governmental agencies), that may involve greater risk due to rapidly changing market and governmental conditions in those sectors;
• significant failures of our portfolio companies to comply with laws and regulations applicable to them could affect the ability of our funds to invest in other companies in certain industries in the future and could harm our reputation;
• companies in which private equity investments are made may have limited financial resources and may be unable to meet their obligations, which may be accompanied by a deterioration in the value of their equity securities or any collateral or guarantees provided with respect to their debt;
• companies in which private equity investments are made are more likely to depend on the management talents and efforts of a small group of persons and, as a result, the death, disability, resignation or termination of one or more of those persons could have a material adverse impact on their business and prospects and the investment made;
• companies in which private equity investments are made may from time to time be parties to litigation, may be engaged in rapidly changing businesses with products subject to a substantial risk of obsolescence and may require substantial additional capital to support their operations, finance expansion or maintain their competitive position;
• companies in which private equity investments are made generally have less predictable operating results;
• instances of fraud, corruption and other deceptive practices committed by senior management of portfolio companies in which our funds invest may undermine our due diligence efforts with respect to such companies and, upon the discovery of such fraud, negatively affect the valuation of a fund’s investments as well as contribute to overall market volatility that can negatively impact a fund’s investment program;
• our funds may make investments that they do not advantageously dispose of prior to the date the applicable fund is dissolved, either by expiration of such fund’s term or otherwise, resulting in a lower than expected return on the investments and, potentially, on the fund itself;
• our funds generally establish the capital structure of portfolio companies on the basis of the financial projections based primarily on management judgments and assumptions, and general economic conditions and other factors may cause actual performance to fall short of these financial projections, which could cause a substantial decrease in the value of our equity holdings in the portfolio company and cause our funds’ performance to fall short of our expectations;
• under ERISA, a “trade or business” within a “controlled group” can be liable for the ERISA Title IV pension obligations (including withdrawal liability for union multiemployer plans) of any other member of the controlled group. This “controlled group” liability represents one of the few situations in which one entity’s liability can be imposed upon another simply because the entities are united by common ownership, but in order for such joint and several liability to be imposed, two tests must be satisfied: (1) the entity on which such liability is to be imposed must be a “trade or business” and (2) a “controlled group” relationship must exist among such entity and the pension plan sponsor or the contributing employer. While a number of cases have held that managing investments is not a “trade or business” for tax purposes, a 2013 federal Circuit Court case concluded that a private equity fund could be a “trade or business” for ERISA purposes (and, consequently, could be liable for underfunded pension liabilities of an insolvent portfolio company) based upon a number of factors present in that case, including the fund’s level of involvement in the management of its portfolio companies and the nature of its management fee arrangements.
• executive officers, directors and employees of an equity sponsor may be named as defendants in litigation involving a company in which a private equity investment is made or is being made.
Our real estate funds are subject to the risks inherent in the ownership and operation of real estate and the construction and development of real estate.
Investments in our real estate funds will be subject to the risks inherent in the ownership and operation of real estate and real estate-related businesses and assets. These risks include the following:
• those associated with the burdens of ownership of real property;
• general and local economic conditions;
• changes in supply of and demand for competing properties in an area (as a result, for instance, of overbuilding);
• fluctuations in the average occupancy and room rates for hotel properties;
• the financial resources of tenants;
• changes in building, environmental and other laws;
• energy and supply shortages;
• various uninsured or uninsurable risks;
• natural disasters;
• changes in government regulations (such as rent control);
• changes in real property tax rates;
• changes in interest rates;
• the reduced availability of mortgage funds which may render the sale or refinancing of properties difficult or impracticable;
• negative developments in the economy that depress travel activity;
• environmental liabilities;
• contingent liabilities on disposition of assets;
• unexpected cost overruns in connection with development projects;
• terrorist attacks, war and other factors that are beyond our control; and
• dependence on local operating partners.
During 2008 and 2009, real estate markets in the United States, Europe and Japan generally experienced sharp increases in capitalization rates and declines in value as a result of the overall economic decline and the limited availability of financing. As a result, the value of certain investments in our real estate funds declined significantly. In addition, if our real estate funds acquire direct or indirect interests in undeveloped land or underdeveloped real property, which may often be non-income producing, they will be subject to the risks normally associated with such assets and development activities, including risks relating to the availability and timely receipt of zoning and other regulatory or environmental approvals, the cost and timely completion of construction (including risks beyond the control of our fund, such as weather or labor conditions or material shortages) and the availability of both construction and permanent financing on favorable terms. Additionally, our funds’ properties may be managed by a third party, which makes us dependent upon such third parties and subjects us to risks associated with the actions of such third parties. Any of these factors may cause the value of the investments in our real estate funds to decline, which may have a material impact on our results of operations. Although real estate values have generally rebounded with the rest of the economy, other than certain high-profile assets in the best markets, average prices in 2013 often remain below peaks reached in late-2007 or early-2008.
We often pursue investment opportunities that involve business, regulatory, legal or other complexities.
As an element of our investment style, we may pursue unusually complex investment opportunities. This can often take the form of substantial business, regulatory, tax, or legal complexity that would deter other asset managers. Our tolerance for complexity presents risks, as such transactions can be more difficult, expensive and time-consuming to finance and execute; it can be more difficult to manage or realize value from the assets acquired in such transactions; and such transactions sometimes entail a higher level of regulatory scrutiny or a greater risk of contingent liabilities. The complexity of these transactions could also make it more difficult to find a suitable buyer. Any of these risks could harm the performance of our funds.
Our investment funds make investments in companies that we do not control.
Investments by many of our investment funds will include debt instruments and equity securities of companies that we do not control. Such instruments and securities may be acquired by our investment funds through trading activities or through purchases of securities from the issuer. In addition, our funds may acquire minority equity interests in large transactions, which may be structured as “consortium transactions” due to the size of the investment and the amount of capital required to be invested. A consortium transaction involves an equity investment in which two or more private equity or other firms serve together or collectively as equity sponsors. We participated in a number of consortium transactions in prior years due to the increased size of many of the transactions in which we were involved. Consortium transactions generally entail a reduced level of control by our firm over the investment because governance rights must be shared with the other consortium sponsors. Accordingly, we may not be able to control decisions relating to a consortium investment, including decisions relating to the management and operation of the company and the timing and nature of any exit. Our funds may also dispose of a portion of their majority equity investments in portfolio companies over time in a manner that results in the funds retaining a minority investment. Those investments may be subject to the risk that the company in which the investment is made may make business, tax, legal, financial or management decisions with which we do not agree or that the majority stakeholders or the management of the company may take risks or otherwise act in a manner that does not serve our interests. If any of the foregoing were to occur, the value of investments by our funds could decrease and our financial condition, results of operations and cash flow could suffer as a result.
Our funds make investments in companies that are based outside of the United States, which may expose us to additional risks not typically associated with investing in companies that are based in the United States.
Many of our investment funds generally invest a significant portion of their assets in the equity, debt, loans or other securities of issuers that are headquartered outside of the United States, such as China, India, Indonesia, Latin America, MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa. A substantial amount of these foreign investments consist of investments made by our carry funds. For example, as of December 31, 2013, approximately 40% of the equity invested by our carry funds was attributable to foreign investments. Investments in non-U.S. securities involve risks not typically associated with investing in U.S. securities, including:
• certain economic and political risks, including potential exchange control regulations and restrictions on our non-U.S. investments and repatriation of profits on investments or of capital invested, the risks of political, economic or social instability, the possibility of expropriation or confiscatory taxation and adverse economic and political developments;
• the imposition of non-U.S. taxes on gains from the sale of investments or other distributions by our funds;
• the absence of uniform accounting, auditing and financial reporting standards, practices and disclosure requirements and less government supervision and regulation;
• changes in laws or clarifications to existing laws that could impact our tax treaty positions, which could adversely impact the returns on our investments;
• differences in the legal and regulatory environment or enhanced legal and regulatory compliance;
• limitations on borrowings to be used to fund acquisitions or dividends;
• political hostility to investments by foreign or private equity investors, including increased risk of government expropriation;
• less liquid markets;
• reliance on a more limited number of commodity inputs, service providers and/or distribution mechanisms;
• adverse fluctuations in currency exchange rates and costs associated with conversion of investment principal and income from one currency into another;
• higher rates of inflation;
• higher transaction costs;
• less government supervision of exchanges, brokers and issuers;
• less developed bankruptcy, limited liability company, corporate, partnership and other laws (which may have the effect of disregarding or otherwise circumventing the limited liability structures potentially causing the actions or liabilities of one fund or a portfolio company to adversely impact us or an unrelated fund or portfolio company);
• difficulty in enforcing contractual obligations;
• less stringent requirements relating to fiduciary duties;
• fewer investor protections; and
• greater price volatility.
We operate in numerous national and subnational jurisdictions throughout the world and are subject to complex taxation requirements that could result in the imposition of taxes in excess of any amounts that are reserved
as a cash or financial statement matter for such purposes. In addition, the portfolio companies of our funds are typically subject to taxation in the jurisdictions in which they operate. It is possible that a taxing authority could take a contrary view of our tax position or there could be changes in law subsequent to the date of an investment in a particular portfolio company will adversely affect returns from that investment, or adversely affect any prospective investments in a particular jurisdiction, for example as a result of new legislation in any such local jurisdiction affecting the deductibility of interest or other expenses related to acquisition financing.
In the event a portfolio company outside the United States experiences financial difficulties, we may consider local laws, corporate organizational structure, potential impacts on other portfolio companies in the region and other factors in developing our business response. Among other actions, we may seek to enhance the management team or make fund capital investments from our investment funds, our senior Carlyle professionals and/or us. To the extent we and/or certain of our senior Carlyle professionals fund additional capital into a company that is experiencing difficulties, we may be required to consolidate the entity into our financial statements under applicable U.S. GAAP Standards. See “—Risks Related to Our Business Operations —The Consolidation of Investment Funds, Holding Companies or Operating Businesses of Our Portfolio Companies Could Make it More Difficult to Understand the Operating Performance of the Partnership and Could Create Operational Risks For the Partnership.”
Our funds’ investments that are denominated in a foreign currency will be subject to the risk that the value of a particular currency will change in relation to one or more other currencies. Among the factors that may affect currency values are trade balances, levels of short-term interest rates, differences in relative values of similar assets in different currencies, long-term opportunities for investment and capital appreciation and political developments. Furthermore, in certain cases, our fund management fees are denominated in foreign currencies. With respect to those funds, we are subject to the risk that the value of a particular currency will change in relation to one or more other currencies in which the fund has incurred expenses or has made investments. With respect to investments made in a different currency, fluctuations in such currencies could impact an investment fund’s net asset value. We may employ hedging techniques to minimize these risks, but we can offer no assurance that such strategies will be effective or tax-efficient. If we engage in hedging transactions, we may be exposed to additional risks associated with such transactions. See “— Risks Related to Our Business Operations —Risk management activities may adversely affect the return on our funds’ investments.”
We may need to pay “giveback” obligations if and when they are triggered under the governing agreements with our investors.
If, at the end of the life of a carry fund (or earlier with respect to certain of funds), the carry fund has not achieved investment returns that (in most cases) exceed the preferred return threshold or (in almost all cases) the general partner receives net profits over the life of the fund in excess of its allocable share under the applicable partnership agreement, we will be obligated to repay an amount equal to the extent to which carried interest that was previously distributed to us exceeds the amounts to which we are ultimately entitled. These repayment obligations may be related to amounts previously distributed to our senior Carlyle professionals prior to the completion of our initial public offering, with respect to which our common unitholders did not receive any benefit. This obligation is known as a “giveback” obligation. As of December 31, 2013, we had accrued a giveback obligation of $49.9 million, inclusive of giveback obligations accrued for Consolidated Funds, representing the giveback obligation that would need to be paid if the carry funds were liquidated at their current fair values at that date. If, as of December 31, 2013, all of the investments held by our carry funds were deemed worthless, the amount of realized and distributed carried interest subject to potential giveback would have been $1.6 billion, on an after-tax basis where applicable. Although a giveback obligation is several to each person who received a distribution, and not a joint obligation, the governing agreements of our funds generally provide that to the extent a recipient does not fund his or her respective share, then we may have to fund such additional amounts beyond the amount of carried interest we retained, although we generally will retain the right to pursue any remedies that we have under such governing agreements against those carried interest recipients who fail to fund their obligations. We have historically withheld a portion of the cash from carried interest distributions to individual senior Carlyle professionals and other employees as security for their potential giveback obligations. We also set aside cash reserves from carried interest we receive and retain for potential giveback obligations that we may be required to fund in the future. However, we have not set aside additional cash reserves relating to the secondary liability we retain for the giveback obligations attributable to our individual senior Carlyle professionals and other employees if they fail to satisfy these obligations. We may need to use or reserve cash to repay such giveback obligations instead of using the cash for other purposes. See “Part I. Item 1. Business —Structure and Operation of Our Investment Funds —Incentive Arrangements / Fee Structure” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations— Contractual Obligations— Contingent Obligations (Giveback)” and Notes 2 and 11 to the consolidated financial statements.
Our investment funds often make common equity investments that rank junior to preferred equity and debt in a company’s capital structure.
In most cases, the companies in which our investment funds invest have, or are permitted to have, outstanding indebtedness or equity securities that rank senior to our fund’s investment. By their terms, such instruments may provide that their holders are entitled to receive payments of dividends, interest or principal on or before the dates on which payments are to be made in respect of our investment. Also, in the event of insolvency, liquidation, dissolution, reorganization or bankruptcy of a company in which an investment is made, holders of securities ranking senior to our investment would typically be entitled to receive payment in full before distributions
could be made in respect of our investment. After repaying senior security holders, the company may not have any remaining assets to use for repaying amounts owed in respect of our investment. To the extent that any assets remain, holders of claims that rank equally with our investment would be entitled to share on an equal and ratable basis in distributions that are made out of those assets. Also, during periods of financial distress or following an insolvency, the ability of our funds to influence a company’s affairs and to take actions to protect their investments may be substantially less than that of the senior creditors.
Third-party investors in substantially all of our carry funds have the right to remove the general partner of the fund for cause, to accelerate the liquidation date of the investment fund without cause by a simple majority vote and to terminate the investment period under certain circumstances and investors in certain of the investment funds we advise may redeem their investments. These events would lead to a decrease in our revenues, which could be substantial.
The governing agreements of substantially all of our carry funds provide that, subject to certain conditions, third-party investors in those funds have the right to remove the general partner of the fund for cause (other than the AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles) or to accelerate the liquidation date of the investment fund without cause by a simple majority vote, resulting in a reduction in management fees we would earn from such investment funds and a significant reduction in the expected amounts of total carried interest and incentive fees from those funds. Carried interest and incentive fees could be significantly reduced as a result of our inability to maximize the value of investments by an investment fund during the liquidation process or in the event of the triggering of a “giveback” obligation. Finally, the applicable funds would cease to exist after completion of liquidation and winding-up. In addition, the governing agreements of our investment funds provide that in the event certain “key persons” in our investment funds do not meet specified time commitments with regard to managing the fund (for example, certain of the investment professionals serving on the investment committee or advising the fund), then investors in certain funds have the right to vote to terminate the investment period by a simple majority vote in accordance with specified procedures, accelerate the withdrawal of their capital on an investor-by-investor basis, or the fund’s investment period will automatically terminate and the vote of a simple majority of investors is required to restart it. In addition to having a significant negative impact on our revenue, net income and cash flow, the occurrence of such an event with respect to any of our investment funds would likely result in significant reputational damage to us and could negatively impact our future fundraising efforts.
The AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles generally provide for suspension or termination of investment commitments in the event of cause, key person or regulatory events, changes in control of Carlyle or of majority ownership of AlpInvest, and, in some cases, other performance metrics, or in a limited number of cases, the right of a supermajority of the investors to remove the general partner of the fund without cause, but generally have not provided for liquidation without cause. Where AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles include “key person” provisions, they are focused on specific existing AlpInvest personnel. While we believe that existing AlpInvest management have appropriate incentives to remain at AlpInvest, based on equity ownership, profit participation and other contractual provisions, we are not able to guarantee the ongoing participation of AlpInvest management team members in respect of the AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles. In addition, AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles have historically had few or even a single investor. In such cases, an individual investor may hold disproportionate authority over decisions reserved for third-party investors.
Third-party investors in our onshore commodity hedge funds have the right to remove the general partner of the fund by a simply majority vote in accordance with specified procedures.
Investors in our hedge funds and DGAM funds may generally redeem their investments on an annual, semi-annual or quarterly basis without penalty following the expiration of a specified period of time when capital may not be withdrawn (typically between three months and three years), subject to the applicable fund’s specific redemption provisions. In a declining market, the pace of redemptions and consequent reduction in our AUM could accelerate. The decrease in revenues that would result from significant redemptions in our hedge funds could have a material adverse effect on our business, revenue and cash flow.
In addition, because our investment funds generally have an adviser that is registered under the Advisers Act, the management agreements of each of our investment funds would be terminated upon an “assignment” to a third-party of these agreements without appropriate investor consent, which assignment may be deemed to occur in the event these advisers were to experience a change of control. We cannot be certain that consents required to assignments of our investment management agreements will be obtained if a change of control occurs. “Assignment” of these agreements without investor consent could cause us to lose the fees we earn from such investment funds.
Third-party investors in our investment funds with commitment-based structures may not satisfy their contractual obligation to fund capital calls when requested by us, which could adversely affect a fund’s operations and performance.
Investors in our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles make capital commitments to those funds that we are entitled to call from those investors at any time during prescribed periods. We depend on investors fulfilling their commitments when we call capital from them in order for those funds to consummate investments and otherwise pay their obligations (for example, management fees) when due. Any investor that did not fund a capital call would generally be subject to several possible penalties, including having a significant amount of its existing investment forfeited in that fund. However, the impact of the penalty is directly correlated to the amount of capital previously invested by the investor in the fund and if an investor has invested little or no capital, for instance early in the life of the fund, then the forfeiture penalty may not be as meaningful. Investors may also negotiate for lesser or reduced penalties at the outset of the fund, thereby inhibiting our ability to enforce the funding of a capital call. If investors were to fail to satisfy a significant amount of capital calls for any particular fund or funds, the operation and performance of those funds could be materially and adversely affected.
Under our agreement with the New York Attorney General, in May 2009, we adopted the New York Attorney General’s Public Pension Fund Reform Code of Conduct. Such code of conduct governs ours interactions with public pension funds in the United States and, among other matters, (a) bans the use of outside placement agents and lobbyists in connection with obtaining investments from such public pension funds, (b) bans certain campaign contributions in the United States and (c) provides for (i) increased disclosure, (ii) strengthened employment, confidentiality and gift policies, and (iii) conflicts of interest procedures as they relate to public pension funds in the United States. Among other consequences, in the event that we materially violate this code, we may be disqualified from doing further business with the pension fund investor for a period of up to 10 years. In addition, a pension fund investor may be excused from its obligation to make further capital contributions relating to all or any part of an investment or may withdraw from the fund. If a pension fund investor were to seek to be excused from funding a significant amount of capital calls for any particular fund or funds, the operation and performance of those funds could be materially and adversely affected.
Our failure to deal appropriately with conflicts of interest in our investment business could damage our reputation and adversely affect our businesses.
As we have expanded and as we continue to expand the number and scope of our businesses, we increasingly confront potential conflicts of interest relating to our funds’ investment activities. Certain of our funds, managed accounts or investment vehicles may have overlapping investment objectives and potential conflicts may arise with respect to our decisions regarding how to allocate investment opportunities among those funds, managed accounts or investors. For example, a decision to acquire material, non-public information about a company while pursuing an investment opportunity for a particular fund gives rise to a potential conflict of interest when it results in our having to restrict the ability of other funds to take any action. We may also cause different private equity funds to invest in a single portfolio company, for example where the fund that made an initial investment no longer has capital available to invest. We may also cause different funds that we manage to purchase different classes of securities in the same portfolio company. For example, one of our Global Market Strategies funds could acquire a debt security issued by the same company in which one of our buyout funds owns common equity securities. A direct conflict of interest could arise between the debt holders and the equity holders if such a company were to develop insolvency concerns, and that conflict would have to be carefully managed by us. In addition, conflicts of interest may exist in the valuation of our investments and regarding decisions about the allocation of specific investment opportunities among us and our funds and the allocation of fees and costs among us, our funds and their portfolio companies. Lastly, in certain infrequent instances we may purchase an investment alongside one of our investment funds or sell an investment to one of our investment funds and conflicts may arise in respect of the allocation, pricing and timing of such investments and the ultimate disposition of such investments. To the extent we fail to appropriately deal with any such conflicts, it could negatively impact our reputation and ability to raise additional funds and the willingness of counterparties to do business with us or result in regulatory liability or potential litigation against us.
Risk management activities may adversely affect the return on our funds’ investments.
When managing our exposure to market risks, we may (on our own behalf or on behalf of our funds) from time to time use forward contracts, options, swaps, caps, collars and floors or pursue other strategies or use other forms of derivative instruments to limit our exposure to changes in the relative values of investments that may result from market developments, including changes in prevailing interest rates, currency exchange rates and commodity prices. The scope of risk management activities undertaken by us varies based on the level and volatility of interest rates, prevailing foreign currency exchange rates, the types of investments that are made and other changing market conditions. The use of hedging transactions and other derivative instruments to reduce the effects of a decline in the value of a position does not eliminate the possibility of fluctuations in the value of the position or prevent losses if the value of the position declines. Such transactions may also limit the opportunity for gain if the value of a position increases. Moreover, it may not be possible to limit the exposure to a market development that is so generally anticipated that a hedging or other derivative transaction cannot be entered into at an acceptable price. The success of any hedging or other derivative transaction generally will depend on our ability to correctly predict market changes, the degree of correlation between price movements of a derivative instrument and the position being hedged, the creditworthiness of the counterparty and other factors. As a result, while we may enter into such a transaction in order to reduce our exposure to market risks, the transaction may result in poorer overall investment performance than if it had not been executed.
Certain of our fund investments may be concentrated in particular asset types or geographic regions, which could exacerbate any negative performance of those funds to the extent those concentrated investments perform poorly.
The governing agreements of our investment funds contain only limited investment restrictions and only limited requirements as to diversification of fund investments, either by geographic region or asset type. For example, we advise funds that invest predominantly in the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, Ireland, Peru, Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa or MENA; and we advise funds that invest in a single industry sector, such as financial services and power. During periods of difficult market conditions or slowdowns in these sectors or geographic regions, decreased revenue, difficulty in obtaining access to financing and increased funding costs experienced by our funds may be exacerbated by this concentration of investments, which would result in lower investment returns for our funds. Such concentration may increase the risk that events affecting a specific geographic region or asset type will have an adverse or disparate impact on such investment funds, as compared to funds that invest more broadly.
Certain of our investment funds may invest in securities of companies that are experiencing significant financial or business difficulties, including companies involved in bankruptcy or other reorganization and liquidation proceedings. Such investments may be subject to a greater risk of poor performance or loss.
Certain of our investment funds, especially our distressed and corporate opportunities funds, may invest in business enterprises involved in work-outs, liquidations, reorganizations, bankruptcies and similar transactions and may purchase high risk receivables. An investment in such business enterprises entails the risk that the transaction in which such business enterprise is involved either will be unsuccessful, will take considerable time or will result in a distribution of cash or a new security the value of which will be less than the purchase price to the fund of the security or other financial instrument in respect of which such distribution is received. In addition, if an anticipated transaction does not in fact occur, the fund may be required to sell its investment at a loss. Investments in troubled companies may also be adversely affected by U.S. federal and state laws relating to, among other things, fraudulent conveyances, voidable preferences, lender liability and a bankruptcy court’s discretionary power to disallow, subordinate or disenfranchise particular claims. Investments in securities and private claims of troubled companies made in connection with an attempt to influence a restructuring proposal or plan of reorganization in a bankruptcy case may also involve substantial litigation, which has the potential to adversely impact us or unrelated funds or portfolio companies. Because there is substantial uncertainty concerning the outcome of transactions involving financially troubled companies, there is a potential risk of loss by a fund of its entire investment in such company.
Our private equity funds’ performance, and our performance, may be adversely affected by the financial performance of our portfolio companies and the industries in which our funds invest.
Our performance and the performance of our private equity funds are significantly impacted by the value of the companies in which our funds have invested. Our funds invest in companies in many different industries, each of which is subject to volatility based upon economic and market factors. Over the last few years, the credit crisis has caused significant fluctuations in the value of securities held by our funds and the global economic recession had a
significant impact in overall performance activity and the demands for many of the goods and services provided by portfolio companies of the funds we advise. Although the U.S. economy has registered four consecutive years of growth in real GDP, there remain many obstacles to continued growth in the economy such as high unemployment, global geopolitical events, risks of inflation or deflation and high debt levels, both public and private. These factors and other general economic trends are likely to impact the performance of portfolio companies in many industries and in particular, industries that anticipated that the GDP in developed economies would quickly return to pre-crisis trend. In addition, the value of our investments in portfolio companies in the financial services industry is impacted by the overall health and stability of the credit markets. For example, the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area contributed to a lengthy recession from 2011 to the first quarter of 2013 that impaired corporate loan performance and further weakened bank balance sheets. Actions required to be taken by certain European countries as a condition to financial rescue packages have resulted in increased political discord within and among Eurozone countries. As a result, there has been a strain on banks and other financial services participants, including our portfolio companies in the financial services industry, which could have a material adverse impact on such portfolio companies. The performance of our private equity funds, and our performance, may be adversely affected to the extent our fund portfolio companies in these industries experience adverse performance or additional pressure due to downward trends. In respect of real estate, various factors could halt or limit a recovery in the housing market and have an adverse effect on investment performance, including, but not limited to, continued high unemployment, a low level of consumer confidence in the economy and/or the residential real estate market and rising mortgage interest rates. In response to financial difficulties that are currently being experienced or that may be experienced in the future by certain portfolio companies or real estate investments, we may consider legal, regulatory, tax or other factors in determining the steps we may take to support such companies or investments, which may include enhancing the management team or funding additional capital investments from our investment funds, our senior Carlyle professionals and/or us. The actions we may take to support companies or investments experiencing financial difficulties may not be successful in remedying the financial difficulties and our investment funds, our senior Carlyle Professionals or we may not recoup some or all of any capital investments made in support of such companies or investments. To the extent we and/or certain of our senior Carlyle professionals fund additional capital into a portfolio company or real estate investment that is experiencing difficulties, we may be required to consolidate such entity into our financial statements under applicable U.S. GAAP standards. See “—Risks Related to Our Business Operations—The Consolidation of Investment Funds, Holding Companies or Operating Businesses of Our Portfolio Companies Could Make it More Difficult to Understand the Operating Performance of the Partnership and Could Create Operational Risks For the Partnership.”
The financial projections of our portfolio companies could prove inaccurate.
Our funds generally establish the capital structure of portfolio companies on the basis of financial projections prepared by the management of such portfolio companies. These projected operating results will normally be based primarily on judgments of the management of the portfolio companies. In all cases, projections are only estimates of future results that are based upon assumptions made at the time that the projections are developed. General economic conditions, which are not predictable, along with other factors may cause actual performance to fall short of the financial projections that were used to establish a given portfolio company’s capital structure. Because of the leverage that we typically employ in our investments, this could cause a substantial decrease in the value of our equity holdings in the portfolio company. The inaccuracy of financial projections could thus cause our funds’ performance to fall short of our expectations.
Contingent liabilities could harm fund performance.
We may cause our funds to acquire an investment that is subject to contingent liabilities. Such contingent liabilities could be unknown to us at the time of acquisition or, if they are known to us, we may not accurately assess or protect against the risks that they present. Acquired contingent liabilities could thus result in unforeseen losses for our funds. In addition, in connection with the disposition of an investment in a portfolio company, a fund may be required to make representations about the business and financial affairs of such portfolio company typical of those made in connection with the sale of a business. A fund may also be required to indemnify the purchasers of such investment to the extent that any such representations are inaccurate. These arrangements may result in the incurrence of contingent liabilities by a fund, even after the disposition of an investment. Accordingly, the inaccuracy of representations and warranties made by a fund could harm such fund’s performance.
We and our investment funds are subject to risks in using prime brokers, custodians, administrators and other agents.
We and many of our investment funds depend on the services of prime brokers, custodians, administrators and other agents to carry out certain securities transactions. The counterparty to one or more of our or our funds’ contractual arrangements could default on its obligations under the contract. If a counterparty defaults, we and our funds may be unable to take action to cover the exposure and we or one or more of our funds could incur material losses. The consolidation and elimination of counterparties resulting from the disruption in the financial markets has increased our concentration of counterparty risk and has decreased the number of potential counterparties. Our carry funds generally are not restricted from dealing with any particular counterparty or from concentrating any or all of their transactions with one counterparty. In the event of the insolvency of a party that is holding our assets or those of our funds as collateral, we and our funds may not be able to recover equivalent assets in full as we and our funds will rank among the counterparty’s unsecured creditors. In addition, our and our funds’ cash held with a prime broker, custodian or counterparty may not be segregated from the prime broker’s, custodian’s or counterparty’s own cash, and we and our funds therefore may rank as unsecured creditors in relation thereto. The inability to recover our or our investment funds’ assets could have a material impact on us or on the performance of our funds.
Investments in the natural resources industry, including the power industry, involve various operational, construction and regulatory risks.
The development, operation and maintenance of power generation facilities involves various operational risks, which can include mechanical and structural failure, accidents, labor issues or the failure of technology to perform as anticipated. Events outside our control, such as economic developments, changes in fuel prices or the price of other feedstocks, governmental policies, demand for energy and the like, could materially reduce the revenues generated or increase the expenses of constructing, operating, maintaining or restoring power generation businesses. In turn, such developments could impair a portfolio company’s ability to repay its debt or conduct its operations. We may also choose or be required to decommission a power generation facility or other asset. The decommissioning process could be protracted and result in the incurrence of significant financial and/or regulatory obligations or other uncertainties.
Our natural resource portfolio companies may also face construction risks typical for power generation and related infrastructure businesses, including, without limitation:
• labor disputes, work stoppages or shortages of skilled labor
• shortages of fuels or materials,
• slower than projected construction progress and the unavailability or late delivery of necessary equipment,
• delays caused by or in obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals or permits,
• adverse weather conditions and unexpected construction conditions,
• accidents or the breakdown or failure of construction equipment or processes,
• difficulties in obtaining suitable or sufficient financing, and
• force majeure or catastrophic events such as explosions, fires and terrorist activities and other similar events beyond our control.
Such developments could result in substantial unanticipated delays or expenses and, under certain circumstances, and could prevent completion of construction activities once undertaken. Construction costs may exceed estimates for various reasons, including inaccurate engineering and planning, labor and building material costs in excess of expectations and unanticipated problems with project start-up. Such unexpected increases may result in increased debt service costs and funds being insufficient to complete construction. Portfolio investments under development or portfolio investments acquired to be developed may receive little or no cash flow from the date of acquisition through the date of completion of development and may experience operating deficits after the date of completion. In addition, market conditions may change during the course of development that make such development less attractive than at the time it was commenced. Any events of this nature could severely delay or prevent the completion of, or significantly increase the cost of, the construction. In addition, there are risks inherent in the construction work which may give rise to claims or demands against one of our portfolio companies from time to time. Delays in the completion of any power project may result in lost revenues or increased expenses, including higher operation and maintenance costs related to such portfolio company.
Investments in electric utility industries both in the United States and abroad continue to experience increasing competitive pressures, primarily in wholesale markets, as a result of consumer demands, technological advances, greater availability of natural gas and other factors. Changes in regulation may support not only consolidation among domestic utilities, but also the disaggregation of vertically integrated utilities into separate generation, transmission and distribution businesses. As a result, additional significant competitors could become active in the independent power industry.
The power and energy sectors are the subject of substantial and complex laws, rules and regulation. These regulators include Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (the “FERC”), which has jurisdiction over the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity in interstate commerce and over the transportation, storage and certain sales of natural gas in interstate commerce, including the rates, charges and other terms and conditions for such services, respectively and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), the purpose of which is to establish and enforce reliability standards applicable to all users, owners and operators of the bulk power system. These regulators derive their authority from, among other laws, the Federal Power Act, as amended (the “FPA”), The Energy Policy Act of 2005, Natural Gas Act, as amended (the “NGA”) and state and, perhaps, local public utility laws. On the state level, some state laws require approval from the state commission before an electric utility operating in the state may divest or transfer electric generation facilities. Most state laws require approval from the state commission before an electric utility company operating in the state may divest or transfer distribution
facilities. Failure to comply with applicable laws, rules regulations and standards could result in the prevention of operation of certain facilities or the prevention of the sale of such a facility to a third party, as well as the loss of certain rate authority, refund liability, penalties and other remedies, all of which could result in additional costs to a portfolio company and adversely affect the investment results.
Our energy business is involved in oil and gas exploration and development which involves a high degree of risk.
Our energy teams focus on investments in businesses involved in oil and gas exploration and development, which can be a speculative business involving a high degree of risk, including:
• the use of new technologies,
• reliance on estimates of oil and gas reserves in the evaluation of available geological, geophysical, engineering and economic data for each reservoir,
• encountering unexpected formations or pressures, premature declines of reservoirs, blow-outs, equipment failures and other accidents in completing wells and otherwise, cratering, sour gas releases, uncontrollable flows of oil, natural gas or well fluids, adverse weather conditions, pollution, fires, spills and other environmental risks, and
• the volatility of oil and natural gas prices.
Our Solutions business is subject to additional risks.
Our Solutions business is subject to additional risks, including the following:
• The Solutions business is subject to business and other risks and uncertainties generally consistent with our business as a whole, including without limitation legal, tax and regulatory risks, the avoidance or management of conflicts of interest and the ability to attract and retain investment professionals and other personnel, and risks associated with the acquisition of new investment platforms.
• We restrict our day-to-day participation in the Solutions business (including with respect to AlpInvest, Metropolitan, and DGAM), which may in turn limit our ability to address risks arising from the Solutions business for so long as it maintains separate investment operations. For example, although we maintain ultimate control over AlpInvest, AlpInvest’s management team (who are our employees) continue to exercise independent investment authority without involvement by other Carlyle personnel. For so long as these arrangements are in place, Carlyle representatives will serve on the management board of AlpInvest but we will observe substantial restrictions on our ability to access investment information or engage in day-to-day participation in the AlpInvest investment business, including a restriction that AlpInvest investment decisions are made and maintained without involvement by other Carlyle personnel and that no specific investment data, other than data on the investment performance of its investment funds and managed accounts, will be shared. Generally, we have a reduced ability to identify or respond to investment and other operational issues that may arise within the Solutions business, relative to other Carlyle investment funds.
• Historically, the main part of AlpInvest capital commitments have been obtained from its initial co-owners, with such owners thereby holding, specific contractual rights with respect to potential suspension or termination of investment commitments made to AlpInvest.
• AlpInvest is seeking to broaden its investor base by advising separate accounts for investors on an account-by-account basis and the number and complexity of such investor mandates and fund structures has increased as a result of continuing fundraising efforts, and the activation of mandates with existing investors. Conflicts may arise between such separate managed accounts (e.g., competition for investment opportunities), and in some cases conflicts may arise between a managed account and a Carlyle fund.
• Our fund-of-funds business could be subject to the risk that other sponsors will no longer be willing to provide these fund-of-funds with investment opportunities as favorable as in the past, if at all, as a result of our ownership of AlpInvest, DGAM and Metropolitan.
• Our secondary investments businesses could also be subject to the risk that opportunities in the secondary investments market may not be as favorable as in the past.
• Our Solutions business is separated from the rest of the firm by an informational wall designed to prevent certain types of information from flowing from the Solutions platform to the rest of the firm. This information barrier could limit the collaboration between our investment professionals with respect to specific investments.
We intend to continue to build upon the foundation created by AlpInvest, Metropolitan and DGAM by expanding into new products and initiatives that facilitate third-party access to our funds. Our Solutions Business is also currently in the process of undergoing substantial changes in its information technology infrastructure. A significant amount of time and resources are being committed to researching, developing, acquiring and implementing a technology platform to enable the Solutions group to achieve its strategic goals. There is no guarantee that these efforts, or the future technology environment, will enable our Solutions platform to meet its strategic goals and achieve the expected growth.
Hedge fund investments are subject to additional risks.
Investments by our funds of hedge funds and the hedge funds we advise are subject to additional risks, including the following:
• Generally, there are few limitations on the execution of these hedge funds’ investment strategies, which are subject to the sole discretion of the management company or the general partner of such funds.
• These funds may engage in short-selling, which is subject to a theoretically unlimited risk of loss because there is no limit on how much the price of a security may appreciate before the short position is closed out. A fund may be subject to losses if a security lender demands return of the lent securities and an alternative lending source cannot be found or if the fund is otherwise unable to borrow securities that are necessary to hedge its positions.
• These funds may be limited in their ability to engage in short selling or other activities as a result of regulatory mandates. Such regulatory actions may limit our ability to engage in hedging activities and therefore impair our investment strategies. In addition, these funds may invest in securities and other assets for which appropriate market hedges do not exist or cannot be acquired on attractive terms.
• These funds are exposed to the risk that a counterparty will not settle a transaction in accordance with its terms and conditions because of a dispute over the terms of the contract (whether or not bona fide) or because of a credit or liquidity problem, thus causing the fund to suffer a loss.
• Credit risk may arise through a default by one of several large institutions that are dependent on one another to meet their liquidity or operational needs, so that a default by one institution causes a series of defaults by the other institutions. This “systemic risk” could have a further material adverse effect on the financial intermediaries (such as prime brokers, clearing agencies, clearing houses, banks, securities firms and exchanges) with which these funds transact on a daily basis.
• The efficacy of investment and trading strategies depend largely on the ability to establish and maintain an overall market position in a combination of financial instruments, which can be difficult to execute.
• These funds may make investments or hold trading positions in markets that are volatile and may become illiquid.
• These funds’ investments are subject to risks relating to investments in commodities, futures, options and other derivatives, the prices of which are highly volatile and may be subject to a theoretically unlimited risk of loss in certain circumstances. In addition, the funds’ assets are subject to the risk of the failure of any of the exchanges on which their positions trade or of their clearinghouses or counterparties.
• These funds may make investments that they do not advantageously dispose of prior to the date the applicable fund is dissolved, either by expiration of such fund’s term or otherwise. Although we generally expect that investments will be disposed of prior to dissolution or be suitable for in-kind distribution at dissolution, and the general partners of the funds have a limited ability to extend the term of the fund with the consent of fund investors or the advisory board of the fund, as applicable, our funds may have to sell, distribute or otherwise dispose of investments at a disadvantageous time as a result of dissolution. This would result in a lower than expected return on the investments and, perhaps, on the fund itself.
Through our partnership with Vermillion, our funds may hold physical commodities. These investments incur storage and insurance costs and may suffer the risk of loss from storage inadequacy, insurance counterparty default, and spoilage.
Risks Related to Our Organizational Structure
Our common unitholders do not elect our general partner or, except in limited circumstances, vote on our general partner’s directors and have limited ability to influence decisions regarding our business.
Our general partner, Carlyle Group Management L.L.C., which is owned by our senior Carlyle professionals, manages all of our operations and activities. The limited liability company agreement of Carlyle Group Management L.L.C. establishes a board of directors that is responsible for the oversight of our business and operations. Unlike the holders of common stock in a corporation, our common unitholders have only limited voting rights and have no right to remove our general partner or, except in the limited circumstances described below, elect the directors of our general partner. Our common unitholders have no right to elect the directors of our general partner unless, as determined on January 31 of each year, the total voting power held by holders of the special voting units in The Carlyle Group L.P. (including voting units held by our general partner and its affiliates) in their capacity as such, or otherwise held by then-current or former Carlyle personnel (treating voting units deliverable to such persons pursuant to outstanding equity awards as being held by them), collectively, constitutes less than 10% of the voting power of the outstanding voting units of The Carlyle Group L.P. As of December 31, 2013, the percentage of the voting power of The Carlyle Group L.P. limited partners collectively held by those categories of holders and calculated in this manner was approximately 85%. Unless and until the foregoing voting power condition is satisfied, our general partner’s board of directors will be elected in accordance with its limited liability company agreement, which provides that directors may be appointed and removed by members of our general partner holding a majority in interest of the voting power of the members, which voting power is allocated to each member ratably according to his or her aggregate relative ownership of our common units and partnership units. As a result, our common unitholders have limited ability to influence decisions regarding our business.
Our senior Carlyle professionals will be able to determine the outcome of those few matters that may be submitted for a vote of the limited partners.
TCG Carlyle Global Partners L.L.C., an entity wholly owned by our senior Carlyle professionals, holds a special voting unit that provides it with a number of votes on any matter that may be submitted for a vote of our common unitholders (voting together as a single class on all such matters) that is equal to the aggregate number of vested and unvested Carlyle Holdings partnership units held by the limited partners of Carlyle Holdings. As of December 31, 2013, a special voting unit held by TCG Carlyle Global Partners L.L.C. provided it with approximately 84% of the total voting power of The Carlyle Group L.P. limited partners. Accordingly, our senior Carlyle professionals generally will have sufficient voting power to determine the outcome of those few matters that may be submitted for a vote of the limited partners of The Carlyle Group L.P.
Our common unitholders’ voting rights are further restricted by the provision in our partnership agreement stating that any common units held by a person that beneficially owns 20% or more of any class of The Carlyle Group L.P. common units then outstanding (other than our general partner and its affiliates, or a direct or subsequently approved transferee of our general partner or its affiliates) cannot be voted on any matter. In addition, our partnership agreement contains provisions limiting the ability of our common unitholders to call meetings or to acquire information about our operations, as well as other provisions limiting the ability of our common unitholders to influence the manner or direction of our management. Our partnership agreement also does not restrict our general partner’s ability to take actions that may result in our being treated as an entity taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal (and applicable state) income tax purposes. Furthermore, the common unitholders are not entitled to dissenters’ rights of appraisal under our partnership agreement or applicable Delaware law in the event of a merger or consolidation, a sale of substantially all of our assets or any other transaction or event.
As a result of these matters and the provisions referred to under “— Our common unitholders do not elect our general partner or, except in limited circumstances, vote on our general partner’s directors and will have limited ability to influence decisions regarding our business,” our common unitholders may be deprived of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common units in the future through a sale of The Carlyle Group L.P., and the trading prices of our common units may be adversely affected by the absence or reduction of a takeover premium in the trading price.
We are permitted to repurchase all of the outstanding common units under certain circumstances, and this repurchase may occur at an undesirable time or price.
We have the right to acquire all of our then-outstanding common units at the then-current trading price either if 10% or less of our common units are held by persons other than our general partner and its affiliates or if we are required to register as an investment company under the 1940 Act. As a result of our general partner’s right to purchase outstanding common units, a holder of common units may have his common units purchased at an undesirable time or price.
We are a limited partnership and as a result qualify for and intend to continue to rely on exceptions from certain corporate governance and other requirements under the rules of the NASDAQ Global Select Market.
We are a limited partnership and qualify for exceptions from certain corporate governance and other requirements of the rules of the NASDAQ Global Select Market. Pursuant to these exceptions, limited partnerships may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements of the NASDAQ Global Select Market, including the requirements (1) that a majority of the board of directors of our general partner consist of independent directors, (2) that we have a compensation committee that is composed entirely of independent directors, (3) that the compensation committee be required to consider certain independence factors when engaging compensation consultants, legal counsel and other committee advisors, (4) that we have independent director oversight of director nominations, and (5) that we obtain unitholder approval for (a) certain private placements of units that equal or exceed 20% of the outstanding common units or voting power, (b) certain acquisitions of stock or assets of another company or (c) a change of control transaction. In addition, we are not required to hold annual meetings of our common unitholders. We intend to continue to avail ourselves of these exceptions. Accordingly, common unitholders generally do not have the same protections afforded to equityholders of entities that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements of the NASDAQ Global Select Market.
Potential conflicts of interest may arise among our general partner, its affiliates and us. Our general partner and its affiliates have limited fiduciary duties to us and our common unitholders, which may permit them to favor their own interests to the detriment of us and our common unitholders.
Conflicts of interest may arise among our general partner and its affiliates, on the one hand, and us and our common unitholders, on the other hand. As a result of these conflicts, our general partner may favor its own interests and the interests of its affiliates over the interests of our common unitholders. These conflicts include, among others, the following:
• our general partner determines the amount and timing of our investments and dispositions, indebtedness, issuances of additional partnership interests and amounts of reserves, each of which can affect the amount of cash that is available for distribution to common unitholders;
• our general partner is allowed to take into account the interests of parties other than us and the common unitholders in resolving conflicts of interest, which has the effect of limiting its duties (including fiduciary duties) to our common unitholders. For example, our subsidiaries that serve as the general partners of our investment funds have certain duties and obligations to those funds and their investors as a result of which we expect to regularly take actions in a manner consistent with such duties and obligations but that might adversely affect our near term results of operations or cash flow;
• because our senior Carlyle professionals hold their Carlyle Holdings partnership units directly or through entities that are not subject to corporate income taxation and The Carlyle Group L.P. holds Carlyle Holdings partnership units through wholly owned subsidiaries, some of which are subject to corporate income taxation, conflicts may arise between our senior Carlyle professionals and The Carlyle Group L.P. relating to the selection, structuring and disposition of investments and other matters. For example, the earlier disposition of assets following an exchange or acquisition transaction by a limited partner of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships generally will accelerate payments under the tax receivable agreement and increase the present value of such payments, and the disposition of assets before an exchange or acquisition transaction will increase the tax liability of a limited partner of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships without giving rise to any rights of a limited partner of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships to receive payments under the tax receivable agreement;
• our partnership agreement does not prohibit affiliates of the general partner, including its owners, from engaging in other businesses or activities, including those that might directly compete with us;
• our general partner has limited its liability and reduced or eliminated its duties (including fiduciary duties) under the partnership agreement, while also restricting the remedies available to our common unitholders for actions that, without these limitations, might constitute breaches of duty (including fiduciary duty). In addition, we have agreed to indemnify our general partner and its affiliates to the fullest extent permitted by law, except with respect to conduct involving bad faith, fraud or willful misconduct. By purchasing our common units, common unitholders have agreed and consented to the provisions set forth in our partnership agreement, including the provisions regarding conflicts of interest situations that, in the absence of such provisions, might constitute a breach of fiduciary or other duties under applicable state law;
• our partnership agreement will not restrict our general partner from causing us to pay it or its affiliates for any services rendered, or from entering into additional contractual arrangements with any of these entities on our behalf, so long as our general partner agrees to the terms of any such additional contractual arrangements in good faith as determined under the partnership agreement;
• our general partner determines how much we pay for acquisition targets and the structure of such consideration, including whether to incur debt to fund the transaction, whether to issue units as consideration and the number of units to be issued and the amount and timing of any earn-out payments;
• our general partner determines whether to allow the senior Carlyle professionals to exchange their Carlyle Holdings partnership units or waive certain restrictions relating to such units pursuant to the terms of the Exchange Agreement;
• our general partner determines how much debt we incur and that decision may adversely affect our credit ratings;
• our general partner determines which costs incurred by it and its affiliates are reimbursable by us;
• our general partner controls the enforcement of obligations owed to us by it and its affiliates; and
• our general partner decides whether to retain separate counsel, accountants or others to perform services for us.
See “Part III. Item 13. Certain Relationships, Related Transactions and Director Independence” and “Part III. Items 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance—Committees of the Board of Directors—Conflicts Committee.”
Our partnership agreement contains provisions that reduce or eliminate duties (including fiduciary duties) of our general partner and limit remedies available to common unitholders for actions that might otherwise constitute a breach of duty. It will be difficult for a common unitholder to successfully challenge a resolution of a conflict of interest by our general partner or by its conflicts committee.
Our partnership agreement contains provisions that waive or consent to conduct by our general partner and its affiliates that might otherwise raise issues about compliance with fiduciary duties or applicable law. For example, our partnership agreement provides that when our general partner is acting in its individual capacity, as opposed to in its capacity as our general partner, it may act without any fiduciary obligations to us or our common unitholders whatsoever. When our general partner, in its capacity as our general partner, is permitted to or required to make a decision in its “sole discretion” or “discretion” or pursuant to any provision of our partnership agreement not subject to an express standard of “good faith,” then our general partner is entitled to consider only such interests and factors as it desires, including its own interests, and has no duty or obligation (fiduciary or otherwise) to give any consideration to any interest of or factors affecting us or any limited partners and will not be subject to any different standards imposed by the partnership agreement, otherwise existing at law, in equity or otherwise.
The modifications of fiduciary duties contained in our partnership agreement are expressly permitted by Delaware law. Hence, we and our common unitholders only have recourse and are able to seek remedies against our general partner if our general partner breaches its obligations pursuant to our partnership agreement. Unless our general partner breaches its obligations pursuant to our partnership agreement, we and our common unitholders do not have any recourse against our general partner even if our general partner were to act in a manner that was inconsistent with traditional fiduciary duties. Furthermore, even if there has been a breach of the obligations set forth in our partnership agreement, our partnership agreement provides that our general partner and its officers and directors are not be liable to us or our common unitholders for errors of judgment or for any acts or omissions unless there has been a final and non-appealable judgment by a court of competent jurisdiction determining that the general partner or its officers and directors acted in bad faith or engaged in fraud or willful misconduct. These modifications are detrimental to the common unitholders because they restrict the remedies available to common unitholders for actions that without those limitations might constitute breaches of duty (including fiduciary duty).
Whenever a potential conflict of interest exists between us, any of our subsidiaries or any of our partners, and our general partner or its affiliates, our general partner may resolve such conflict of interest. Our general partner’s resolution of the conflict of interest will conclusively be deemed approved by the partnership and all of our partners, and not to constitute a breach of the partnership agreement or any duty, unless the general partner subjectively believes such determination or action is opposed to the best interests of the partnership. A common unitholder seeking to challenge this resolution of the conflict of interest would bear the burden of proving that the general partner subjectively believed that such resolution was opposed to the best interests of the partnership. This is different from the situation with Delaware corporations, where a conflict resolution by an interested party would be presumed to be unfair and the interested party would have the burden of demonstrating that the resolution was fair.
Also, if our general partner obtains the approval of the conflicts committee of our general partner, any determination or action by the general partner will be conclusively deemed to be made or taken in good faith and not a breach by our general partner of the partnership agreement or any duties it may owe to us or our common unitholders. This is different from the situation with Delaware corporations, where a conflict resolution by a committee consisting solely of independent directors may, in certain circumstances, merely shift the burden of demonstrating unfairness to the plaintiff. Common unitholders, in purchasing our common units, are deemed as having consented to the provisions set forth in our partnership agreement, including the provisions regarding conflicts of interest situations that, in the absence of such provisions, might constitute a breach of fiduciary or other duties under applicable state law. As a result, common unitholders will, as a practical matter, not be able to successfully challenge an informed decision by the conflicts committee. See “Part III. Item 13. Certain Relationships, Related Transactions and Director Independence” and “Part III. Items 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance—Committees of the Board of Directors—Conflicts Committee.”
The control of our general partner may be transferred to a third party without common unitholder consent.
Our general partner may transfer its general partner interest to a third party in a merger or consolidation without the consent of our common unitholders. Furthermore, at any time, the members of our general partner may sell or transfer all or part of their limited liability company interests in our general partner without the approval of the common unitholders, subject to certain restrictions as described elsewhere in this annual report. A new general partner may not be willing or able to form new investment funds and could form funds that have investment objectives and governing terms that differ materially from those of our current investment funds. A new owner could also have a different investment philosophy, employ investment professionals who are less experienced, be unsuccessful in identifying investment opportunities or have a track record that is not as successful as Carlyle’s track record. If any of the foregoing were to occur, we could experience difficulty in making new investments, and the value of our existing investments, our business, our results of operations and our financial condition could materially suffer.
We intend to pay periodic distributions to our common unitholders, but our ability to do so may be limited by our cash flow from operations and available liquidity, holding partnership structure, applicable provisions of Delaware law and contractual restrictions and obligations.
The Carlyle Group L.P. is a holding partnership and has no material assets other than the ownership of the partnership units in Carlyle Holdings held through wholly owned subsidiaries. The Carlyle Group L.P. has no independent means of generating revenue. Accordingly, we intend to cause Carlyle Holdings to make distributions to its partners, including The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries, to fund any distributions The Carlyle Group L.P. may declare on the common units. If Carlyle Holdings makes such distributions, the limited partners of
Carlyle Holdings will be entitled to receive equivalent distributions pro rata based on their partnership interests in Carlyle Holdings. Because Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc. must pay taxes and make payments under the tax receivable agreement, the amounts ultimately distributed by The Carlyle Group L.P. to common unitholders are generally expected to be less, on a per unit basis, than the amounts distributed by the Carlyle Holdings partnerships to the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships in respect of their Carlyle Holdings partnership units.
The declaration and payment of any distributions is at the sole discretion of our general partner, which may change our distribution policy at any time including, without limitation, to reduce the quarterly distributions payable to our common unitholders to less than $0.16 per common unit. There can be no assurance that any distributions, whether quarterly or otherwise, will or can be paid. Our ability to make cash distributions to our common unitholders depends on a number of factors, including among other things, general economic and business conditions, our strategic plans and prospects, our business and investment opportunities, our financial condition and operating results, working capital requirements and anticipated cash needs, contractual restrictions and obligations, including fulfilling our current and future capital commitments, legal, tax and regulatory restrictions, restrictions and other implications on the payment of distributions by us to our common unitholders or by our subsidiaries to us, payments required pursuant to the tax receivable agreement and such other factors as our general partner may deem relevant.
Under the Delaware Limited Partnership Act, we may not make a distribution to a partner if after the distribution all our liabilities, other than liabilities to partners on account of their partnership interests and liabilities for which the recourse of creditors is limited to specific property of the partnership, would exceed the fair value of our assets. If we were to make such an impermissible distribution, any limited partner who received a distribution and knew at the time of the distribution that the distribution was in violation of the Delaware Limited Partnership Act would be liable to us for the amount of the distribution for three years. In addition, the terms of our credit facility or other financing arrangements may from time to time include covenants or other restrictions that could constrain our ability to make distributions.
We are required to pay the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships for most of the benefits relating to any additional tax depreciation or amortization deductions that we may claim as a result of the tax basis step-up we receive in connection with subsequent sales or exchanges of Carlyle Holdings partnership units and related transactions. In certain cases, payments under the tax receivable agreement with the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships may be accelerated and/or significantly exceed the actual tax benefits we realize and our ability to make payments under the tax receivable agreement may be limited by our structure.
Limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships, may, subject to the terms of the exchange agreement and the Carlyle Holdings partnership agreements, exchange their Carlyle Holdings partnership units for The Carlyle Group L.P. common units on a one-for-one basis. A Carlyle Holdings limited partner must exchange one partnership unit in each of the three Carlyle Holdings partnerships to effect an exchange for a common unit. The exchanges are expected to result in increases in the tax basis of the tangible and intangible assets of Carlyle Holdings. These increases in tax basis may increase (for tax purposes) depreciation and amortization deductions and therefore reduce the amount of tax that Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc. and any other entity which may in the future pay taxes and become obligated to make payments under the tax receivable agreement as described in the fourth succeeding paragraph below, which we refer to as the “corporate taxpayers,” would otherwise be required to pay in the future, although the IRS may challenge all or part of that tax basis increase, and a court could sustain such a challenge.
We have entered into a tax receivable agreement with the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships that provides for the payment by the corporate taxpayers to such owners of 85% of the amount of cash savings, if any, in U.S. federal, state and local income tax or foreign or franchise tax that the corporate taxpayers realize as a result of these increases in tax basis and of certain other tax benefits related to entering into the tax receivable agreement, including tax benefits attributable to payments under the tax receivable agreement. This payment obligation is an obligation of the corporate taxpayers and not of Carlyle Holdings. While the actual increase in tax basis, as well as the amount and timing of any payments under this agreement, will vary depending upon a number of factors, we expect that as a result of the size of the transfers and increases in the tax basis of the tangible and intangible assets of Carlyle Holdings, the payments that we may make pursuant to the tax receivable agreement will be substantial. The factors include:
• the timing of exchanges — for instance, the increase in any tax deductions will vary depending on the fair value, which may fluctuate over time, of the depreciable or amortizable assets of Carlyle Holdings at the time of each exchange;
• the price of our common units at the time of the exchange — the increase in any tax deductions, as well as the tax basis increase in other assets, of Carlyle Holdings, is directly proportional to the price of our common units at the time of the exchange;
• the extent to which such exchanges are taxable — if an exchange is not taxable for any reason, increased deductions will not be available; and
• the amount and timing of our income — the corporate taxpayers will be required to pay 85% of the cash tax savings as and when realized, if any. If the corporate taxpayers do not have taxable income, the corporate taxpayers are not required (absent a change of control or other circumstances requiring an early termination payment) to make payments under the tax receivable agreement for that taxable year because no cash tax savings will have been realized. However, any cash tax savings that do not result in realized benefits in a given tax year will likely generate tax attributes that may be utilized to generate benefits in previous or future tax years. The utilization of such tax attributes will result in payments under the tax receivables agreement.
The payments under the tax receivable agreement are not conditioned upon the tax receivable agreement counterparties’ continued ownership of us. In the event that The Carlyle Group L.P. or any of its wholly owned subsidiaries that are not treated as corporations for U.S. federal income tax purposes become taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes, these entities will also be obligated to make payments under the tax receivable agreement on the same basis and to the same extent as the corporate taxpayers.
The tax receivable agreement provides that upon certain changes of control, or if, at any time, the corporate taxpayers elect an early termination of the tax receivable agreement, the corporate taxpayers’ obligations under the tax receivable agreement (with respect to all Carlyle Holdings partnership units whether or not previously exchanged) would be calculated by reference to the value of all future payments that the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships would have been entitled to receive under the tax receivable agreement using certain valuation assumptions, including that the corporate taxpayers’ will have sufficient taxable income to fully utilize the deductions arising from the increased tax deductions and tax basis and other benefits related to entering into the tax receivable agreement and, in the case of an early termination election, that any Carlyle Holdings partnership units that have not been exchanged are deemed exchanged for the market value of the common units at the time of termination. Assuming that the market value of a common unit were to be equal to $35.62 per common unit, which is the closing price per common unit as of December 31, 2013, and that LIBOR were to be 1.25%, we estimate that the aggregate amount of these termination payments would be approximately $1.35 billion if the corporate taxpayers were to exercise their termination right. The foregoing number is merely an estimate and the actual payments could differ materially. In addition, the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships will not reimburse us for any payments previously made under the tax receivable agreement if such tax basis increase is successfully challenged by the IRS. The corporate taxpayers’ ability to achieve benefits from any tax basis increase, and the payments to be made under this agreement, will depend upon a number of factors, including the timing and amount of our future income. As a result, even in the absence of a change of control or an election to terminate the tax receivable agreement, payments to the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships under the tax receivable agreement could be in excess of the corporate taxpayers’ actual cash tax savings.
Accordingly, it is possible that the actual cash tax savings realized by the corporate taxpayers may be significantly less than the corresponding tax receivable agreement payments. There may be a material negative effect on our liquidity if the payments under the tax receivable agreement exceed the actual cash tax savings that the corporate taxpayers realize in respect of the tax attributes subject to the tax receivable agreement and/or distributions to the corporate taxpayers by Carlyle Holdings are not sufficient to permit the corporate taxpayers to make payments under the tax receivable agreement after they have paid taxes and other expenses. We may need to incur debt to finance payments under the tax receivable agreement to the extent our cash resources are insufficient to meet our obligations under the tax receivable agreement as a result of timing discrepancies or otherwise.
In the event that The Carlyle Group L.P. or any of its wholly owned subsidiaries become taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes, these entities will also be obligated to make payments under the tax receivable agreement on the same basis and to the same extent as the corporate taxpayers.
See “Part III. Item 13. Certain Relationships, Related Transactions and Director Independence—Tax Receivable Agreement.”
If The Carlyle Group L.P. were deemed to be an “investment company” under the 1940 Act, applicable restrictions could make it impractical for us to continue our business as contemplated and could have a material adverse effect on our business.
An entity generally will be deemed to be an “investment company” for purposes of the 1940 Act if:
• it is or holds itself out as being engaged primarily, or proposes to engage primarily, in the business of investing, reinvesting or trading in securities; or
• absent an applicable exemption, it owns or proposes to acquire investment securities having a value exceeding 40% of the value of its total assets (exclusive of U.S. government securities and cash items) on an unconsolidated basis.
We believe that we are engaged primarily in the business of providing asset management services and not in the business of investing, reinvesting or trading in securities. We hold ourselves out as an asset management firm and do not propose to engage primarily in the business of investing, reinvesting or trading in securities. Accordingly, we do not believe that The Carlyle Group L.P. is an “orthodox” investment company as defined in section 3(a)(1)(A) of the 1940 Act and described in the first bullet point above. Furthermore, The Carlyle Group L.P. does not have any material assets other than its interests in certain wholly owned subsidiaries, which in turn have no material assets other than general partner interests in the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. These wholly owned subsidiaries are the sole general partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships and are vested with all management and control over the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. We do not believe that the equity interests of The Carlyle Group L.P. in its wholly owned subsidiaries or the general partner interests of these wholly owned subsidiaries in the Carlyle Holdings partnerships are investment securities. Moreover, because we believe that the capital interests of the general partners of our funds in their respective funds are neither securities nor investment securities, we believe that less than 40% of The Carlyle Group L.P.’s total assets (exclusive of U.S. government securities and cash items) on an unconsolidated basis are composed of assets that could be considered investment securities. Accordingly, we do not believe that The Carlyle Group L.P. is an inadvertent investment company by virtue of the 40% test in section 3(a)(1)(C) of the 1940 Act as described in the second bullet point above. In addition, we believe that The Carlyle Group L.P. is not an investment company under section 3(b)(1) of the 1940 Act because it is primarily engaged in a non-investment company business.
The 1940 Act and the rules thereunder contain detailed parameters for the organization and operation of investment companies. Among other things, the 1940 Act and the rules thereunder limit or prohibit transactions with affiliates, impose limitations on the issuance of debt and equity securities, generally prohibit the issuance of options and impose certain governance requirements. We intend to conduct our operations so that The Carlyle Group L.P. will not be deemed to be an investment company under the 1940 Act. If anything were to happen which would cause The Carlyle Group L.P. to be deemed to be an investment company under the 1940 Act, requirements imposed by the 1940 Act, including limitations on our capital structure, ability to transact business with affiliates (including us) and ability to compensate key employees, could make it impractical for us to continue our business as currently conducted, impair the agreements and arrangements between and among The Carlyle Group L.P., Carlyle Holdings and our senior Carlyle professionals, or any combination thereof, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. In addition, we may be required to limit the amount of investments that we make as a principal or otherwise conduct our business in a manner that does not subject us to the registration and other requirements of the 1940 Act.
Changes in accounting standards issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) or other standard-setting bodies may adversely affect our financial statements.
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP as defined in the Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) of the FASB. From time to time, we are required to adopt new or revised accounting standards or guidance that are incorporated into the ASC. It is possible that future accounting standards we are required to adopt could change the current accounting treatment that we apply to our consolidated financial statements and that such changes could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.
In addition, the FASB is working on several projects with the International Accounting Standards Board, which could result in significant changes as GAAP converges with International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”), including how our financial statements are presented. Furthermore, the SEC is considering whether and
how to incorporate IFRS into the U.S. financial reporting system. The accounting changes being proposed by the FASB will be a complete change to how we account for and report significant areas of our business. The effective dates and transition methods are not known; however, issuers may be required to or may choose to adopt the new standards retrospectively. In this case, the issuer will report results under the new accounting method as of the effective date, as well as for all periods presented. The changes to GAAP and the alignment with IFRS, will impose special demands on issuers in the areas of governance, employee training, internal controls and disclosure and will likely affect how we manage our business, as it will likely affect other business processes such as the design of compensation plans.
The consolidation of investment funds, holding companies or operating businesses of our portfolio companies could make it more difficult to understand the operating performance of the Partnership and could create operational risks for the Partnership.
Under applicable US GAAP standards, we may be required to consolidate certain of our investment funds, holding companies or operating businesses if we determine that these entities are VIEs and that the Partnership is the primary beneficiary of the VIE. The consolidation of such entities could make it difficult for an investor to differentiate the assets, liabilities, and results of operations of the Partnership apart from the assets, liabilities, and results of operations of the consolidated VIEs. The assets of the consolidated VIEs are not available to meet our liquidity requirements and similarly we generally have not guaranteed or assumed any obligation for repayment of the liabilities of the consolidated VIEs. For example, under current US GAAP standards, we generally are required to consolidate onto our financial statements the CLOs that we manage. In 2013, the Partnership formed six new CLOs and consolidated the financial positions and results of operations of such CLOs into its consolidated financial statements beginning on their respective formation dates. The total assets and total liabilities of the CLOs included in the Partnership’s consolidated financial statements were approximately $17 billion and $16 billion, respectively, as of December 31, 2013. In some circumstances, the issuance of credit or other financial support could trigger the consolidation of an entity onto our financial statements. For example, commencing with the issuance of credit support in connection with a potential tax liability of Carlyle Europe Real Estate Partners, L.P. (“CEREP I”) in July 2012, CEREP I became a VIE and the Partnership became its primary beneficiary. Accordingly, as of that date, the Partnership began to consolidate the fund into its consolidated financial statements. As of December 31, 2013, this fund reported total assets of approximately $47 million, total liabilities of approximately $106 million and a deficit in partners’ capital of approximately $59 million.
As a public entity, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), and requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”). These requirements may place a strain on our systems and resources. The Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and financial condition, and provide an annual assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting as required by the Exchange Act, significant resources and management oversight are required. We have implemented and continue to implement additional procedures and processes for the purpose of addressing the standards and requirements applicable to public companies. If we are not able to implement or maintain the necessary procedures and processes, we may be unable to report our financial information on a timely basis and thereby could subject us to adverse regulatory consequences, including sanctions by the SEC or violations of applicable stock exchange listing rules, and could result in a breach of the covenants under the agreements governing any of our financing arrangements. There could also be a negative reaction in the financial markets due to a loss of investor confidence in us and the reliability of our financial statements.
The VIEs that we consolidate as the primary beneficiary are, subject to certain transition guidelines, included in our annual assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. As a result, we will need to continue to implement and oversee procedures and processes to integrate such operations into our internal control structure. If we are not able to implement or maintain the necessary procedures and processes, we may be unable to report our financial information on a timely or accurate basis and thereby could subject us to adverse consequences, including sanctions by the SEC or violations of applicable stock exchange listing rules, and could result in a breach of the covenants under the agreements governing any of our financing arrangements. There could also be a negative reaction in the financial markets due to a loss of investor confidence in us and the reliability of our financial statements.
Risks Related to Our Common Units
The market price of our common units may decline due to the large number of common units eligible for exchange and future sale.
The market price of our common units could decline as a result of sales of a large number of common units in the market in the future or the perception that such sales could occur. These sales, or the possibility that these sales may occur, also might make it more difficult for us to sell common units in the future at a time and at a price that we deem appropriate. Subject to the lock-up restrictions described below, we may issue and sell in the future additional common units.
In addition, as of December 31, 2013, limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships owned an aggregate of 262,164,851 Carlyle Holdings partnership units. At the time of our IPO, we entered into an exchange agreement with the then-existing limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships so that these holders, subject to any applicable vesting and minimum retained ownership requirements and transfer restrictions applicable to such limited partners as set forth in the partnership agreements of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships, may on a quarterly basis, from and after May 8, 2013 (subject to the terms of the exchange agreement), exchange their Carlyle Holdings partnership units for The Carlyle Group L.P. common units on a one-for-one basis, subject to customary conversion rate adjustments for splits, unit distributions and reclassifications. Since our IPO, additional limited partners of the Carlyle holdings partnerships have become party to the exchange agreement and are generally entitled to exchange their Carlyle Holdings partnership units for common units on the same basis, from and after the first anniversary of the date of their acquisition of their Carlyle Holdings partnership units. In addition, Mubadala held 23,517,939 Carlyle Holdings partnership units as of December 31, 2013. Mubadala is generally entitled to exchange Carlyle Holdings partnerships units for common units (subject to the terms of the exchange agreement). If Mubadala were to exchange all of its Carlyle Holdings partnership units for common units, such common units would be subject to certain transfer restrictions as follows: in the period from November 9, 2013 to May 7, 2014, Mubadala would be able to transfer up to 21,042,420 of such common units without restriction; and from and after May 8, 2014, Mubadala may transfer all such common units without restriction. We have entered into registration rights agreements with the limited partners of Carlyle Holdings that generally require us to register these common units under the Securities Act. See “Part III. Item 13. Certain Relationships, Related Transactions and Director Independence —Registration Rights Agreements.” Provisions of the partnership agreements of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships and related agreements that contractually restrict the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships’ ability to transfer the Carlyle Holdings partnership units or The Carlyle Group L.P. common units they hold may lapse over time or be waived, modified or amended at any time.
Under our Equity Incentive Plan, we have granted 20,722,952 deferred restricted common units as of December 31, 2013. Additional common units and Carlyle Holdings partnership units will be available for future grant under our Equity Incentive Plan, which plan provides for automatic annual increases in the number of units available for future issuance. We have filed a registration statement and intend to file additional registration statements on Form S-8 under the Securities Act to register common units or securities convertible into or exchangeable for common units issued or available for future grant under our Equity Incentive Plan (including pursuant to automatic annual increases). Any such Form S-8 registration statement will automatically become effective upon filing. Accordingly, common units registered under such registration statement will be available for sale in the open market. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, our equity plan service provider, may, from time to time, act as a broker, dealer, or agent for, or otherwise facilitate sales of our common units on behalf of, plan participants, including in connection with sales of common units to fund tax obligations payable in connection with awards under our Equity Incentive Plan.
In addition, our partnership agreement authorizes us to issue an unlimited number of additional partnership securities and options, rights, warrants and appreciation rights relating to partnership securities for the consideration and on the terms and conditions established by our general partner in its sole discretion without the approval of any limited partners. In accordance with the Delaware Limited Partnership Act and the provisions of our partnership agreement, we may also issue additional partnership interests that have certain designations, preferences, rights, powers and duties that are different from, and may be senior to, those applicable to common units. Similarly, the Carlyle Holdings partnership agreements authorize the wholly owned subsidiaries of The Carlyle Group L.P. which are the general partners of those partnerships to issue an unlimited number of additional partnership securities of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships with such designations, preferences, rights, powers and duties that are different from, and may be senior to, those applicable to the Carlyle Holdings partnerships units, and which may be exchangeable for our common units.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or if they downgrade their recommendations regarding our common units, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common units is influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us or our business. If any of the analysts who cover us downgrades our common units or publishes inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our common unit stock price may decline. If analysts cease coverage of us or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our common unit stock price or trading volume to decline and our common units to be less liquid.
The market price of our common units may be volatile, which could cause the value of your investment to decline.
Even if a trading market develops, the market price of our common units may be highly volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations. Securities markets worldwide experience significant price and volume fluctuations. This market volatility, as well as general economic, market or political conditions, could reduce the market price of common units in spite of our operating performance. In addition, our operating results could be below the expectations of public market analysts and investors due to a number of potential factors, including variations in our quarterly operating results or distributions to unitholders, additions or departures of key management personnel, failure to meet analysts’ earnings estimates, publication of research reports about our industry, litigation and government investigations, changes or proposed changes in laws or regulations or differing interpretations or enforcement thereof affecting our business, adverse market reaction to any indebtedness we may incur or securities we may issue in the future, changes in market valuations of similar companies or speculation in the press or investment community, announcements by our competitors of significant contracts, acquisitions, dispositions, strategic partnerships, joint ventures or capital commitments, adverse publicity about the industries in which we participate or individual scandals, and in response the market price of our common units could decrease significantly. You may be unable to resell your common units at or above the price you paid for them.
In the past few years, stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations. In the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market price of a company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against public companies. This type of litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.
Risks Related to U.S. Taxation
Our structure involves complex provisions of U.S. federal income tax law for which no clear precedent or authority may be available. Our structure also is subject to potential legislative, judicial or administrative change and differing interpretations, possibly on a retroactive basis.
The U.S. federal income tax treatment of common unitholders depends in some instances on determinations of fact and interpretations of complex provisions of U.S. federal income tax law for which no clear precedent or authority may be available. You should be aware that the U.S. federal income tax rules are constantly under review by persons involved in the legislative process, the IRS and the U.S. Treasury Department, frequently resulting in revised interpretations of established concepts, statutory changes, revisions to regulations and other modifications and interpretations. The IRS pays close attention to the proper application of tax laws to partnerships. The present U.S. federal income tax treatment of an investment in our common units may be modified by administrative, legislative or judicial interpretation at any time, possibly on a retroactive basis, and any such action may affect investments and commitments previously made. Changes to the U.S. federal income tax laws and interpretations thereof could make it more difficult or impossible to meet the exception for us to be treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes that is not taxable as a corporation (referred to as the “Qualifying Income Exception”), affect or cause us to change our investments and commitments, affect the tax considerations of an investment in us, change the character or treatment of portions of our income (including, for instance, the treatment of carried interest as ordinary income rather than capital gain) and adversely affect an investment in our common units. For example, as discussed above under “— Risks Related to Our Company— Although not enacted, the U.S. Congress has considered legislation that would have: (i) in some cases after a ten-year transition period, precluded us from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or required us to hold carried interest through taxable subsidiary corporations; and (ii) taxed certain income and gains at increased rates. If any similar legislation were to be enacted and apply to us, the after tax income and gain related to our business, as well as our distributions to you and the market price of our common units, could be reduced,” the U.S. Congress has considered various
legislative proposals to treat all or part of the capital gain and dividend income that is recognized by an investment partnership and allocable to a partner affiliated with the sponsor of the partnership (i.e., a portion of the carried interest) as ordinary income to such partner for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
Our organizational documents and governing agreements will permit our general partner to modify our limited partnership agreement from time to time, without the consent of the common unitholders, to address certain changes in U.S. federal income tax regulations, legislation or interpretation. In some circumstances, such revisions could have a material adverse impact on some or all common unitholders. For instance, our general partner could elect at some point to treat us as an association taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal (and applicable state) income tax purposes. If our general partner were to do this, the U.S. federal income tax consequences of owning our common units would be materially different. Moreover, we will apply certain assumptions and conventions in an attempt to comply with applicable rules and to report income, gain, deduction, loss and credit to common unitholders in a manner that reflects such common unitholders’ beneficial ownership of partnership items, taking into account variation in ownership interests during each taxable year because of trading activity. As a result, a common unitholder transferring units may be allocated income, gain, loss and deductions realized after the date of transfer. However, those assumptions and conventions may not be in compliance with all aspects of applicable tax requirements. It is possible that the IRS will assert successfully that the conventions and assumptions used by us do not satisfy the technical requirements of the Internal Revenue Code and/or Treasury regulations and could require that items of income, gain, deductions, loss or credit, including interest deductions, be adjusted, reallocated or disallowed in a manner that adversely affects common unitholders.
If we were treated as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax or state tax purposes or otherwise became subject to additional entity level taxation (including as a result of changes to current law), then our distributions to you would be substantially reduced and the value of our common units would be adversely affected.
The value of your investment in us depends in part on our being treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes, which requires that 90% or more of our gross income for every taxable year consist of qualifying income, as defined in Section 7704 of the Internal Revenue Code and that our partnership not be registered under the 1940 Act. Qualifying income generally includes dividends, interest, capital gains from the sale or other disposition of stocks and securities and certain other forms of investment income. We may not meet these requirements or current law may change so as to cause, in either event, us to be treated as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes or otherwise subject us to U.S. federal income tax. Moreover, the anticipated after-tax benefit of an investment in our common units depends largely on our being treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes. We have not requested, and do not plan to request, a ruling from the IRS on this or any other matter affecting us.
If we were treated as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes, we would pay U.S. federal income tax on our taxable income at the applicable tax rates. In addition, we would likely be liable for state and local income and/or franchise tax on all our income. Distributions to you would generally be taxed again as corporate distributions, and no income, gains, losses, deductions or credits would otherwise flow through to you. Because a tax would be imposed upon us as a corporation, our distributions to you would be substantially reduced which would cause a reduction in the value of our common units.
Current law may change, causing us to be treated as a corporation for U.S. federal or state income tax purposes or otherwise subjecting us to additional entity level taxation. See “— Risks Related to Our Company— Although not enacted, the U.S. Congress has considered legislation that would have: (i) in some cases after a ten-year transition period, precluded us from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or required us to hold carried interest through taxable subsidiary corporations; and (ii) taxed certain income and gains at increased rates. If any similar legislation were to be enacted and apply to us, the after tax income and gain related to our business, as well as our distributions to you and the market price of our common units, could be reduced.” For example, because of widespread state budget deficits, several states are evaluating ways to subject partnerships to entity level taxation through the imposition of state income, franchise or other forms of taxation. If any state were to impose a tax upon us as an entity, our distributions to you would be reduced.
Our common unitholders may be subject to U.S. federal income tax on their share of our taxable income, regardless of whether they receive any cash distributions from us.
As long as 90% of our gross income for each taxable year constitutes qualifying income as defined in Section 7704 of the Internal Revenue Code and we are not required to register as an investment company under the
1940 Act on a continuing basis, and assuming there is no change in law, we will be treated, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, as a partnership and not as an association or a publicly traded partnership taxable as a corporation. Accordingly, our common unitholders will be required to take into account their allocable share of our items of income, gain, loss and deduction. Distributions to our common unitholders generally will be taxable for U.S. federal income tax purposes only to the extent the amount distributed exceeds their tax basis in the common unit. That treatment contrasts with the treatment of a shareholder in a corporation. For example, a shareholder in a corporation who receives a distribution of earnings from the corporation generally will report the distribution as dividend income for U.S. federal income tax purposes. In contrast, a holder of our common units who receives a distribution of earnings from us will not report the distribution as dividend income (and will treat the distribution as taxable only to the extent the amount distributed exceeds the unitholder’s tax basis in the common units), but will instead report the holder’s allocable share of items of our income for U.S. federal income tax purposes. As a result, you may be subject to U.S. federal, state, local and possibly, in some cases, foreign income taxation on your allocable share of our items of income, gain, loss, deduction and credit (including our allocable share of those items of any entity in which we invest that is treated as a partnership or is otherwise subject to tax on a flow through basis) for each of our taxable years ending with or within your taxable years, regardless of whether or not you receive cash distributions from us. See “—Risks Related to Our Company—Although not enacted, the U.S. Congress has considered legislation that would have: (i) in some cases after a ten-year transition period, precluded us from qualifying as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes or required us to hold carried interest through taxable subsidiary corporations; and (ii) taxed certain income and gains at increased rates. If any similar legislation were to be enacted and apply to us, the after tax income and gain related to our business, as well as our distributions to common unitholders and the market price of our common units, could be reduced.”
Our common unitholders may not receive cash distributions equal to their allocable share of our net taxable income or even the tax liability that results from that income. In addition, certain of our holdings, including holdings, if any, in a controlled foreign corporation (“CFC”) and a passive foreign investment company (“PFIC”) may produce taxable income prior to the receipt of cash relating to such income, and common unitholders that are U.S. taxpayers will be required to take such income into account in determining their taxable income. In the event of an inadvertent termination of our partnership status for which the IRS has granted us limited relief, each holder of our common units may be obligated to make such adjustments as the IRS may require in order to maintain our status as a partnership. Such adjustments may require persons holding our common units to recognize additional amounts in income during the years in which they hold such units.
The Carlyle Group L.P.’s interest in certain of our businesses will be held through Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc., which will be treated as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes; such corporation may be liable for significant taxes and may create other adverse tax consequences, which could potentially adversely affect the value of your investment.
In light of the publicly traded partnership rules under U.S. federal income tax law and other requirements, The Carlyle Group L.P. holds its interest in certain of our businesses through Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc., which is treated as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Such corporation could be liable for significant U.S. federal income taxes and applicable state, local and other taxes that would not otherwise be incurred, which could adversely affect the value of your investment.
Complying with certain tax-related requirements may cause us to invest through foreign or domestic corporations subject to corporate income tax or enter into acquisitions, borrowings, financings or arrangements we may not have otherwise entered into.
In order for us to be treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes and not as an association or publicly traded partnership taxable as a corporation, we must meet the Qualifying Income Exception discussed above on a continuing basis and we must not be required to register as an investment company under the 1940 Act. In order to effect such treatment, we (or our subsidiaries) may be required to invest through foreign or domestic corporations subject to corporate income tax, forgo attractive investment opportunities or enter into acquisitions, borrowings, financings or other transactions we may not have otherwise entered into. This may adversely affect our ability to operate solely to maximize our cash flow.
Our structure also may impede our ability to engage in certain corporate acquisitive transactions because we generally intend to hold all of our assets through the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. In addition, we may be unable to participate in certain corporate reorganization transactions that would be tax-free to our common unit holders if we were a corporation.
Tax gain or loss on disposition of our common units could be more or less than expected.
If you sell your common units, you will recognize a gain or loss equal to the difference between the amount realized and the adjusted tax basis in those common units. Prior distributions to you in excess of the total net taxable income allocated to you, which decreased the tax basis in your common units, will in effect become taxable income to you if the common units are sold at a price greater than your tax basis in those common units, even if the price is less than the original cost. A portion of the amount realized, whether or not representing gain, may be ordinary income to you.
Because we do not intend to make, or cause to be made, an otherwise available election under Section 754 of the Internal Revenue Code to adjust our asset basis or the asset basis of certain of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships, a holder of common units could be allocated more taxable income in respect of those common units prior to disposition than if we had made such an election.
We have not made and currently do not intend to make, or cause to be made, an election to adjust asset basis under Section 754 of the Internal Revenue Code with respect to us or Carlyle Holdings II L.P. If no such election is made, there generally will be no adjustment to the basis of the assets of Carlyle Holdings II L.P. upon our acquisition of interests in Carlyle Holdings II L.P. in connection with our initial public offering, or to our assets or to the assets of Carlyle Holdings II L.P. upon a subsequent transferee’s acquisition of common units from a prior holder of such common units, even if the purchase price for those interests or units, as applicable, is greater than the share of the aggregate tax basis of our assets or the assets of Carlyle Holdings II L.P. attributable to those interests or units immediately prior to the acquisition. Consequently, upon a sale of an asset by us or Carlyle Holdings II L.P. gain allocable to a holder of common units could include built-in gain in the asset existing at the time we acquired those interests, or such holder acquired such units, which built-in gain would otherwise generally be eliminated if we had made a Section 754 election.
Non-U.S. persons face unique U.S. tax issues from owning common units that may result in adverse tax consequences to them.
In light of our intended investment activities, we generally do not expect to generate significant amounts of income treated as effectively connected income with respect to non-U.S. holders of our common units (“ECI”). However, there can be no assurance that we will not generate ECI currently or in the future and, subject to the qualifying income rules, we are under no obligation to minimize ECI. To the extent our income is treated as ECI, non-U.S. holders generally would be subject to withholding tax on their allocable shares of such income, would be required to file a U.S. federal income tax return for such year reporting their allocable shares of income effectively connected with such trade or business and any other income treated as ECI, and would be subject to U.S. federal income tax at regular U.S. tax rates on any such income (state and local income taxes and filings may also apply in that event). In addition, certain income of non-U.S. holders from U.S. sources not connected to any such U.S. trade or business conducted by us could be treated as ECI. Non-U.S. holders that are corporations may also be subject to a 30% branch profits tax on their allocable share of such income. In addition, certain income from U.S. sources that is not ECI allocable to non-U.S. holders will be reduced by withholding taxes imposed at the highest effective applicable tax rate. A portion of any gain recognized by a non-U.S. holder on the sale or exchange of common units could also be treated as ECI.
Tax-exempt entities face unique tax issues from owning common units that may result in adverse tax consequences to them.
In light of our intended investment activities, we generally do not expect to make investments directly in operating businesses that generate significant amounts of unrelated business taxable income for tax-exempt holders of our common units (“UBTI”). However, certain of our investments may be treated as debt-financed investments, which may give rise to debt-financed UBTI. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that we will not generate UBTI currently or in the future and, subject to the qualifying income rules, we are under no obligation to minimize UBTI. Consequently, a holder of common units that is a tax-exempt organization may be subject to “unrelated business income tax” to the extent that its allocable share of our income consists of UBTI. A tax-exempt partner of a partnership could be treated as earning UBTI if the partnership regularly engages in a trade or business that is unrelated to the exempt function of the tax-exempt partner, if the partnership derives income from debt-financed property or if the partnership interest itself is debt-financed.
We cannot match transferors and transferees of common units, and we will therefore adopt certain income tax accounting positions that may not conform to all aspects of applicable tax requirements. The IRS may challenge this treatment, which could adversely affect the value of our common units.
Because we cannot match transferors and transferees of common units, we will adopt depreciation, amortization and other tax accounting positions that may not conform to all aspects of existing Treasury regulations. A successful IRS challenge to those positions could adversely affect the amount of tax benefits available to our common unitholders. It also could affect the timing of these tax benefits or the amount of gain on the sale of common units and could have a negative impact on the value of our common units or result in audits of and adjustments to our common unitholders’ tax returns.
In addition, our taxable income and losses will be determined and apportioned among investors using conventions we regard as consistent with applicable law. As a result, if you transfer your common units, you may be allocated income, gain, loss and deduction realized by us after the date of transfer. Similarly, a transferee may be allocated income, gain, loss and deduction realized by us prior to the date of the transferee’s acquisition of our common units. A transferee may also bear the cost of withholding tax imposed with respect to income allocated to a transferor through a reduction in the cash distributed to the transferee.
The sale or exchange of 50% or more of our capital and profit interests will result in the termination of our partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes. We will be considered to have been terminated for U.S. federal income tax purposes if there is a sale or exchange of 50% or more of the total interests in our capital and profits within a twelve-month period. Our termination would, among other things, result in the closing of our taxable year for all common unitholders and could result in a deferral of depreciation deductions allowable in computing our taxable income.
Certain U.S. holders of common units are subject to additional tax on “net investment income.”
U.S. holders that are individuals, estates or trusts are subject to a Medicare tax of 3.8% on “net investment income” (or undistributed “net investment income,” in the case of estates and trusts) for each taxable year, with such tax applying to the lesser of such income or the excess of such person’s adjusted gross income (with certain adjustments) over a specified amount. Net investment income includes net income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents and net gain attributable to the disposition of investment property. It is anticipated that net income and gain attributable to an investment in the Partnership will be included in a U.S. holder’s “net investment income” subject to this Medicare tax.
Common unitholders may be subject to state and local taxes and return filing requirements as a result of investing in our common units.
In addition to U.S. federal income taxes, our common unitholders may be subject to other taxes, including state and local taxes, unincorporated business taxes and estate, inheritance or intangible taxes that are imposed by the various jurisdictions in which we do business or own property now or in the future, even if our common unitholders do not reside in any of those jurisdictions. Our common unitholders may also be required to file state and local income tax returns and pay state and local income taxes in some or all of these jurisdictions. Further, common unitholders may be subject to penalties for failure to comply with those requirements. It is the responsibility of each common unitholder to file all U.S. federal, state and local tax returns that may be required of such common unitholder. Our counsel has not rendered an opinion on the state or local tax consequences of an investment in our common units.
We may not be able to furnish to each unitholder specific tax information within 90 days after the close of each calendar year, which means that holders of common units who are U.S. taxpayers should anticipate the need to file annually a request for an extension of the due date of their income tax return. In addition, it is possible that common unitholders may be required to file amended income tax returns.
As a publicly traded partnership, our operating results, including distributions of income, dividends, gains, losses or deductions and adjustments to carrying basis, will be reported on Schedule K-1 and distributed to each unitholder annually. Although we currently intend to distribute Schedule K-1s on or around 90 days after the end of our fiscal year, it may require longer than 90 days after the end of our fiscal year to obtain the requisite information from all lower-tier entities so that K-1s may be prepared for us. For this reason, holders of common units who are U.S. taxpayers should anticipate that they may need to file annually with the IRS (and certain states) a request for an extension past April 15 or the otherwise applicable due date of their income tax return for the taxable year.
In addition, it is possible that a common unitholder will be required to file amended income tax returns as a result of adjustments to items on the corresponding income tax returns of the partnership. Any obligation for a common unitholder to file amended income tax returns for that or any other reason, including any costs incurred in the preparation or filing of such returns, is the responsibility of each common unitholder.
We may hold or acquire certain investments through an entity classified as a PFIC or CFC for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
Certain of our investments may be in foreign corporations or may be acquired through a foreign subsidiary that would be classified as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Such an entity may be a PFIC or a CFC for U.S. federal income tax purposes. U.S. holders of common units indirectly owning an interest in a PFIC or a CFC may experience adverse U.S. tax consequences.
Changes in U.S. tax law could adversely affect our ability to raise funds from certain foreign investors.
Under FATCA, a broadly defined class of foreign financial institutions are required to comply with a complicated and expansive reporting regime or be subject to certain U.S. withholding taxes. The reporting obligations imposed under FATCA require foreign financial institutions to enter into agreements with the IRS to obtain and disclose information about certain account holders and investors to the IRS (or in the case of certain foreign financial institutions that are resident in a jurisdiction that has entered into an intergovernmental agreement to implement this legislation, the foreign financial institutions may comply with revised diligence and reporting obligations of such intergovernmental agreement). Additionally, certain non-U.S. entities that are not foreign financial institutions are required to provide certain certifications or other information regarding their U.S. beneficial ownership or be subject to certain U.S. withholding taxes. The administrative and economic costs of compliance with FATCA may discourage some foreign investors from investing in U.S. funds, which could adversely affect our ability to raise funds from these investors. In addition, we expect to incur additional expenses related to our compliance with such regulations.
Our principal executive offices are located in leased office space at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. We also lease the space for our other 34 offices, including our office in Arlington, Virginia, which houses our treasury, tax and finance functions. We do not own any real property. We consider these facilities to be suitable and adequate for the management and operation of our business.
From time to time, we are involved in various legal proceedings, lawsuits and claims incidental to the conduct of our business. Our businesses are also subject to extensive regulation, which may result in regulatory proceedings against us. We believe that the matters described below are without merit and intend to vigorously contest all such allegations.
In September 2006 and March 2009, the Partnership received requests for certain documents and other information from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in connection with the DOJ’s investigation of global alternative asset firms to determine whether they have engaged in conduct prohibited by U.S. antitrust laws. The Partnership fully cooperated with the DOJ’s investigation.
On February 14, 2008, a private class-action lawsuit challenging “club” bids and other alleged anti-competitive business practices was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit v. Apollo Global Management, LLC). The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain global alternative asset firms, including the Partnership, violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by forming multi-sponsor consortiums for the purpose of bidding collectively in company buyout transactions in certain
going private transactions, which the plaintiffs allege constitutes a “conspiracy in restraint of trade.” Count One of the complaint alleges an overarching conspiracy relating to certain large buyout transactions. Count Two of the complaint alleges a conspiracy with regard to the buyout of Healthcare Corporation of America. The plaintiffs seek damages as provided for in Section 4 of the Clayton Act and an injunction against such conduct in restraint of trade in the future. The defendants moved for summary judgment on both counts. On March 13, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that plaintiffs could proceed on Count One solely on the basis of an alleged conspiracy to refrain from “jumping” announced proprietary (i.e., non-auction) deals. The Court stated that it would entertain further summary judgment motions by individual defendants as to their participation in the more narrowly defined alleged conspiracy. The Court also denied summary judgment as to Count Two. On April 16, 2013, Carlyle filed a consolidated motion, renewing its motion for summary judgment on Count One, and moving for reconsideration on Count Two. On April 22, 2013, Carlyle joined a motion seeking reconsideration on Count Two filed on behalf of all Count Two defendants. On June 20, 2013, the Court denied the motion for reconsideration on Count Two filed by the Count Two defendants. On July 18, 2013, the Court denied Carlyle’s individual summary judgment motion regarding its participation in the conspiracy alleged in Count One. The U. S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has set a schedule for class certification proceedings, which calls for a hearing on class certification sometime after May 19, 2014. The parties have jointly submitted a proposed case management order that calls for a jury trial commencing in November 2014.
Along with many other companies and individuals in the financial sector, Carlyle and Carlyle Mezzanine Partners, L.P. (“CMP”) are named as defendants in Foy v. Austin Capital, a case filed in June 2009, pending in the State of New Mexico’s First Judicial District Court, County of Santa Fe, which purports to be a qui tam suit on behalf of the State of New Mexico. The suit alleges that investment decisions by New Mexico public investment funds were improperly influenced by campaign contributions and payments to politically connected placement agents. The plaintiffs seek, among other things, actual damages, actual damages for lost income, rescission of the investment transactions described in the complaint and disgorgement of all fees received. In May 2011, the Attorney General of New Mexico moved to dismiss certain defendants including Carlyle and CMP on the grounds that separate civil litigation by the Attorney General is a more effective means to seek recovery for the State from these defendants. The Attorney General has brought two civil actions against certain of those defendants, not including the Carlyle defendants. The Attorney General has stated that its investigation is continuing and it may bring additional civil actions.
Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited (“CCC”) was a fund sponsored by Carlyle that invested in AAA-rated residential mortgage backed securities on a highly leveraged basis. In March of 2008, amidst turmoil throughout the mortgage markets and money markets, CCC filed for insolvency protection in Guernsey. Several different lawsuits, described below, developed from the CCC insolvency.
First, on July 13, 2009, a former shareholder of CCC, claiming to have lost $20.0 million, filed a claim against CCC, Carlyle and certain affiliates and one of the Partnership’s officers (Huffington v. TC Group L.L.C., et al.) alleging violations of Massachusetts “blue sky” law provisions relating to material misrepresentations and omissions allegedly made during and after the marketing of CCC. The plaintiff sought treble damages, interest, expenses, attorney’s fees and to have the subscription agreement deemed null and void and to receive a full refund of the investment. In March 2010, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint on the grounds that it should have been filed in Delaware instead of Massachusetts based on the forum selection provision in the plaintiff’s subscription agreement. The plaintiff subsequently filed a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The plaintiff lost his appeal to the First Circuit and filed a new claim in Delaware State Court. The Delaware State Court granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion to dismiss, which was converted to a motion for summary judgment. The plaintiff has since dismissed his claim without any monetary compensation, in exchange for Carlyle’s dismissal of its counterclaim against him for violation of the forum selection clause.
Second, in November 2009, another CCC investor, National Industries Group (Holding) (“National Industries”) instituted legal proceedings on similar grounds in Kuwait’s Court of First Instance (National Industries Group v. Carlyle Group ) seeking to recover losses incurred in connection with an investment in CCC. In July 2011, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued a decision restraining National Industries from proceeding in Kuwait on any CCC-related claims based on the forum selection clause in National Industries’ subscription agreement, which provided for exclusive jurisdiction in the Delaware courts. In September 2011, National Industries reissued its complaint in Kuwait naming CCC only, and reissued its complaint in January 2012 joining Carlyle Investment Management, L.L.C. as a defendant. In April 2013, the court in Kuwait dismissed National Industries’ claim without prejudice for failure to serve process. Hearings in the case and related to the case have nevertheless taken place on several occasions since that time, most recently in September 2013. Meanwhile, in August 2012, National Industries had filed a motion to vacate the Delaware Court of Chancery’s decision. The Partnership successfully opposed that motion and the Court’s injunction remained in effect. In November 2012, National
Industries appealed that decision to the Delaware Supreme Court. On May 29, 2013, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Chancery Court’s decision and upheld the 2011 injunction barring National Industries from filing or prosecuting any CCC-related action in any forum other than the courts of Delaware.
Third, the Guernsey liquidators who took control of CCC in March 2008 filed four suits on July 7, 2010 against Carlyle, certain of its affiliates and the former directors of CCC in the Delaware Chancery Court, the Royal Court of Guernsey, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of New York, New York County (Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited v. Conway et al.) seeking $1.0 billion in damages. They allege that Carlyle and the CCC board of directors were negligent, grossly negligent or willfully mismanaged the CCC investment program and breached certain fiduciary duties allegedly owed to CCC and its shareholders. The liquidators further allege (among other things) that the directors and Carlyle put the interests of Carlyle ahead of the interests of CCC and its shareholders and gave priority to preserving and enhancing Carlyle’s reputation and its “brand” over the best interests of CCC. In July 2011, the Royal Court of Guernsey held that the case should be litigated in Delaware pursuant to the exclusive jurisdiction clause in the investment management agreement. That ruling was appealed by the liquidators, and in February 2012 was reversed by the Guernsey Court of Appeal, which held that the case should proceed in Guernsey. Defendants’ attempts to appeal to the Privy Council were unsuccessful and the plaintiffs’ case is proceeding in Guernsey. Two claims in that case, which sought the return of certain documents and other property purportedly belonging to CCC, were resolved by agreement of the parties and order of the Royal Court of Guernsey in December 2012. Carlyle has now completed its document production pursuant to that order. On July 24, 2013, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, which contained further detail in support of the existing claims but no new defendants or claims. Defendants prepared a defense to the amended claim, which was filed in December 2013. After the defense is filed, the court is expected to set a schedule for the remainder of the case. In addition, the liquidators’ lawsuits in New York and the District of Columbia were dismissed in December 2011 without prejudice.
Fourth, on June 21, 2011, August 24, 2011 and September 1, 2011, respectively, three putative shareholder class actions were filed against Carlyle, certain of its affiliates and former directors of CCC alleging that the fund offering materials and various public disclosures were materially misleading or omitted material information. Two of the shareholder class actions (Phelps v. Stomber, et al. and Glaubach v. Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited, et al.) were filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Phelps v. Stomber, et al. was also filed in the Supreme Court of New York, New York County and was subsequently removed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The two original D.C. cases were consolidated into one case under the caption of Phelps v. Stomber and the Phelps named plaintiffs were designated “lead plaintiffs” by the Court. The New York case was transferred to the D.C. federal court and the plaintiffs requested that it be consolidated with the other two D.C. actions. The plaintiffs were seeking compensatory damages sustained as a result of the alleged misrepresentations, costs and expenses, as well as reasonable attorney’s fees. On August 13, 2012, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed both the D.C. and New York shareholder class actions. The plaintiffs moved for leave to amend their complaint and/or for amendment of the Court’s decision, but the trial court denied that motion on June 4, 2013. The plaintiffs’ previously filed notice of appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was then automatically reinstated and oral arguments on this appeal were held on February 19, 2014.
It is not possible to predict the ultimate outcome of all pending investigations and legal proceedings, and some of the matters discussed above involve claims for potentially large and/or indeterminate amounts of damages. Based on information known by management, management has not concluded that as of the date of this filing the final resolutions of the matters above will have a material effect upon the Partnership’s consolidated financial statements. However, given the potentially large and/or indeterminate amounts of damages sought in certain of these matters and the inherent unpredictability of investigations and litigations, it is possible that an adverse outcome in certain matters could, from time to time, have a material effect on our financial results in any particular period.
From 2007 to 2009, a Luxembourg subsidiary of CEREP I, a real estate fund, received proceeds from the sale of real estate located in Paris, France. The relevant French tax authorities have asserted that CEREP I was ineligible to claim certain exemptions from French tax under the Luxembourg-French tax treaty, and have issued a tax assessment seeking to collect approximately €97.0 million, consisting of taxes, interest and penalties. Additionally, the French Ministry of Justice has commenced an investigation regarding the legality under French law of claiming the exemptions under the tax treaty. CEREP I and its subsidiaries are contesting the French tax assessment.
Our common units representing limited partner interests in The Carlyle Group L.P. are traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “CG.” Our common units began trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market Exchange on May 3, 2012.
The number of holders of record of our common units as of February 20, 2014 was 62. This does not include the number of unitholders that hold shares in “street name” through banks or broker-dealers.
Cash Distribution Policy
We currently anticipate that we will cause Carlyle Holdings to make quarterly distributions to its partners, including The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries, that will enable The Carlyle Group L.P. to pay a quarterly distribution of $0.16 per common unit for each of the first three quarters of each year and for the fourth quarter of each year, to pay a distribution of at least $0.16 per common unit that, taken together with the prior quarterly distributions in respect of that year, represents its share, net of taxes and amounts payable under the tax receivable agreement, of Carlyle’s Distributable Earnings in excess of the amount determined by Carlyle’s general partner to be necessary or appropriate to provide for the conduct of Carlyle’s business, to make appropriate investments in its business and its funds or to comply with applicable law or any of its financing agreements. We anticipate that the aggregate amount of our distributions for most years will be less than our Distributable Earnings for that year due to these funding requirements.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the declaration and payment of any distributions will be at the sole discretion of our general partner, which may change our distribution policy at any time. Our general partner will take into account general economic and business conditions, our strategic plans and prospects, our business and investment opportunities, our financial condition and operating results, working capital requirements and anticipated cash needs, contractual restrictions and obligations, legal, tax and regulatory restrictions, other constraints on the payment of distributions by us to our common unitholders or by our subsidiaries to us, and such other factors as our general partner may deem relevant.
Because The Carlyle Group L.P. is a holding partnership and has no material assets other than its ownership of partnership units in Carlyle Holdings held through wholly owned subsidiaries, we will fund distributions by The Carlyle Group L.P., if any, in three steps:
• first, we will cause Carlyle Holdings to make distributions to its partners, including The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries. If Carlyle Holdings makes such distributions, the limited partners of Carlyle Holdings will be entitled to receive equivalent distributions pro rata based on their partnership interests in Carlyle Holdings;
• second, we will cause The Carlyle Group L.P.’s wholly owned subsidiaries to distribute to The Carlyle Group L.P. their share of such distributions, net of taxes and amounts payable under the tax receivable agreement by such wholly owned subsidiaries; and
• third, The Carlyle Group L.P. will distribute its net share of such distributions to our common unitholders on a pro rata basis.
Because our wholly owned subsidiaries must pay taxes and make payments under the tax receivable agreement, the amounts ultimately distributed by us to our common unitholders are expected to be less, on a per unit basis, than the amounts distributed by the Carlyle Holdings partnerships to the other limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships in respect of their Carlyle Holdings partnership units.
In addition, the partnership agreements of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships will provide for cash distributions, which we refer to as “tax distributions,” to the partners of such partnerships if the wholly owned subsidiaries of The Carlyle Group L.P. which are the general partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships determine that the taxable income of the relevant partnership will give rise to taxable income for its partners. Generally, these tax distributions will be computed based on our estimate of the net taxable income of the relevant partnership allocable to a partner multiplied by an assumed tax rate equal to the highest effective marginal combined
U.S. federal, state and local income tax rate prescribed for an individual or corporate resident in New York, New York (taking into account the non-deductibility of certain expenses and the character of our income). The Carlyle Holdings partnerships will make tax distributions only to the extent distributions from such partnerships for the relevant year were otherwise insufficient to cover such tax liabilities. The Carlyle Group L.P. is not required to distribute to its common unitholders any of the cash that its wholly owned subsidiaries may receive as a result of tax distributions by the Carlyle Holdings partnerships.
Under the Delaware Limited Partnership Act, we may not make a distribution to a partner if after the distribution all our liabilities, other than liabilities to partners on account of their partnership interests and liabilities for which the recourse of creditors is limited to specific property of the partnership, would exceed the fair value of our assets. If we were to make such an impermissible distribution, any limited partner who received a distribution and knew at the time of the distribution that the distribution was in violation of the Delaware Limited Partnership Act would be liable to us for the amount of the distribution for three years. In addition, the terms of our credit facility provide certain limits on our ability to make distributions. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operation — Liquidity and Capital Resources.”
With respect to distribution year 2013, we declared distributions to common unitholders totaling approximately $93.5 million, or $1.88 per common unit, consisting of $0.16 per common unit in respect of each of the first three quarters of 2013 and an additional distribution in respect of the fourth quarter of 2013 of $1.40 per common unit (approximately $70.4 million), which is payable on March 11, 2014 to holders of record of common units at the close of business on March 3, 2014. Distributions to common unitholders paid during the calendar year ended December 31, 2013 were $59.9 million, representing the amount paid in March 2013 of $0.85 per common unit with respect to the fourth quarter of 2012 and the $0.16 per common unit quarterly distributions paid in May, August and November of 2013.
With respect to distribution year 2012, we declared distributions to common unitholders totaling approximately $48.5 million, or $1.12 per common unit, consisting of $0.11 per common unit for the second quarter of 2012 (a pro-rated amount from the IPO in May 2012), $0.16 per common unit for the third quarter of 2012, and $0.85 in respect of the fourth quarter of 2012 which was paid in March 2013. Distributions to common unitholders paid during the calendar year ended December 31, 2012 were $11.7 million, representing the $0.11 per common unit quarterly distribution paid in August 2012 and the $0.16 per common unit quarterly distribution paid in November of 2012.
With respect to distribution year 2013, we declared distributions to the other limited partners of Carlyle Holdings totaling approximately $512.0 million, or $1.97 per Carlyle Holdings unit, consisting of the distributions declared in respect of the first three quarters of 2013 and an additional distribution in respect of the fourth quarter of 2013 of $1.40 per Carlyle Holdings unit (approximately $366.8 million), which is payable on March 10, 2014 to holders of record of Carlyle Holdings units at the close of business on March 3, 2014. Distributions to the other limited partners of Carlyle Holdings paid during the calendar year ended December 31, 2013 were $368.6 million, representing the quarterly distributions paid in March, May, August, and November of 2013.
With respect to distribution year 2012, we declared distributions to the other limited partners of Carlyle Holdings totaling approximately $320.0 million, or $1.22 per Carlyle Holdings unit, consisting of the distributions declared in respect of the second quarter and third quarter of 2013 and $0.85 in respect of the fourth quarter of 2012 which was paid in March 2013. Distributions to other limited partners of Carlyle Holdings paid during the calendar year ended December 31, 2012 were $96.6 million, representing the quarterly distributions paid in August and November of 2012.
The following table sets forth the high and low sales prices per unit of our common units, for the periods indicated:
High Low High Low
$ 37.89 $ 26.11 N/A N/A
Second Quarter (1)
$ 33.47 $ 23.85 $ 22.45 $ 20.00
(1) Represents the high and low sales price for the period from May 3, 2012, the date our common units began trading, through June 30, 2012.
No purchases of our common units were made by us or on our behalf during the quarter ended December 31, 2013.
As permitted by our policies and procedures governing transactions in our securities by our directors, executive officers and other employees, from time to time some of these persons may establish plans or arrangements complying with Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act, and similar plans and arrangements relating to our common units and Carlyle Holdings partnership units.
Sales of Unregistered Securities
During the fourth quarter of 2013, we issued an aggregate of 67,181 common units as partial consideration for our acquisition of OKLO Financial to its former owners. We also issued an aggregate of 67,338 common units as partial consideration for our acquisition of Metropolitan Real Estate Equity Management, LLC to certain of its former owners. In connection with both of these acquisitions, we have also agreed to issue additional common units to certain of the former owners upon satisfaction of certain earn-out provisions. In each of the these transactions, the offer and sale of the common units was made in reliance upon the exemption from registration under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, afforded by Section 4(a)(2) thereof, on the basis that it did not involve any public offering.
The following selected consolidated financial data presents selected data on the financial condition and results of operations of The Carlyle Group L.P. and, for periods prior to May 8, 2012, the financial condition and results of operations of Carlyle Group, the predecessor of The Carlyle Group L.P. Carlyle Group is considered the predecessor of The Carlyle Group L.P. for accounting purposes, and its combined and consolidated financial statements are the historical financial statements of The Carlyle Group L.P. This financial data should be read together with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the historical financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
We derived the following selected consolidated financial data of The Carlyle Group L.P. as of December 31, 2013 and 2012 and for the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012, and 2011 from the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The selected consolidated financial data as of December 31, 2011, 2010, and 2009 and for the years ended December 31, 2010 and 2009 were derived from the historical audited combined and consolidated financial statements of Carlyle Group which are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Historical results are not necessarily indicative of results for any future period.
For periods prior to the reorganization and initial public offering in May 2012, net income was determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP for partnerships and was not comparable to net income of a corporation. For the periods prior to May 2012, all distributions and compensation for services rendered by senior Carlyle professionals was reflected as distributions from equity rather than compensation expense. The historical consolidated financial statements have been prepared on substantially the same basis for all historical periods presented; however, the consolidated funds are not the same entities in all periods shown due to changes in U.S. GAAP, changes in fund terms and the creation and termination of funds.
(Dollars in millions, except per unit data)
Statement of Operations Data
$ 984.6 $ 977.6 $ 915.5 $ 770.3 $ 788.1
Performance fees
1,176.7 907.5 1,307.4 266.4 11.1
1,198.6 133.6 (185.8 ) 1,215.6 485.6
Total performance fees
2,375.3 1,041.1 1,121.6 1,482.0 496.7
Interest and other income
Interest and other income of Consolidated Funds
1,043.1 903.5 714.0 452.6 0.7
Revenue of a consolidated real estate VIE
7.5 — — — —
4,441.2 2,973.1 2,845.3 2,798.9 1,317.8
2,244.1 1,143.9 477.9 429.0 348.4
General, administrative and other expenses
496.4 357.5 323.5 177.2 236.6
Interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds
890.6 758.1 453.1 233.3 0.7
Interest and other expenses of a consolidated real estate VIE
33.8 — — — —
Other non-operating (income) expenses
(16.5 ) 7.1 32.0 — —
Loss (gain) from early extinguishment of debt, net of related expenses
— — — 2.5 (10.7 )
Equity issued for affiliate debt financing
— — — 214.0 —
Other Income (Loss)
Net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds
696.7 1,758.0 (323.3 ) (245.4 ) (33.8 )
Gain on business acquisition
— — 7.9 — —
Income before provision for income taxes
Net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests in consolidated entities
676.0 1,756.7 (202.6 ) (66.2 ) (30.5 )
Net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings
671.8 642.8 $ 1,356.9 $ 1,525.6 $ 694.1
Net income attributable to non-controlling interests in Carlyle Holdings
Net income attributable to The Carlyle Group L.P.
$ 104.1 $ 20.3
Net income attributable to The Carlyle Group L.P. per common unit
Distributions declared per common unit
As of December 31,
(Dollars in millions)
Investments and accrued performance fees
$ 4,418.9 $ 3,073.7 $ 2,644.0 $ 2,594.3 $ 1,279.2
Investments of Consolidated Funds(1)
$ 26,886.4 $ 24,815.7 $ 19,507.3 $ 11,864.6 $ 163.9
$ 35,622.3 $ 31,566.6 $ 24,651.7 $ 17,062.8 $ 2,509.6
Loans payable and senior notes
Subordinated loan payable to Mubadala
$ — $ — $ 262.5 $ 494.0 $ —
Loans payable of Consolidated Funds
$ 15,220.7 $ 13,656.7 $ 9,689.9 $ 10,433.5 $ —
Loans payable of a consolidated real estate VIE at fair value
$ 122.1 $ — $ — $ — $ —
Redeemable non-controlling interests in consolidated entities
$ 4,352.0 $ 2,887.4 $ 1,923.4 $ 694.0 $ —
Members’ equity
$ — $ — $ 873.1 $ 929.7 $ 448.5
Partners’ capital
$ 357.1 $ 235.1 $ — $ — $ —
$ (11.2 ) $ (4.8 ) $ (55.8 ) $ (34.5 ) $ (11.0 )
Partners’ capital appropriated for Consolidated Funds
$ 463.6 $ 838.6 $ 853.7 $ 938.5 $ —
Non-controlling interests in consolidated entities
$ 7,696.6 $ 8,264.8 $ 7,496.2 $ 364.9 $ 276.1
Non-controlling interests in Carlyle Holdings
$ 1,871.3 $ 1,361.7 $ — $ — $ —
Total partners’ capital
$ 10,377.4 $ 10,695.4 $ 9,167.2 $ 2,198.6 $ 713.6
(1) The entities comprising our Consolidated Funds are not the same entities for all periods presented. Pursuant to revised consolidation guidance that became effective January 1, 2010, we consolidated the existing and any subsequently acquired CLOs where we hold a controlling financial interest. On December 31, 2010, we completed our acquisition of Claren Road and consolidated its operations and certain of its managed funds from that date forward. In addition, on July 1, 2011, we completed the acquisitions of ESG and 60% of AlpInvest and consolidated these entities as well as certain of their managed funds from that date forward. On February 28, 2012, we acquired certain European CLO management contracts from Highland Capital Management L.P. and consolidated those CLOs from that date forward. We also formed four new CLOs throughout 2012 and six new CLOs throughout 2013 and consolidated those CLOs beginning on their respective formation dates. The consolidation or deconsolidation of funds generally has the effect of grossing up or down, respectively, reported assets, liabilities, and cash flows, and has no effect on net income attributable to The Carlyle Group L.P. or partners’ capital.
The Carlyle Group L.P. (the “Partnership”) is a Delaware limited partnership formed on July 18, 2011. Pursuant to a reorganization into a holding partnership structure, the Partnership became a holding partnership and its sole material assets are equity interests through wholly owned subsidiary entities representing partnership units in Carlyle Holdings I L.P., Carlyle Holdings II L.P. and Carlyle Holdings III L.P. (collectively,” Carlyle Holdings”) that the Partnership acquired using proceeds from the Partnership’s initial public offering on May 8, 2012. Beginning on May 8, 2012, through wholly owned subsidiary entities, the Partnership is the sole general partner of Carlyle Holdings and operates and controls all of the business and affairs of Carlyle Holdings and, through Carlyle Holdings and its subsidiaries, continues to conduct the business now conducted by these subsidiaries. Carlyle Group Management L.L.C. is the general partner of the Partnership.
On May 2, 2012, our senior Carlyle professionals, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (“CalPERS”), and entities affiliated with Mubadala Development Company, the Abu-Dhabi based strategic development and investment company (“Mubadala”) contributed all of their interests in the Parent Entities, and our senior Carlyle professionals and other individuals engaged in our business contributed a portion of the equity interests they owned in the general partners of our existing carry funds, to Carlyle Holdings in exchange for an aggregate of 274,000,000 Carlyle Holdings partnership units. Carlyle Holdings did not conduct any activity prior to May 2, 2012.
As the sole general partner of Carlyle Holdings, the Partnership consolidates the financial position and results of operations of Carlyle Holdings into its financial statements, and the ownership interests of the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships are reflected as a non-controlling interest in the Partnership’s financial statements. The historical combined and consolidated financial statements of TC Group, L.L.C., TC Group Cayman, L.P., TC Group Investment Holdings, L.P. and TC Group Cayman Investment Holdings, L.P., as well as their majority-owned subsidiaries (collectively, “Carlyle Group”), reflect the predecessor financial statements of the Partnership, and are based on the historical ownership interests of the senior Carlyle professionals, CalPERS, and Mubadala in Carlyle Group.
The following discussion analyzes the financial condition and results of operations of the Partnership and, for periods prior to May 8, 2012, the financial condition and results of operations of Carlyle Group, the predecessor of the Partnership. Such analysis should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and the related notes included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the Partnership’s final prospectus dated May 2, 2012, included in the Partnership’s Registration Statement on Form S-1, as amended (SEC File No. 333-176685). For ease of reference, we refer to the historical financial results of Carlyle Group as being “our” historical financial results. Unless the context otherwise requires, references to “we”, “us”, “our”, and “the Partnership” are intended to mean the business and operations of the Partnership since May 8, 2012. When used in the historical context (i.e., prior to May 8, 2012), these terms are intended to mean the business and operations of Carlyle Group.
We conduct our operations through four reportable segments: Corporate Private Equity, Global Market Strategies, Real Assets and Solutions.
• Corporate Private Equity — Our Corporate Private Equity segment advises our 23 buyout and 8 growth capital funds, which seek a wide variety of investments of different sizes and growth potentials. As of December 31, 2013, our Corporate Private Equity segment had approximately $65 billion in AUM and approximately $43 billion in Fee-earning AUM.
• Global Market Strategies — Our Global Market Strategies segment advises a group of 61 funds that pursue investment opportunities across structured credit, distressed debt, corporate and energy mezzanine debt, middle-market and senior debt, as well as credit, emerging markets and commodities-focused hedge funds. As of December 31, 2013, our Global Market Strategies segment had approximately $35 billion in AUM and approximately $33 billion in Fee-earning AUM.
• Real Assets — Our Real Assets segment advises our nine U.S. and internationally focused real estate funds, our infrastructure fund, one power fund, one international energy fund, as well as our five Legacy Energy funds (funds that we jointly advise with Riverstone). The segment also includes eight NGP management fee funds and one NGP carry fund advised by NGP. As of December 31, 2013, our Real Assets segment had approximately $39 billion in AUM and approximately $28 billion in Fee-earning AUM.
• Solutions — Our Solutions segment was launched upon our acquisition of a 60% equity interest in AlpInvest on July 1, 2011 and advises a global private equity fund of funds program and related co-investment and secondary activities across 106 fund of funds vehicles. On August 1, 2013 we acquired the remaining 40% equity interest in AlpInvest and, on November 1, 2013, we acquired 100% of the equity interests in Metropolitan, one of the largest managers of indirect investments in global real estate, which manages 22 fund of funds vehicles As of December 31, 2013, AlpInvest had approximately $48 billion in AUM and approximately $33 billion in Fee-earning AUM, and Metropolitan had approximately $2 billion in AUM and approximately $2 billion in Fee-earning AUM.
We earn management fees pursuant to contractual arrangements with the investment funds that we manage and fees for transaction advisory and oversight services provided to portfolio companies of these funds. We also typically receive a performance fee from an investment fund, which may be either an incentive fee or a special residual allocation of income, which we refer to as a carried interest, in the event that specified investment returns are achieved by the fund. Under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (“U.S. GAAP”), we are required to consolidate some of the investment funds that we advise. However, for segment reporting purposes, we present revenues and expenses on a basis that deconsolidates these investment funds. Accordingly, our segment revenues primarily consist of fund management and related advisory fees, performance fees (consisting of incentive fees and carried interest allocations), investment income, including realized and unrealized gains on our investments in our funds and other trading securities, as well as interest and other income. Our segment expenses primarily consist of compensation and benefits expenses, including salaries, bonuses, performance payment arrangements, and equity-based compensation granted subsequent to our initial public offering, and general and administrative expenses. Refer to Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information on the differences between our financial results reported pursuant to U.S. GAAP and our financial results for segment reporting purposes.
Trends Affecting our Business
We believe that our diversified, multi-product global platform, which invests across numerous industries, asset classes and geographies generally enhances, on an annual basis, the stability of our distributable earnings and management fee streams, reduces the volatility of our carried interest and incentive fees and decreases our exposure to a negative event associated with any specific fund, investment or vintage. However, our results of operations are affected by a variety of factors including global economic, market and financial conditions, particularly in the United States, Europe and Asia. In general, a climate of reasonable interest rates and high levels of liquidity in the debt and equity capital markets provide a positive environment for us to generate attractive investment returns in our carry funds, but periods of volatility and dislocation in the capital markets can present us with opportunities to invest at reduced valuations that position us for future revenue growth. For our hedge funds, opportunities to generate revenue depend on their respective investment strategies, certain of which may benefit from higher market volatility. These strategies include, but are not limited to, low levels of correlation in equity and debt markets, differences in market prices versus fundamental value and opportunities to profit from trading inefficiencies.
In the U.S. macroeconomic environment, risk asset prices continued to drift upward since the end of the third quarter of 2013, with the S&P 500 posting its highest return, including dividends, since 1997. By contrast, emerging market equity declined during the fourth quarter of 2013 and posted a loss for the year. On December 18, 2013, the Federal Open Market Committee announced that it would start to “taper” its asset purchase program by reducing monthly purchases from the prior pace of $85 billion. Although interest rates initially moved upward, additional economic announcements mitigated this movement. Also during the year, the global issuance of speculative grade credit increased and spreads fell to levels last seen in 2007. Investors’ concern about higher interest rates causes the issuance of fixed-rate high-yield bonds to slow in the second half of 2013, but this was offset by demand for leveraged loans, which increased over the course of the year. This economic environment generally provided access to reasonably priced credit for our portfolio companies and for financing new transactions during the year.
Our management team monitors trends in the global marketplace and our industry in order to anticipate developments in the business climate and tailor our strategy. Some of these trends include:
Our ability to attract new capital and new fund investors. Our ability to attract new capital and investors in our funds is driven, in part, by the extent to which they continue to see the alternative asset management industry generally, and our investment products specifically, as an attractive vehicle for capital appreciation. We continually seek to meet our investors’ evolving needs and broaden the appeal of our
investment products by offering an expansive range of investment funds, developing new products and creating managed accounts and other investment vehicles tailored to our investors’ goals. One area of recent focus has been the expansion of our Solutions business through our acquisition of Metropolitan in November 2013 and DGAM in February 2014. During the year ended December 31, 2013, we raised more than $22 billion of new capital commitments across our fund platform. However, the fundraising environment remains competitive and the time required to raise a fund has increased from prior years. However, with several of our larger funds currently in the market, we expect fundraising to continue at a strong pace through 2014. We also are continuing to create avenues through which we expect to attract a new base of individual fund investors, including retail investors. Our efforts to reach out to a new investor base include the use of feeder funds and the launch of new mutual funds and other registered investment products and we have dedicated resources to support and further develop these products. These new fundraising strategies differ from our traditional fundraising model and have meaningfully increased our fundraising expenses and are likely to continue to do so.
• Our successful deployment of capital. Our ability to maintain and grow our revenue base is dependent upon our ability to deploy successfully the capital that our investors have committed to our investment funds. Greater competition, high valuations, increased overall cost of credit and other general market conditions may impact our ability to identify and execute attractive investments. Additionally, because we maintain a disciplined investment approach and analyze each carry fund transaction based on our ability to achieve our targeted returns while taking on a reasonable level of risk, we will not deploy our capital until we have sourced a suitable investment opportunity. We have a long-term investment horizon and the capital deployed in any one quarter may vary significantly from the capital deployed in any other quarter or the quarterly average of capital deployed in any given year. During the year ended December 31, 2013, we invested over $8 billion in new and existing investments in our carry funds. Over the past five years, we have invested an average of more than $8 billion a year in new and existing investments in our carry funds. As of December 31, 2013, we had capital available for investment through our carry funds of $32 billion, we had capital available for investment in our Solutions segment through our fund of funds vehicles of $17 billion and we had over $14 billion in hedge fund assets invested across credit, equities, and commodities trading strategies.
• Our ability to generate strong absolute and risk adjusted returns. The strength of our investment performance affects investors’ willingness to commit capital to our funds. The capital we are able to attract is one of the main drivers of the growth of our AUM and the management fees we earn. During the year ended December 31, 2013, we realized proceeds of over $17 billion for our carry fund investors. Our decision to realize carry considers such factors as the level of embedded valuation gains, the portion of the fund invested, the portion of the fund returned to limited partner investors, and the length of time the fund has been in carry, as well as other qualitative measures. The valuation of our carry fund portfolio increased 20% overall during 2013 with a 30% increase in our Corporate Private Equity segment, a 28% increase in our Global Market Strategies segment and a 1% increase in our Real Assets segment. During the fourth quarter of 2013 alone we achieved a 6% overall increase in the valuation of our carry fund portfolio, with a 9% increase in our Corporate Private Equity segment, a 10% increase in our Global Market Strategies segment and a 1% decline in our Real Assets segment. There can be no assurance that these trends will continue, though we focus our efforts on maximizing the valuation of our portfolio. Given the current investment environment with increased competition from other financial sponsors and strategic purchasers, the internal rates of return we are able to generate on certain of our near-term investments may be lower than our historical rates, but we continue to follow our core investment tenets and disciplined approach to participate in transactions that we believe will be the most successful for our investors.
• The timing of the expiration of the investment periods of our funds and the raising of successor funds. In general, the expiration of the original investment period (regardless of whether it is extended) of our carry funds will trigger a change in the capital base on which management fees are calculated from committed capital to invested capital at cost. In some cases, a step-down in the applicable rate used to calculate management fees may also occur. As a result, the management fee revenues we earn from these extended funds will decline. In certain circumstances, this reduction will occur prior to the raising of a successor fund. The favorable impact on Fee-earning AUM and related management fee revenues of a successor fund or new fundraising initiatives will, to the extent of the success of these new funds or initiatives, offset the management fee revenue reductions. For example, during 2013, we had several funds move out of their investment period at the same time as we were raising successor funds, which caused a gap period for generating fees. We expect to see this trend begin to reverse as these new funds begin their investment period.
On October 3, 2013, the Partnership borrowed €12.6 million ($17.4 million as of December 31, 2013) under a new term loan and security agreement with a financial institution. Proceeds from the borrowing were used to fund the Partnership’s investment in a CLO. The facility is scheduled to mature on the earlier of five years after closing or the date that the CLO is dissolved. Refer to Note 8 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.
On November 1, 2013, the Partnership acquired 100% of Metropolitan, one of the largest managers of indirect investments in global real estate, which manages 22 fund of funds vehicles with $2 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2013. Refer to Note 3 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.
On February 3, 2014, the Partnership acquired 100% of the equity interests in DGAM, a global manager of hedge funds based in Toronto, Canada, with $6.6 billion in managed and advised assets as of December 31, 2013. Refer to Note 20 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.
In February 2014, the Board of Directors of our general partner declared a distribution of $1.40 per common unit to common unitholders in respect of the fourth quarter of 2013 payable on March 3, 2014 to holders of record of common units at the close of business on March 11, 2014.
Consolidation of Certain Carlyle Funds and Variable Interest Entities
Pursuant to U.S. GAAP, we consolidate certain Carlyle sponsored funds, related co-investment entities and CLOs that we advise, which we refer to collectively as the Consolidated Funds, in our consolidated financial statements. These funds represent approximately 16% of our AUM as of December 31, 2013, approximately 16% of our fund management fees and approximately 3% of our performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2013.
We are not required under U.S. GAAP to consolidate in our financial statements most of the investment funds we advise because such funds provide their limited partners with the right to dissolve the fund without cause by a simple majority vote of the non-Carlyle affiliated limited partners, which overcomes the presumption of control by Carlyle. However, we consolidate certain CLOs that we advise as a result of the application of the accounting standards governing consolidations. As of December 31, 2013, our consolidated CLOs held approximately $17 billion of total assets and comprised 58% of the assets of the Consolidated Funds and 100% of the loans payable of the Consolidated Funds. As of December 31, 2013, our consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles had approximately $7 billion of total assets and comprised 26% of the assets of the Consolidated Funds. The remainder of the assets of the Consolidated Funds as of December 31, 2013 primarily relate to our consolidated hedge funds and other consolidated funds. The assets and liabilities of the Consolidated Funds are generally held within separate legal entities and, as a result, the liabilities of the Consolidated Funds are non-recourse to us. For further information on consolidation of certain funds, see Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Generally, the consolidation of the Consolidated Funds has a gross-up effect on our assets, liabilities and cash flows but has no net effect on the net income attributable to the Partnership and partners’ capital. The majority of the net economic ownership interests of the Consolidated Funds are reflected as non-controlling interests in consolidated entities, redeemable non-controlling interests in consolidated entities, and partners’ capital appropriated for Consolidated Funds in the consolidated financial statements. For further information, see Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Because only a small portion of our funds are consolidated, the performance of the Consolidated Funds is not necessarily consistent with or representative of the combined performance trends of all of our funds.
In addition, as described in Note 17 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, as of September 30, 2013, we began consolidating Urbplan, a Brazilian real estate portfolio company of certain of our real estate investment funds. Due to the timing and availability of financial information of Urbplan, we consolidate the financial position and results of operations of Urbplan on a financial reporting lag of 90 days. As of December 31, 2013, our consolidated financial statements included approximately $240 million of assets related to Urbplan, representing less than 1% of our consolidated total assets. As further described in “Part I. Item 9A. Controls and Procedures”, we have excluded Urbplan’s internal controls over financial reporting from our assessment of and report on internal control over financial reporting for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013.
Key Financial Measures
Our key financial measures are discussed in the following pages.
Revenues primarily consist of fund management fees, performance fees, investment income, including realized and unrealized gains of our investments in our funds and other trading securities, as well as interest and other income. See “— Critical Accounting Policies — Performance Fees” and Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information regarding the manner in which management fees and performance fees are generated.
Fund Management Fees. Fund management fees include (i) management fees earned on capital commitments or AUM and (ii) transaction and portfolio advisory fees. Management fees are fees we receive for advisory services we provide to funds in which we hold a general partner interest or with which we have an investment advisory or investment management agreement. Management fees are based on (a) third parties’ capital commitments to our investment funds, (b) third parties’ remaining capital invested in our investment funds, (c) gross assets, excluding cash and cash equivalents, (d) the lower of cost or fair value of the capital invested for the fund of funds vehicles following the expiration of the commitment period of such vehicles, (e) the total par amount of assets for our CLOs, or (f) the net asset value (“NAV”) of certain of our investment funds, as described in our consolidated financial statements.
Management fees for funds in our corporate private equity funds, closed-end carry funds in the global market strategies segment and real assets funds generally range from 1.0% to 2.0% of commitments during the investment period of the relevant fund. Large funds tend to have lower effective management fee rates, while smaller funds tend to have effective management fee rates approaching 2.0%. Following the expiration or termination of the investment period of such funds, the management fees generally step-down to between 0.6% and 2.0% of contributions for unrealized investments. Depending upon the contracted terms of investment advisory or investment management and related agreements, these fees are called semiannually in advance and are recognized as earned over the subsequent six month period. As a result, cash on hand and deferred revenue will generally be higher at or around January and July, which are the semiannual due dates for management fees. The management fees for our fund of funds vehicles generally range from 0.3% to 1.0% on the vehicle’s capital commitments during the commitment fee period of the relevant fund or the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds. Following the expiration of the commitment fee period or weighted-average investment period of such funds, the management fees generally range from 0.3% to 1.0% on the lower of cost or fair value of the capital invested, the net asset value for unrealized investments, or the contributions for unrealized investments. Management fees for our Solutions segment are due quarterly and recognized over the related quarter. Our hedge funds generally pay management fees quarterly that range from 1.5% to 2.0% of NAV per year. Management fees for our business development companies are due quarterly in arrears at annual rates that range from 0.25% to 1.0% of gross assets, excluding cash and cash equivalents. Management fees for our CLOs typically range from 0.25% to 0.65% on the total par amount of assets in the fund and are due quarterly or semiannually based on the terms and recognized over the relevant period. Our management fees for our CLOs and credit opportunities funds are governed by indentures and collateral management agreements. With respect to Claren Road, ESG, and Vermillion, we retain a specified percentage of the earnings of the businesses based on our economic ownership in the management companies of 55%. Through the second quarter of 2013, we retained 60% of the earnings of AlpInvest based on our 60% equity interest in AlpInvest. During the third quarter of 2013, we acquired the remaining 40% equity interest in AlpInvest, and therefore we are entitled to 100% of the earnings of AlpInvest subsequent to that acquisition. Management fees are not subject to repayment but may be offset to the extent that other fees are earned as described below under “—Transaction and Portfolio Advisory Fee.”
Management fees attributable to Carlyle Partners V, L.P. (“CP V”), our fifth U.S. buyout fund with approximately $9.8 billion of Fee-earning AUM as of December 31, 2013, were approximately 11%, 17%, and 18% of total management fees recognized during the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012, and 2011, respectively. No other fund generated over 10% of total management fees in the periods presented.
Transaction and Portfolio Advisory Fees. Transaction and portfolio advisory fees are fees we receive for the transaction and portfolio advisory services we provide to our portfolio companies. When covered by separate contractual agreements, we recognize transaction and portfolio advisory fees for these services when the service has been provided and collection is reasonably assured. We are required to offset our fund management fees earned by a percentage of the transaction and advisory fees earned, which we refer to as the “rebate offsets.” Such rebate offset
percentages generally range from 50% to 80% of the transaction and advisory fees earned. The recognition of portfolio advisory fees and transactions fees can be volatile as they are primarily generated by investment activity within our funds, and therefore are impacted by our investment pace. We have received and expect to continue to receive requests from a variety of investors and groups representing investors to increase the percentage of transaction and advisory fees we share with our investors in future funds; to the extent that we accommodate such requests on future funds, the rebate offset percentages would increase as compared to the historical levels.
Performance Fees. Performance fees consist principally of the special residual allocation of profits to which we are entitled, commonly referred to as carried interest, from certain of our investment funds, which we refer to as the “carry funds.” We are generally entitled to a 20% allocation (or 10% to 20% on external coinvestment vehicles, with some earning no carried interest, or approximately 2% to 10% in the case of most of our fund of funds vehicles) of the net realized income or gain as a carried interest after returning the invested capital, the allocation of preferred returns of generally 8% to 9% and the return of certain fund costs (subject to catch-up provisions as set forth in the fund limited partnership agreement). Carried interest revenue, which is a component of performance fees in our consolidated financial statements, is recognized by Carlyle upon appreciation of the valuation of our funds’ investments above certain return hurdles as set forth in each respective partnership agreement and is based on the amount that would be due to us pursuant to the fund partnership agreement at each period end as if the funds were liquidated at such date. Accordingly, the amount of carried interest recognized as performance fees reflects our share of the fair value gains and losses of the associated funds’ underlying investments measured at their then-current fair values. As a result, the performance fees earned in an applicable reporting period are not indicative of any future period. Carried interest is ultimately realized and distributed when: (i) an underlying investment is profitably disposed of, (ii) certain costs borne by the limited partner investors have been reimbursed, (iii) the investment fund’s cumulative returns are in excess of the preferred return and (iv) we have decided to collect carry rather than return additional capital to limited partner investors. Our decision to realize carry considers such factors as the level of embedded valuation gains, the portion of the fund invested, the portion of the fund returned to limited partner investors, and the length of time the fund has been in carry, as well as other qualitative measures. The portion of performance fees that are realized and unrealized in each period are separately reported in our statement of operations.
Under our arrangements with the historical owners and management team of AlpInvest, the management team and employees of AlpInvest are allocated all carried interest in respect of the historical investments and commitments to our fund of funds vehicles that existed as of July 1, 2011 (including any options to increase any such commitments exercised after such date), 85% of the carried interest in respect of commitments from the historical owners of AlpInvest for the period between 2011 and 2020 and 60% of the carried interest in respect of all other commitments (including all future commitments from third parties).
Our performance fees are generated by a diverse set of funds with different vintages, geographic concentration, investment strategies and industry specialties. For an explanation of the fund acronyms used throughout this Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations section, see “Item 1. Business — Our Family of Funds.”
Performance fees from CP V, Carlyle Europe Partners III, L.P. (“CEP III”), our third Europe buyout fund, and Carlyle Partners IV, L.P. (“CP IV”), our fourth U.S. buyout fund (with total AUM of approximately $15.3 billion, $7.7 billion, and $5.9 billion, respectively, as of December 31, 2013) were $592.0 million, $509.1 million, and $390.1 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2013. Performance fees from CP V, CP IV and Carlyle Asia Partners II, L.P. (“CAP II”) were $302.6 million, $230.1 million, and $115.1 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2012. Performance fees from CP V and CP IV were $491.9 million and $472.3 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2011. No other fund generated over 10% of performance fees in the periods presented.
Realized carried interest may be clawed-back or given back to the fund if the fund’s investment values decline below certain return hurdles, which vary from fund to fund. When the fair value of a fund’s investments remains constant or falls below certain return hurdles, previously recognized performance fees are reversed. In all cases, each investment fund is considered separately in evaluating carried interest and potential giveback obligations. For any given period, carried interest income could thus be negative; however, cumulative performance fees can never be negative over the life of a fund. In addition, we are not obligated to pay guaranteed returns or hurdles. If upon a hypothetical liquidation of a fund’s investments at the then-current fair values, previously recognized and distributed carried interest would be required to be returned, a liability is established in our financial statements for the potential giveback obligation. As discussed below, each individual recipient of realized carried interest typically signs a guarantee agreement or partnership agreement that personally obligates such person to
return his/her pro rata share of any amounts of realized carried interest previously distributed that are later clawed back. Accordingly, carried interest as performance fee compensation is subject to return to the Partnership in the event a giveback obligation is funded. Generally, the actual giveback liability, if any, does not become due until the end of a fund’s life.
For any given period, performance fee revenue on our statement of operations may include reversals of previously recognized performance fees due to a decrease in the value of a particular fund that results in a decrease of cumulative performance fees earned to date. Since fund return hurdles are cumulative, previously recognized performance fees also may be reversed in a period of appreciation that is lower than the particular fund’s hurdle rate. For the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012, and 2011, the reversals of performance fees were $63.0 million, $34.5 million, and $286.8 million, respectively.
As of December 31, 2013, accrued performance fees and accrued giveback obligations were approximately $3.7 billion and $39.6 million, respectively, after amounts eliminated related to the Consolidated Funds. Each balance assumes a hypothetical liquidation of the funds’ investments at December 31, 2013 at their then current fair values. These assets and liabilities will continue to fluctuate in accordance with the fair values of the fund investments until they are realized.
In addition, realized performance fees may be reversed in future periods to the extent that such amounts become subject to a giveback obligation. If at December 31, 2013, all investments held by our carry funds were deemed worthless, the amount of realized and previously distributed performance fees subject to potential giveback would be approximately $1.6 billion. See the related discussion of “Contingent Obligations (Giveback)” within “— Liquidity and Capital Resources.”
As described above, each investment fund is considered separately in evaluating carried interest and potential giveback obligations. As a result, performance fees within funds will continue to fluctuate primarily due to certain investments within each fund constituting a material portion of the carry in that fund. Additionally, the fair value of investments in our funds may have substantial fluctuations from period to period.
In addition, we use the term “net performance fees” to refer to the performance fees from our funds net of the portion allocated to our investment professionals which is reflected as performance fee related compensation expense. We use the term “realized net performance fees” to refer to realized performance fees from our funds, net of the portion allocated to our investment professionals which is reflected as realized performance fee related compensation expense. See “— Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for the amount of realized and unrealized performance fees recognized each period. See “— Segment Analysis” for the realized and unrealized performance fees by segment and related discussion for each period.
Fair Value Measurement. U.S. GAAP establishes a hierarchal disclosure framework which ranks the observability of market price inputs used in measuring financial instruments at fair value. The observability of inputs is impacted by a number of factors, including the type of financial instrument, the characteristics specific to the financial instrument and the state of the marketplace, including the existence and transparency of transactions between market participants. Financial instruments with readily available quoted prices, or for which fair value can be measured from quoted prices in active markets, will generally have a higher degree of market price observability and a lesser degree of judgment applied in determining fair value.
Financial instruments measured and reported at fair value are classified and disclosed based on the observability of inputs used in the determination of fair values, as follows:
Level I – inputs to the valuation methodology are quoted prices available in active markets for identical instruments as of the reporting date. The type of financial instruments included in Level I include unrestricted securities, including equities and derivatives, listed in active markets. The Partnership does not adjust the quoted price for these instruments, even in situations where the Partnership holds a large position and a sale could reasonably impact the quoted price.
Level II – inputs to the valuation methodology are other than quoted prices in active markets, which are either directly or indirectly observable as of the reporting date. The type of financial instruments in this category includes less liquid and restricted securities listed in active markets, securities traded in other than active markets, government and agency securities, and certain over-the-counter derivatives where the fair value is based on observable inputs. Investments in hedge funds are classified in this category when their net asset value is redeemable without significant restriction.
Level III – inputs to the valuation methodology are unobservable and significant to overall fair value measurement. The inputs into the determination of fair value require significant management judgment or estimation. Financial instruments that are included in this category include investments in privately-held entities, non-investment grade residual interests in securitizations, collateralized loan obligations, and certain over-the-counter derivatives where the fair value is based on unobservable inputs. Investments in fund of funds are generally included in this category.
In certain cases, the inputs used to measure fair value may fall into different levels of the fair value hierarchy. In such cases, the determination of which category within the fair value hierarchy is appropriate for any given financial instrument is based on the lowest level of input that is significant to the fair value measurement. Our assessment of the significance of a particular input to the fair value measurement in its entirety requires judgment and considers factors specific to the financial instrument.
The table below summarizes the valuation of investments and other financial instruments included within our AUM, by segment and fair value hierarchy levels, as of December 31, 2013 (amounts in millions):
Equity Global
Strategies Real Assets Solutions Total
Consolidated Results
$ 13,068 $ 7,966 $ 2,967 $ 737 $ 24,738
622 2,858 1,089 103 4,672
24,978 19,432 27,112 31,901 103,423
Total Fair Value
Other Net Asset Value
1,454 3,763 (1,258 ) — 3,959
Total AUM, Excluding Available Capital Commitments
Available Capital Commitments
24,743 1,458 8,754 17,063 52,018
Total AUM
$ 64,865 $ 35,477 $ 38,664 $ 49,804 $ 188,810
In certain cases, debt and equity securities are valued on the basis of prices from an orderly transaction between market participants provided by reputable dealers or pricing services. In determining the value of a particular investment, pricing services may use certain information with respect to transactions in such investments, quotations from dealers, pricing matrices, market transactions in comparable investments and various relationships between investments.
Investment professionals with responsibility for the underlying investments are responsible for preparing the investment valuations pursuant to the policies, methodologies and templates prepared by our valuation group, which is a team made up of individuals with previous valuation experience reporting to our chief accounting officer. The valuation group is responsible for maintaining our valuation policy and related guidance, templates and systems
that are designed to be consistent with the guidance found in US GAAP. These valuations, inputs and preliminary conclusions are reviewed by the fund accounting teams. The valuations are then reviewed and approved by the respective fund valuation sub-committees which are comprised of the respective fund head, segment head, chief financial and chief accounting officers, as well as members from the valuation group. The valuation group compiles the aggregate results and significant matters and presents them for review and approval by the global valuation committee, which is comprised of our co-chief executive officers, chief operating officer, chief risk officer, chief financial officer, chief accounting officer, the business segment heads, and observed by the chief compliance officer and director of internal audit. Additionally, each quarter a sample of valuations are reviewed by external valuation firms.
In the absence of observable market prices, we value our investments using valuation methodologies applied on a consistent basis. For some investments little market activity may exist. Management’s determination of fair value is then based on the best information available in the circumstances and may incorporate management’s own assumptions and involves a significant degree of judgment, taking into consideration a combination of internal and external factors, including the appropriate risk adjustments for non-performance and liquidity risks. Investments for which market prices are not observable include private investments in the equity of operating companies and real estate properties, and certain debt positions. The valuation technique for each of these investments is described in Note 4 of our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Investment Income and Interest and Other Income. Investment income and interest and other income represent the unrealized and realized gains and losses on our principal investments, including our investments in Carlyle funds that are not consolidated, our equity method investments and other principal investments, as well as any interest and other income. Investment income (loss) also includes the related amortization of the basis difference between the carrying value of our investment and our share of the underlying net assets of the investee, as well as the compensation expense associated with compensatory arrangements provided by us to employees of our equity method investee. Realized investment income (loss) is recorded when we redeem all or a portion of our investment or when we receive or are due cash income, such as dividends or distributions. A realized investment loss is also recorded when an investment is deemed to be worthless. Unrealized investment income (loss) results from changes in the fair value of the underlying investment, as well as the reversal of previously recognized unrealized gains (losses) at the time an investment is realized.
Interest and Other Income of Consolidated Funds. Interest and other income of Consolidated Funds primarily represents the interest earned on CLO assets. However, the Consolidated Funds are not the same entities in all periods presented and may change in future periods due to changes in U.S. GAAP, changes in fund terms and terminations of funds.
Revenue of a Consolidated Real Estate VIE. Revenue of a consolidated real estate VIE consists of revenue generated by Urbplan, which primarily is revenue earned for land development services using the completed contract method and investment income earned on Urbplan’s investments. Under the completed contract method of revenue recognition, revenue is not recognized until the period in which the land development services contract is completed.
Net Investment Gains (Losses) of Consolidated Funds. Net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds measures the change in the difference in fair value between the assets and the liabilities of the Consolidated Funds. A gain (loss) indicates that the fair value of the assets of the Consolidated Funds appreciated more (less), or depreciated less (more), than the fair value of the liabilities of the Consolidated Funds. A gain or loss is not necessarily indicative of the investment performance of the Consolidated Funds and does not impact the management or incentive fees received by Carlyle for its management of the Consolidated Funds. The portion of the net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds attributable to the limited partner investors are allocated to non-controlling interests. Therefore a gain or loss is not expected to have a material impact on the revenues or profitability of the Partnership. Moreover, although the assets of the Consolidated Funds are consolidated onto our balance sheet pursuant to U.S. GAAP, ultimately we do not have recourse to such assets and such liabilities are generally non-recourse to us. Therefore, a gain or loss from the Consolidated Funds generally does not impact the assets available to our equity holders.
Compensation and Benefits. Compensation includes salaries, bonuses, equity-based compensation, and performance payment arrangements. Bonuses are accrued over the service period to which they relate. For periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, compensation attributable to our senior Carlyle professionals was accounted for as distributions from equity rather than as employee compensation. For periods subsequent to our
initial public offering in May 2012, we account for compensation to senior Carlyle professionals as compensation expense in our consolidated statement of operations. Accordingly, compensation expense pursuant to U.S. GAAP was substantially lower in periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012. For periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, in our calculations of Economic Net Income, Fee Related Earnings and Distributable Earnings, which are used by management in assessing the performance of our segments, we have included an adjustment for partner compensation. See “— Consolidated Results of Operations—Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for a reconciliation of Income Before Provision for Income Taxes to Total Segments Economic Net Income, of Total Segments Economic Net Income to Fee Related Earnings and of Fee Related Earnings to Distributable Earnings.
We recognize as compensation expense the portion of performance fees that are due to our employees, senior Carlyle professionals, and operating executives in a manner consistent with how we recognize the performance fee revenue. These amounts are accounted for as compensation expense in conjunction with the related performance fee revenue and, until paid, are recognized as a component of the accrued compensation and benefits liability. Compensation in respect of performance fees is not paid until the related performance fees are realized, and not when such performance fees are accrued. The funds do not have a uniform allocation of performance fees to our employees, senior Carlyle professionals and operating executives. Therefore, for any given period, the ratio of performance fee compensation to performance fee revenue may vary based on the funds generating the performance fee revenue for that period and their particular allocation percentages.
In addition, as part of our initial public offering in May 2012 we implemented various equity-based compensation arrangements that require senior Carlyle professionals and other employees to vest ownership of a portion of their equity interests over a service period of up to six years, which under U.S. GAAP will result in compensation charges over current and future periods. Further, in order to recruit and retain existing and future senior Carlyle professionals and other employees, we have implemented additional equity-based compensation programs that are expected to result in increases to our equity-based compensation expenses in the future as we increase the use of deferred restricted common units. For example, in February 2014, we granted approximately 5.6 million deferred restricted common units across a significant number of our employees for a total estimated grant-date fair value of approximately $172 million; these awards vest over a period up to six years. Compensation charges associated with the equity-based compensation grants issued in our initial public offering in May 2012 or grants issued in acquisitions or strategic investments are excluded from our calculation of Economic Net Income. Compensation charges associated with all equity-based compensation grants are excluded from Fee Related Earnings and Distributable Earnings.
We expect that we will hire additional individuals and that overall compensation levels will correspondingly increase, which will result in an increase in compensation and benefits expense. As a result of recent acquisitions, we have charges associated with contingent consideration taking the form of earn-outs and profit participation, some of which are reflected as compensation expense. Our fundraising has increased in recent periods and, as a result, our compensation expense increased in periods where we closed on increased levels of new capital commitments. Amounts due to employees related to such fundraising will be expensed when earned even though the benefit of the new capital and related fees will be reflected in operations over the life of the related fund.
General, Administrative and Other Expenses. General, administrative, and other expenses include occupancy and equipment expenses and other expenses, which consist principally of professional fees, external costs of fundraising, travel and related expenses, communications and information services, depreciation and amortization and foreign currency transactions.
We expect that general, administrative and other expenses will vary due to infrequently occurring or unusual items. Also, our utilization of third parties to assist in fundraising will cause general, administrative and other expenses to increase in periods of significant fundraising. We also expect to incur greater expenses in the future related to our recent acquisitions including amortization of acquired intangibles, earn-outs to equity holders and fair value adjustments on contingent consideration issued. Additionally, we anticipate that general, administrative and other expenses will fluctuate from period to period due to the impact of foreign exchange transactions.
Interest and Other Expenses of Consolidated Funds. The interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds consist primarily of interest expense relate primarily to our CLO loans, professional fees and other third-party expenses.
Interest and Other Expenses of a Consolidated Real Estate VIE. Interest and other expenses of a consolidated real estate VIE reflect expenses incurred by Urbplan, consisting primarily of interest expense, general and administrative expenses, compensation and benefits, and costs associated with land development services. Also included in this caption is the change in our estimate of the fair value of Urbplan’s loans payable during the period.
Income Taxes. The Carlyle Holdings partnerships and their subsidiaries operate as pass-through entities for U.S. income tax purposes and record a provision for state and local income taxes for certain entities based on applicable laws and a provision for foreign income taxes for certain foreign entities. In addition, Carlyle Holdings I GP Inc. is subject to additional entity-level taxes that are reflected in our consolidated financial statements.
Prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, we operated as a group of pass-through entities for U.S. income tax purposes and our profits and losses were allocated to the individual senior Carlyle professionals, who were individually responsible for reporting such amounts. We recorded a provision for state and local income taxes for certain entities based on applicable laws and a provision for foreign income taxes for certain foreign entities.
Income taxes for foreign entities are accounted for using the liability method of accounting. Under this method, deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the expected future tax consequences of differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities and their respective tax basis, using currently enacted tax rates. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax rates is recognized in income in the period when the change is enacted. Deferred tax assets are reduced by a valuation allowance when it is more likely than not that some or all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized.
In the normal course of business, we are subject to examination by federal and certain state, local and foreign tax regulators. As of December 31, 2013, our U.S. federal income tax returns for the years 2010 through 2012 are open under the normal three-year statute of limitations and therefore subject to examination. State and local tax returns are generally subject to audit from 2009 to 2012. Foreign tax returns are generally subject to audit from 2006 to 2012. Certain of our foreign subsidiaries are currently under audit by foreign tax authorities.
Non-controlling Interests in Consolidated Entities. Non-controlling interests in consolidated entities represent the component of equity in consolidated entities not held by us. These interests are adjusted for general partner allocations and by subscriptions and redemptions in hedge funds which occur during the reporting period. Non-controlling interests related to hedge funds are subject to quarterly or monthly redemption by investors in these funds following the expiration of a specified period of time or may be withdrawn subject to a redemption fee in the hedge funds during the period when capital may not be withdrawn. As limited partners in these types of funds have been granted redemption rights, amounts relating to third-party interests in such consolidated funds are presented as redeemable non-controlling interests in consolidated entities within the consolidated balance sheets. When redeemable amounts become legally payable to investors, they are classified as a liability and included in other liabilities of Consolidated Funds in the consolidated balance sheets.
We record significant non-controlling interests in Carlyle Holdings relating to the ownership interests of the limited partners of the Carlyle Holdings partnerships. The Partnership, through wholly owned subsidiaries, is the sole general partner of Carlyle Holdings. Accordingly, the Partnership consolidates the financial position and results of operations of Carlyle Holdings into its financial statements, and the other ownership interests in Carlyle Holdings are reflected as a non-controlling interest in the Partnership’s financial statements.
Economic Net Income. Economic net income or “ENI,” is a key performance benchmark used in our industry. ENI represents segment net income which excludes the impact of income taxes, acquisition-related items including amortization of acquired intangibles and contingent consideration taking the form of earn-outs, charges associated with equity-based compensation grants issued in May 2012 upon completion of the initial public offering or grants issued in acquisitions or strategic investments, corporate actions and infrequently occurring or unusual events. We believe the exclusion of these items provides investors with a meaningful indication of our core operating performance. For segment reporting purposes, revenues and expenses, and accordingly segment net income, are presented on a basis that deconsolidates the Consolidated Funds. ENI also reflects compensation expense for our senior Carlyle professionals, which for periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, was accounted for as distributions from equity under U.S. GAAP rather than as employee compensation. Total Segment ENI equals the aggregate of ENI for all segments. ENI is evaluated regularly by management in making resource deployment decisions and in assessing performance of our four segments and for compensation. We believe that reporting ENI is helpful to understanding our business and that investors should review the same supplemental financial measure that management uses to analyze our segment performance. This measure supplements and should be considered in addition to and not in lieu of the results of operations discussed further under “Consolidated Results of Operations” prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.
Distributable Earnings. Distributable Earnings is derived from our segment reported results and is an additional measure to assess performance and amounts potentially available for distribution from Carlyle Holdings to its equity holders. Distributable Earnings, which is a non-GAAP measure, is intended to show the amount of net realized earnings without the effects of consolidation of the Consolidated Funds. Distributable Earnings is total ENI less net performance fees and investment income plus realized net performance fees, realized investment income, and equity-based compensation expense. During 2013, we modified the definition of Distributable Earnings used by management to exclude all equity-based compensation expense; the presentation of Distributable Earnings for all periods included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K has been recast to conform with the new definition.
Fee Related Earnings. Fee Related Earnings is a component of Distributable Earnings and is used to measure our operating profitability exclusive of performance fees, investment income from investments in our funds, performance fee-related compensation, and equity-based compensation expense. Accordingly, Fee Related Earnings reflect the ability of the business to cover direct base compensation and operating expenses from fee revenues other than performance fees. Fee Related Earnings are reported as part of our segment results. We use Fee Related Earnings from operations to measure our profitability from fund management fees. Fee Related Earnings reflects compensation expense for our senior Carlyle professionals, which for periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, was accounted for as distributions from equity rather than as employee compensation. During the fourth quarter of 2013, we modified the definition of Fee Related Earnings to exclude all equity-based compensation expense to conform with our definition of Distributable Earnings; the presentation of Fee Related Earnings for all periods included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K has been recast to conform with the new definition. See Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Operating Metrics
We monitor certain operating metrics that are common to the alternative asset management industry.
Fee-earning Assets under Management
Fee-earning assets under management or Fee-earning AUM refers to the assets we manage from which we derive recurring fund management fees. Our Fee-earning AUM generally equals the sum of:
(a) for carry funds and certain co-investment vehicles where the investment period has not expired and for Metropolitan fund of funds vehicles during the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds, the amount of limited partner capital commitments, for AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, the amount of external investor capital commitments during the commitment fee period, and for the NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds, the amount of investor capital commitments before the first investment realization (see “Fee-earning AUM based on capital commitments” in the table below for the amount of this component at each period);
(b) for substantially all carry funds and certain co-investment vehicles where the investment period has expired and for Metropolitan fund of funds vehicles after the expiration of the weighted-average investment period of the underlying funds, the amount of limited partner capital commitments, the remaining amount of limited partner invested capital, and for the NGP management fee funds and NGP carry funds where the first investment has been realized, the amount of partner commitments less realized and written-off investments (see “Fee-earning AUM based on invested capital” in the table below for the amount of this component at each period);
(c) the amount of aggregate Fee-earning collateral balance at par of our CLOs, as defined in the fund indentures (typically exclusive of equities and defaulted positions) as of the quarterly cut-off date for each CLO, and the reference portfolio notional amount of our synthetic CLOs (see “Fee-earning AUM based on collateral balances, at par” in the table below for the amount of this component at each period);
(d) the external investor portion of the net asset value (pre-redemptions and subscriptions) of our long/short credit funds, emerging markets, multi-product macroeconomic and other hedge funds (see “Fee-earning AUM based on net asset value” in the table below for the amount of this component at each period);
(f) for AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles where the commitment fee period has expired, and certain carry funds where the investment period has expired, the lower of cost or fair value of invested capital (see “Fee-earning AUM based on lower of cost or fair value and other” in the table below for the amount of this component at each period).
The table below details Fee-earning AUM by its respective components at each period.
Components of Fee-earning AUM
Fee-earning AUM based on capital commitments (1)
$ 41,839 $ 38,491 $ 51,059
Fee-earning AUM based on invested capital (2)
Fee-earning AUM based on collateral balances, at par (3)
Fee-earning AUM based on net asset value (4)
13,593 11,724 7,858
Fee-earning AUM based on lower of cost or fair value and other(5)
Balance, End of Period
$ 139,949 $ 123,121 $ 111,025
(1) Reflects limited partner capital commitments where the investment period, weighted-average investment period, or commitment fee period has not expired.
(2) Reflects limited partner invested capital and includes amounts committed to or reserved for investments for certain Real Assets and Solutions funds.
(3) Represents the amount of aggregate Fee-earning collateral balances, at par, for our CLOs.
(4) Reflects the net asset value of our hedge funds (pre-redemptions and subscriptions).
(5) Includes funds with fees based on notional value and gross asset value.
The table below provides the period to period rollforward of Fee-earning AUM.
Fee-earning AUM Rollforward
Balance, Beginning of Period
$ 123,121 $ 111,025 $ 80,776
2,235 15,434 34,204
Inflows, including Commitments (1)
Outflows, including Distributions (2)
(16,493 ) (18,936 ) (7,660 )
Subscriptions, net of Redemptions (3)
959 1,786 1,207
Changes in CLO collateral balances (4)
56 311 (584 )
Market Appreciation/(Depreciation) (5)
Foreign Exchange and other (6)
1,361 771 (3,596 )
(1) Inflows represent limited partner capital raised by our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles and capital invested by our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles outside the investment period, weighted-average investment period, or commitment fee period.
(2) Outflows represent limited partner distributions from our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles and changes in basis for our carry funds and fund of funds vehicles where the investment period, weighted-average investment period, or commitment fee period has expired.
(3) Represents the net result of subscriptions to and redemptions from our hedge funds and open-end structured credit funds.
(4) Represents the change in the aggregate Fee-earning collateral balances at par of our CLOs, as of the quarterly cut-off dates.
(5) Market Appreciation/ (Depreciation) represents changes in the net asset value of our hedge funds and our fund of funds vehicles based on the lower of cost or fair value.
(6) Includes onboarding of fully committed existing funds from another manager and represents the impact of foreign exchange rate fluctuations on the translation of our non-U.S. dollar denominated funds. Activity during the period is translated at the average rate for the period. Ending balances are translated at the spot rate as of the period end.
Refer to “— Segment Analysis” for a detailed discussion by segment of the activity affecting Fee-earning AUM for each of the periods presented by segment.
(a) the fair value of the capital invested in our carry funds, co-investment vehicles, NGP management fee funds, NGP carry funds, and fund of funds vehicles plus the capital that we are entitled to call from investors in those funds and vehicles (including our commitments to those funds and vehicles and those of senior Carlyle professionals and employees) pursuant to the terms of their capital commitments to those funds and vehicles;
(b) the amount of aggregate collateral balance and principal cash at par of our CLOs (inclusive of all positions) and the reference portfolio notional amount of our synthetic CLOs;
(c) the net asset value (pre-redemptions and subscriptions), of our long/short credit emerging markets, multi-product macroeconomic and other hedge funds; and
Our carry funds are closed-ended funds and investors are generally not able to redeem their interests under the fund partnership agreements.
Our calculations of Fee-earning AUM and AUM may differ from the calculations of other alternative asset managers and, as a result, this measure may not be comparable to similar measures presented by others. In addition, our calculation of AUM includes uncalled commitments to, and the fair value of invested capital in, our funds from Carlyle and our personnel, regardless of whether such commitments or invested capital are subject to management or performance fees. Our calculations of Fee-earning AUM or AUM are not based on any definition of Fee-earning AUM or AUM that is set forth in the agreements governing the investment funds that we manage.
We generally use Fee-earning AUM as a metric to measure changes in the assets from which we earn management fees. Total AUM tends to be a better measure of our investment and fundraising performance as it reflects assets at fair value plus available uncalled capital.
Available Capital
Available capital, commonly known as “dry powder,” for our carry funds, fund of funds vehicles, NGP management fee funds, and NGP carry funds refers to the amount of capital commitments available to be called for investments. Amounts previously called may be added back to available capital following certain distributions. “Expired Available Capital” occurs when a fund has passed the investment and follow-on periods and can no longer invest capital into new or existing deals. Any remaining Available Capital, typically a result of either recycled distributions or specific reserves established for the follow-on period that are not drawn, can only be called for fees and expenses and is therefore removed from the Total AUM calculation.
The table below provides the period to period rollforward of Available Capital and Fair Value of Capital, and the resulting rollforward of Total AUM.
Fair Value of
Available Capital Capital Total AUM
Balance, As of December 31, 2010
$ 24,416 $ 83,096 $ 107,512
Capital Called, net (2)
(12,066 ) 11,281 (785 )
Distributions (3)
3,784 (22,597 ) (18,813 )
— 1,338 1,338
— (1,116 ) (1,116 )
(940 ) (1,560 ) (2,500 )
$ 37,525 $ 109,444 $ 146,969
— 481 481
— 12,964 12,964
174 885 1,059
(13,924 ) 14,047 123
(1) Represents capital raised by our carry funds, NGP management fee funds, NGP carry funds, and fund of funds vehicles, net of expired available capital.
(2) Represents capital called by our carry funds, NGP management fee funds, NGP carry funds, and fund of funds vehicles, net of fund fees and expenses. Equity invested amounts may vary from capital called due to timing differences between acquisition and capital call dates.
(3) Represents distributions from our carry funds. NGP management fee funds, NGP carry funds, and fund of funds vehicles, net of amounts recycled. Distributions are based on when proceeds are actually distributed to investors, which may differ from when they are realized.
(5) Represents the change in the aggregate collateral balance and principal cash at par of the CLOs.
(6) Market Appreciation/(Depreciation) represents realized and unrealized gains (losses) on portfolio investments and changes in the net asset value of our hedge funds.
Refer to “— Segment Analysis” for a detailed discussion by segment of the activity affecting Total AUM for each of the periods presented.
Consolidated Results of Operations
The following table and discussion sets forth information regarding our consolidated results of operations for the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011. Our consolidated financial statements have been prepared on substantially the same basis for all historical periods presented; however, the consolidated funds are not the same entities in all periods shown due to changes in U.S. GAAP, changes in fund terms and the creation and termination of funds. Pursuant to revised consolidation guidance that became effective on January 1, 2010, we consolidated the existing and any subsequently acquired CLOs where we hold a controlling financial interest. On July 1, 2011, we completed the acquisitions of a 55% equity interest in ESG and a 60% equity interest in AlpInvest and consolidated these entities as well as certain of their managed funds from that date forward. On February 28, 2012, we acquired certain European CLO management contracts from Highland Capital Management L.P. and consolidated those CLOs from that date forward. We also formed four CLOs throughout 2012 and six CLOs in 2013 and consolidated those CLOs beginning on their respective formation dates. As further described below, the consolidation of these funds had the impact of increasing interest and other income of Consolidated Funds, interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds, and net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds in the year that the fund is initially consolidated. The consolidation of these funds had no effect on net income attributable to the Partnership for the periods presented. In addition, as described in Note 17 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, as of September 30, 2013, we began consolidating Urbplan, a Brazilian real estate portfolio company of certain of our real estate investment funds.
(Dollars in millions, except unit and per unit data)
$ 984.6 $ 977.6 $ 915.5
1,176.7 907.5 1,307.4
1,198.6 133.6 (185.8 )
2,375.3 1,041.1 1,121.6
Total investment income
1,043.1 903.5 714.0
7.5 — —
Base compensation
738.0 624.5 374.5
Equity-based compensation
322.4 201.7 —
Performance fee related
644.5 32.2 (122.3 )
Total compensation and benefits
2,244.1 1,143.9 477.9
General, administrative, and other expenses
33.8 — —
Other non-operating (income) expense
(16.5 ) 7.1 32.0
696.7 1,758.0 (323.3 )
— — 7.9
671.8 642.8 $ 1,356.9
per common unit
Weighted-average common units
278,250,489 259,698,987
Year Ended December 31, 2013 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2012.
Total revenues were $4,441.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2013, an increase of 49% over total revenues in 2012. The increase in revenues was primarily attributable to an increase in performance fees and interest and other income of Consolidated Funds, which increased $1,334.2 million and $139.6 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012.
Fund Management Fees. Fund management fees increased $7.0 million, or 1%, to $984.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. In addition, fund management fees from consolidated funds increased $45.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. These fees eliminate upon consolidation of these funds.
The overall increase, inclusive of management fees eliminated from consolidated funds, was primarily due to approximately $149.0 million of incremental management fees from the commencement of the investment period for certain newly raised funds and “catch-up” management fees from subsequent closes of funds that are in the fundraising period, approximately $61.1 million of increased management fees from greater assets under management in ESG, Claren Road, and AlpInvest, and approximately $12.7 million of incremental management fees related to the acquisition of Vermillion in October 2012. Offsetting these increases were decreases in management fees of approximately $166.1 million resulting from the change in the basis for earning management fees from commitments to invested capital for certain funds and from investment sales and monetizations in funds where the management fee basis is invested capital.
Fund management fees include transaction and portfolio advisory fees, net of rebate offsets, of $50.6 million and $49.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Performance Fees. Performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2013 were $2,375.3 million compared to $1,041.1 million in 2012. In addition, performance fees from consolidated funds increased $54.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. These fees eliminate upon consolidation. The performance fees recorded in 2013 and 2012 were due principally to increases in the fair value of the underlying funds, which increased approximately 20% and 14% in total remaining value during 2013 and 2012, respectively. The increase in the fair value of the investments was driven by asset performance and operating projections as well as increases in market comparables. In comparison, the MSCI All Country World Index increased 21% and 14% during the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. Also during 2013, the global issuance of speculative grade credit increased and spreads fell to levels last seen in 2007. This economic environment generally provided access to reasonably priced credit for our portfolio companies and for financing new transactions during the year.
Approximately $1,907.4 million and $786.1 million of performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively, were generated by our Corporate Private Equity segment. During 2013, CEP III and Carlyle Asia Partners III, L.P., our third Asia buyout fund (“CAP III”), exceeded their performance threshold and recorded a cumulative catch-up of performance fees at such time. As a result, performance fees for CEP III and CAP III were $509.1 million and $165.0 million, respectively, in 2013. Approximately $1,491.2 million of our performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2013 were related to CP V, CEP III, and CP IV, and $532.7 million of our performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2012 were related to CP V and CP IV.
Performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012 were $208.2 million and $99.6 million for the Global Market Strategies segment, and $79.7 million and $90.7 million for the Real Assets segment, respectively. Performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012 were $180.0 million and $64.7 million for the Solutions segment.
Investment Income. Investment income of $18.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2013 decreased 48% from investment income of $36.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. The $17.6 million decrease relates primarily to net investment losses of $15.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 from the investment in NGP Management, which was primarily attributable to equity-based compensation previously granted to employees of the equity-method investment and the amortization of the basis difference in the equity-method investment. In addition, investment income from Consolidated Funds decreased $79.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012 to an investment loss of $65.2 million, which was due primarily to $32.0 million of net investment losses from investments in Urbplan through the consolidated Carlyle vehicle prior to the Partnership’s consolidation of Urbplan on September 30, 2013, and net investment losses of $53.4 million from a consolidated European real estate fund. This amount is eliminated upon consolidation.
Interest and Other Income. Interest and other income decreased $2.6 million to $11.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2013, as compared to $14.5 million in 2012.
Interest and Other Income of Consolidated Funds. Interest and other income of Consolidated Funds was $1,043.1 million in the year ended December 31, 2013, an increase of $139.6 million from $903.5 million in 2012. This increase relates primarily to increases in interest and dividend income in the consolidated fund of funds vehicles of $65.6 million and increases in interest and dividend income in the consolidated hedge funds of $45.9 million. Substantially all interest and other income of our Consolidated Funds and CLOs together with interest expense of our CLOs and net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds is attributable to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors and therefore is allocated to non-controlling interests. Accordingly, such amounts have no material impact on net income attributable to the Partnership.
Revenue of a Consolidated Real Estate VIE. Revenue of a consolidated real estate VIE was $7.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2013. This balance consists of revenue generated by Urbplan, which primarily is revenue earned for land development services using the completed contract method and investment income earned on Urbplan’s investments. For the year ended December 31, 2013, substantially all of Urbplan’s revenue was derived from investment income.
Expenses were $3,693.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2013, an increase of $1,402.7 million from $2,291.2 million in 2012. The increase is due primarily to an increase in total compensation and benefits, general, administrative and other expenses, and interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds, which increased $1,100.2 million, $138.9 million and $132.5 million, respectively.
Total compensation and benefits for the year ended December 31, 2013 increased $1,100.2 million, or 96% from $1,143.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 to $2,244.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. For periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, all compensation to senior Carlyle professionals was accounted for as equity distributions in our consolidated financial statements. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then total expenses would have been $3,693.9 million and $2,556.6 million in the year ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively, representing an increase of $1,137.3 million due primarily to an increase in compensation and benefits of $835.8 million, an increase in general, administrative and other expenses of $138.9 million, and interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds of $132.5 million. The increase in compensation primarily reflects higher performance fee related compensation corresponding to the increase in performance fees.
Compensation and Benefits. Base compensation and benefits increased $113.5 million, or 18%, for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012, which primarily relates to the inclusion of base compensation attributable to senior Carlyle professionals for periods subsequent to our initial public offering in May 2012. Also contributing to the increase was $14.8 million of increased compensation expense in 2013 as compared to 2012 from the value of employment-based contingent cash consideration associated with the Partnership’s acquisitions, and approximately $6.5 million of increased compensation expense associated with increased headcount related to the acquisitions of Vermillion (October 2012) and Metropolitan (November 2013). Base compensation and benefits attributable to senior Carlyle professionals was $67.0 million for the period from January 1, 2012 through our initial public offering in May 2012. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then base compensation expense would have been $738.0 million and $691.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Equity-based compensation increased $120.7 million from $201.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 to $322.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. For the year ended December 31, 2012, equity-based compensation included $142.7 million of equity-based compensation associated with grants of deferred restricted common units and phantom deferred restricted common units and the issuance of unvested Carlyle Holdings partnership units. Also included in equity-based compensation for the year ended December 31, 2012 is $59.0 million of expense associated with the exchange of carried interests rights held by Carlyle professionals for Carlyle Holdings partnership units, which was a component of the reorganization in May 2012.
Excluding the equity-based compensation in 2012 associated with the exchange of carried interest rights, the increase in equity-based compensation from 2012 to 2013 was due primarily to the equity-based compensation expense for 2012 representing approximately eight months of equity-based compensation expense (from the grant in May 2012 through December 2012) versus twelve months of compensation expense for 2013. Additionally, the increase was due to $47.9 million of compensation expense recorded in 2013 related to the difference between the estimated forfeitures and actual forfeitures on Carlyle Holdings partnership units that vested in May 2013. Also contributing to the increase was (i) compensation expense recognized in 2013 for grants of deferred restricted common units that occurred subsequent to the initial public offering in May 2012; (ii) an increase in compensation expense associated with the unvested Carlyle Holdings partnership units from revisions to the estimated forfeiture rates in 2013 and from modifications to the vesting terms of certain awards; and (iii) $5.0 million of compensation expense associated with the unvested common units issued in conjunction with the AlpInvest acquisition in 2013.
Performance fee related compensation expense increased $866.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. Performance fee related compensation expense attributable to senior Carlyle professionals was $197.4 million for the period from January 1, 2012 through our initial public offering in May 2012. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then performance fee related compensation expense would have been $1,183.7 million and $515.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. As adjusted for amounts related to senior Carlyle professionals, performance fee related compensation expense as a percentage of performance fees was 50% and 49% in the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Total compensation and benefits would have been $2,244.1 million and $1,408.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively, had compensation attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been treated as compensation expense.
General, Administrative and Other Expenses. General, administrative and other expenses increased $138.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. This increase was driven primarily by (i) an increase of approximately $32.3 million in amortization expense, primarily from intangible assets acquired in 2012 and 2013; (ii) an increase of $41.8 million associated with fundraising activities for carry funds within the Corporate Private Equity and Global Market Strategies segments and for the business development companies; (iii) proceeds from an insurance settlement totaling $18.5 recognized in 2012; and (iv) an impairment loss of $20.8 million to reduce the carrying value of certain intangible assets to their estimated fair value.
Interest. Interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2013 was $45.5 million, an increase of $20.9 million from 2012. The increase is primarily attributable to a higher level of debt outstanding for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012, as well as higher interest rates on outstanding borrowings in 2013 as compared to 2012 resulting from the issuances in 2013 of the 3.875% senior notes and the 5.625% senior notes.
Interest and Other Expenses of Consolidated Funds. Interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds increased $132.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 as compared to 2012. This increase relates primarily to the four new CLOs formed throughout 2012 and the six new CLOs formed in 2013. The CLOs incur interest expense on their loans payable and incur other expenses consisting of trustee fees, rating agency fees and professional fees. Substantially all interest and other income of our CLOs together with interest expense of our CLOs and net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds is attributable to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors and therefore is allocated to non-controlling interests. Accordingly, such amounts have no material impact on net income attributable to the Partnership.
Interest and Other Expenses of a Consolidated Real Estate VIE. Interest and other expenses of a consolidated real estate VIE were $33.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. This balance reflects expenses incurred by Urbplan, consisting primarily of interest expense, general and administrative expenses, compensation and benefits, and costs associated with land development service. Also included in this caption is the change in the Partnership’s estimate of the fair value of Urbplan’s loans payable during the period. For the year ended December 31, 2013, Urbplan interest expense and the change in the fair value of Urbplan’s loans payable totaled $25.9 million.
Other Non-operating (Income) Expenses. Other non-operating income of $16.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 compares to other non-operating expenses of $7.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. Included in this caption is the change in the fair value of contingent consideration associated with the Partnership’s acquisitions. During 2013, the overall estimated fair value of the contingent consideration associated with the Partnership’s hedge fund acquisitions decreased; the overall decrease was due primarily to updated assumptions in the probability-weighted discounted cash flow models used to estimate the fair value.
Net Investment Gains (Losses) of Consolidated Funds.
For the year ended December 31, 2013, net investment gains of Consolidated Funds was $696.7 million, as compared to $1,758.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. This balance is driven predominantly by our consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, CLOs, and hedge funds. For the consolidated CLOs, the amount reflects the net gain or loss on the fair value adjustment of both the assets and liabilities. The components of net investment gains (losses) of consolidated funds for the respective periods are comprised of the following:
Realized gains
Net change in unrealized gains/losses
728.5 1,851.1
Total gains (losses)
1,390.5 2,680.6
Losses on liabilities of CLOs
(695.1 ) (927.8 )
Gains on other assets of CLOs
$ 696.7 $ 1,758.0
The realized and unrealized investment gains/losses include the appreciation/depreciation of the equity investments within the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, the appreciation/depreciation of CLO investments in loans and bonds, as well as the appreciation/depreciation of investments made by our consolidated hedge funds and other consolidated funds. The losses on the liabilities of the CLOs reflect the fair value adjustment on the debt of the CLOs. The net investment gains for the year ended December 31, 2013 and 2012 were due primarily to net investment gains attributable to the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles of $857.9 million and $2,228.0 million, respectively; net investment gains attributable to the consolidated hedge funds and other consolidated funds of $305.2 million and $100.0 million, respectively; and the net appreciation (depreciation) of CLOs of $(466.4) million and $(570.0) million, respectively.
Net income attributable to non-controlling interests in consolidated entities was $676.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to $1,756.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. These amounts are primarily attributable to the portion of the net earnings or losses of the Consolidated Funds for each period that are allocated to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors.
For the year ended December 31, 2013, the net income of our Consolidated Funds was approximately $575.0 million. This income was substantially due to the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, hedge funds, and CLOs. The net income from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and the consolidated hedge funds was approximately $778.2 million and $266.3 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2013. The net income was partially offset by net losses from the consolidated CLOs of $382.9 million and the other consolidated funds of $86.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. The CLOs’ investments appreciated in value less than the CLO liabilities, thereby creating a net loss for this period.
During the year ended December 31, 2012, the net income of the Consolidated Funds was approximately $1,735.1 million. This income was substantially due to the income from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, offset by losses from the consolidated CLOs. The net income (loss) from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and the consolidated CLOs was approximately $2,126.2 million and $(378.0) million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2012.
The net income attributable to the Partnership was $104.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. The Partnership is allocated a portion of the net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings based on the Partnership’s ownership in Carlyle Holdings (which was approximately 16% as of December 31, 2013). For the year ended December 31, 2013, the net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings was $671.8 million. Additionally, the Partnership is allocated 100% of the net income or loss attributable to the Partnership’s wholly owned taxable subsidiaries.
The net income attributable to the Partnership was $20.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. This amount represents the allocation of income to the Partnership for the period from the initial public offering in May 2012 through December 31, 2012. For the period from our initial public offering in May 2012 through December 31, 2012, the net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings was $104.5 million.
Total revenues were $2,973.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2012, an increase of 4% over total revenues in 2011. The increase in revenues was primarily attributable to an increase in interest and other income of Consolidated Funds and fund management fees which increased $189.5 million and $62.1 million, respectively. The increase in revenues was partially offset by a decrease in performance fees of $80.5 million and a decrease in investment income of $42.0 million.
Fund Management Fees. Fund management fees increased $62.1 million, or 7%, to $977.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011. In addition, fund management fees from consolidated funds increased $33.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011. These fees eliminate upon consolidation of these funds.
The increase was due to approximately $86.3 million of incremental management fees related to the acquisitions of ESG, AlpInvest, and Vermillion. The ESG and AlpInvest acquisitions occurred in July 2011 and therefore only reflect six months of management fees for the year ended December 31, 2011 versus twelve months of management fees for the year ended December 31, 2012. The Vermillion acquisition occurred in October 2012. In addition, during the year ended December 31, 2012, management fees increased by $22.2 million as a result of increased AUM in our Claren Road hedge funds.
Fund management fees include transaction and portfolio advisory fees, net of rebate offsets, of $49.5 million and $75.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively. The $26.2 million decrease in transaction and portfolio advisory fees primarily resulted from several significant transaction fees that were generated by our buyout funds during 2011 as well as a decrease in portfolio advisory fees generated upon the sale or public offering of portfolio companies within our Corporate Private Equity segment.
Performance Fees. Performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2012 were $1,041.1 million compared to $1,121.6 million in 2011. In addition, performance fees from consolidated funds decreased $20.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011. These fees eliminate upon consolidation. The performance fees recorded in 2012 and 2011 were due principally to increases in the fair value of the underlying funds, which increased approximately 14% and 16% in total remaining value during 2012 and 2011, respectively. The increase in the fair value of the investments was driven by asset performance and operating projections as well as increases in market comparables. Approximately $786.1 million and $845.8 million of performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively, were generated by our Corporate Private Equity segment. Performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011 were $99.6 million and $145.9 million for the Global Market Strategies segment, and $90.7 million and $150.4 million for the Real Assets segment, respectively. Performance fees for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011 were $64.7 million and $(20.5) million for the Solutions segment, which was established upon the completion of the acquisition of AlpInvest on July 1, 2011. Further, approximately $532.7 million and $964.2 million of our performance fees for the year ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively, were related to CP V and CP IV.
Investment Income. Investment income of $36.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2012 decreased 54% over investment income of $78.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. The $42.0 million decrease relates primarily to the distribution in March 2012 of certain investments that were funded by certain existing and former owners of the Partnership indirectly through the Partnership, as well as unrealized losses in 2012 on certain real estate investments. See Note 12 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition, investment income from Consolidated Funds decreased $10.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011, primarily from a lesser increase in fair value of our investments in the equity tranches of our CLOs in 2012 as compared to 2011. This income is eliminated upon consolidation.
Interest and Other Income of Consolidated Funds. Interest and other income of Consolidated Funds was $903.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2012, an increase of $189.5 million from $714.0 million in 2011. This increase relates primarily to the consolidated CLOs associated with the acquired Highland CLOs in February 2012 and four new CLOs launched in 2012. Interest and other income of consolidated CLOs increased $113.3 million from 2011 to 2012. Also contributing to the increase were the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles. The AlpInvest acquisition occurred in July 2011 and therefore the consolidated financial statements only reflect six months of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2011 versus twelve months of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2012. Interest and other income of consolidated fund of funds vehicles increased $46.0 million from 2011 to 2012. Our CLOs generate interest income primarily from investments in bonds and loans inclusive of amortization of discounts and generate other income from consent and amendment fees. Substantially all interest and other income of our CLOs together with interest expense of our CLOs and net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds is attributable to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors and therefore is allocated to non-controlling interests. Accordingly, such amounts have no material impact on net income attributable to the Partnership.
Expenses were $2,291.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2012, an increase of $944.1 million from $1,347.1 million in 2011. The increase is primarily due to increases in compensation and benefits and interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds, which increased $666.0 million and $305.0 million, respectively.
Total compensation and benefits for the year ended December 31, 2012 increased $666.0 million, or 139%, from $477.9 million in 2011 to $1,143.9 million in 2012. For periods prior to our initial public offering in May 2012, all compensation to senior Carlyle professionals was accounted for as equity distributions in our consolidated financial statements. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then total expenses would have been $2,556.6 million and $2,018.6 million in the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively, representing an increase of $538.0 million due primarily to increases in interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds of $305.0 million and an increase in total compensation and benefits of $259.9 million. The increase in compensation primarily reflects equity-based compensation expense recorded in 2012.
Compensation and Benefits. Base compensation and benefits increased $250.0 million, or 67%, for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011, which primarily relates to the inclusion of base compensation attributable to senior Carlyle professionals in 2012 subsequent to our initial public offering in May 2012. Also contributing to the increase in base compensation expense were increases in the value of the employment-based contingent cash consideration associated with the Partnership’s acquisitions totaling $32.3 million. The balance of the increase reflects the acquisitions of ESG, AlpInvest, and Vermillion and the addition of their professionals in July 2011 for ESG and AlpInvest and October 2012 for Vermillion. Base compensation and benefits attributable to senior Carlyle professionals was $67.0 million and $243.3 million for the period from January 1, 2012 through our initial public offering in May 2012 and for the year ended December 31, 2011, respectively. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then base compensation and benefits would have been $691.5 million and $617.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively.
Equity-based compensation was $201.7 million for the year ended December 2012. Equity-based compensation includes the effect of grants of deferred restricted common units and phantom deferred restricted common units and the issuance of unvested Carlyle Holdings partnership units in 2012. Also included in equity-based compensation is $59.0 million of expense associated with the exchange of carried interest rights held by Carlyle professionals for Carlyle Holdings partnership units, which was a component of the reorganization in May 2012. See Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Performance fee related compensation expense increased $214.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011. Performance fee related compensation expense attributable to senior Carlyle professionals was $197.4 million and $428.2 million for the period from January 1, 2012 through our initial public offering in May 2012 and for the year ended December 31, 2011, respectively. Had such amounts attributable to senior Carlyle professionals been accounted for as compensation expense, then performance fee related compensation expense would have been $515.1 million and $531.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively. As adjusted for amounts related to senior Carlyle professionals, performance fee related compensation expense as a percentage of performance fees was 49% and 47% in the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively.
General, Administrative and Other Expenses. General, administrative and other expenses increased $34.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011. This increase was driven primarily by (i) an increase of $24.6 million in amortization expense associated with intangible assets acquired in 2012 and 2011; (ii) a negative variance of $6.6 million related to foreign currency adjustments; and (iii) an increase of $17.4 million related to the acquisitions of ESG and AlpInvest (which were acquired in July 2011) and Vermillion (which was acquired in October 2012). These increases were partially offset by $18.5 million in proceeds from an insurance settlement that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Interest. Interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2012 was $24.6 million, a decrease of $36.0 million from 2011. This decrease was primarily the result of our redemption of the subordinated notes payable to Mubadala. We redeemed $250 million aggregate principal amount of the subordinated notes payable in October 2011 and the remaining $250 million aggregate principal amount in March 2012.
Interest and Other Expenses of Consolidated Funds. Interest and other expenses of Consolidated Funds increased $305.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 as compared to 2011 due primarily to the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and ESG hedge funds, as well as the acquisitions of the Highland CLOs in February 2012 and four new CLOs launched in 2012. The AlpInvest and ESG acquisitions occurred in July 2011 and therefore only reflect six months of expenses for the year ended December 31, 2011 versus twelve months of expenses for the year ended December 31, 2012. The CLOs incur interest expense on their loans payable and incur other expenses consisting of trustee fees, rating agency fees and professional fees. Substantially all interest and other income of our CLOs together with interest expense of our CLOs and net investment gains (losses) of Consolidated Funds is attributable to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors and therefore is allocated to non-controlling interests. Accordingly, such amounts have no material impact on net income attributable to the Partnership.
Other Non-operating Expenses. Other non-operating expenses of $7.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 reflect a decrease of $24.9 million from other non-operating expenses of $32.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. The decrease is due primarily to the redemption of the subordinated notes payable to Mubadala in October 2011 and March 2012. For the year ended December 31, 2011, we recorded a loss associated with the change in fair value on the subordinated notes of $28.5 million, as compared to a fair value gain of $2.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. The decrease in other non-operating expenses from the Mubadala note redemption was offset partially by increases in the fair value of contingent consideration from the acquisitions, which resulted in an additional $6.1 million of expense in 2012.
For the year ended December 31, 2012, net investment gains of Consolidated Funds was $1,758.0 million, as compared to net investment losses of $323.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. This balance is driven primarily by our consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, CLOs, and hedge funds. For the consolidated CLOs, the amount reflects the net gain or loss on the fair value adjustment of both the assets and liabilities. The components of net investment gains (losses) of consolidated funds for the respective periods are comprised of the following:
1,851.1 (919.6 )
(927.8 ) (64.2 )
$ 1,758.0 $ (323.3 )
The realized and unrealized investment gains/losses include the appreciation/depreciation of the equity investments within the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, the appreciation/depreciation of investments made by our consolidated hedge funds, and the appreciation/depreciation of CLO investments in loans and bonds. The net investment gains for the year ended December 31, 2012 were due primarily to net investment gains attributable to the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles. These gains were partially offset by losses on the liabilities of the consolidated CLOs. The losses on the liabilities of the CLOs reflect the fair value adjustment on the debt of the CLOs. The net investment losses for the year ended December 31, 2011 were due primarily to the change in fair value of the assets and liabilities of the consolidated CLOs. Also contributing to the net investment losses for the year ended December 31, 2011 was approximately $75.1 million of net investment losses attributable to the consolidated funds from the acquisitions of Claren Road, ESG, and AlpInvest.
Net income attributable to non-controlling interests in consolidated entities was $1,756.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 compared to a net loss attributable to non-controlling interests in consolidated entities of $202.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. These amounts are primarily attributable to the portion of the net earnings or losses of the Consolidated Funds for each period that are allocated to the related funds’ limited partners or CLO investors.
During the year ended December 31, 2012, the net income of the Consolidated Funds was approximately $1,735.1 million. This income was substantially due to the income from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles, offset by losses from the consolidated CLOs. The net income (loss) from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and the consolidated CLOs was approximately $2,126.2 million and $(378.0) million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2012. This compares to the net loss of our Consolidated Funds of $208.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. This net loss was substantially due to losses from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and the consolidated CLOs, offset by income from the consolidated hedge funds. The net loss from the consolidated AlpInvest fund of funds vehicles and the consolidated CLOs was approximately $220.4 million and $122.0 million, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2011, offset by net income from the consolidated hedge funds of approximately $84.4 million for that period.
The net income attributable to the Partnership was $20.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. This amount represents the allocation of income to the Partnership for the period from the initial public offering in May 2012 through December 31, 2012. The Partnership is allocated a portion of the net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings based on the Partnership’s ownership in Carlyle Holdings (which was approximately 14% as of December 31, 2012). For the period from our initial public offering in May 2012 through December 31, 2012, the net income attributable to Carlyle Holdings was $104.5 million. Additionally, the Partnership is allocated 100% of the net income or loss attributable to the Partnership’s wholly owned taxable subsidiaries.
The following table sets forth information in the format used by management when making resource deployment decisions and in assessing performance of our segments. These non-GAAP financial measures are presented for the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011. The table below shows our total segment Economic Net Income which is composed of the sum of Fee Related Earnings, Net Performance Fees and Investment Income. This analysis excludes the effect of consolidated funds, acquisition-related items, including amortization of acquired intangible assets and contingent consideration taking the form of earn-outs, charges associated with equity-based compensation grants issued in May 2012 upon completion of the initial public offering or grants issued in acquisitions or strategic investments, corporate actions and infrequently occurring or unusual events, and for the periods prior to the reorganization and initial public offering in May 2012, treats compensation attributable to senior Carlyle professionals as compensation expense. Additionally, during the year ended December 31, 2013, we modified the definition of Fee Related Earnings and Distributable Earnings used by management to exclude all equity-based compensation expense; the presentation of Fee Related Earnings and Distributable Earnings for all periods included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K has been recast to conform with the new definition. See Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Segment Revenues
Fund level fee revenues
$ 1,054.7 $ 943.2 $ 870.5
Portfolio advisory fees, net
Transaction fees, net
Total fund level fee revenues
Investment income (loss)
(53.2 ) 25.2 15.8
Total investment income (loss)
Segment Expenses
Direct base compensation
Indirect base compensation
15.7 1.8 —
615.7 104.4 (148.0 )
General, administrative, and other indirect expenses
Depreciation and amortization expense
Economic Net Income
(-) Net Performance Fees
(-) Investment Income (Loss)
(+) Equity-based Compensation
(=) Fee-Related Earnings
(+) Realized Net Performance Fees
(+) Realized Investment Income
(=) Distributable Earnings
Income before provision for income taxes is the GAAP financial measure most comparable to economic net income, fee related earnings, and distributable earnings. The following table is a reconciliation of income before provision for income taxes to economic net income, to fee related earnings, and to distributable earnings.
$ 1,444.0 $ 2,439.9 $ 1,182.8
Partner compensation(1)
— (265.4 ) (671.5 )
Equity-based compensation issued in conjunction with the initial public offering, acquisitions and strategic investments
Acquisition related charges and amortization of intangibles
260.4 128.3 91.5
— — (7.9 )
Net (income) loss attributable to non-controlling interests in consolidated entities
(676.0 ) (1,756.7 ) 202.6
Other adjustments(2)
(6.2 ) (17.7 ) (4.3 )
Net performance fees(3)
Investment income (loss)(3)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4432
|
__label__wiki
| 0.703874
| 0.703874
|
Sunday, February 16 1908 -- The Great White Fleet is underway from it's last South American port of call, and headed up the coast to California. Every coastal city in California is clamoring to receive the fleet. Despite entreaties to President Roosevelt himself, the fleet will not moor at San Diego but outside the bay at Coronado. Navy officials are too worried that the fleet could be mired in muck in San Diego Bay. Angelenos are readying a big reception for the fleet themselves, though their arrival is still a long ways off.
Obscurity of the Day: Butter & Boop
The late 1960s to mid-70s was a time when 'relevance' tried its darnedest to invade the comic strips. Whether advancing a social or political agenda, young cartoonists all seemed to have Something Important to say. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if all these relevant strips had been picked up by papers, it would have been like reading a page of a social studies textbook every day on the comics page. The key, of course, is to get your point across with humor. Doonesbury and Pogo were masterful at combining humor with relevant content, and Wee Pals, appealing to a less sophisticated demographic, got its point across with a smile.
Butter & Boop is an example of a comic strip that tended to forget that nagging problem of being funny. And no wonder -- the comic strip was begun under the aegis of Black Light Inc., an inner city arts project that was sponsored by a do-gooder starch magnate (yes, there really is such a thing). The studio began in 1968 with a full complement of budding artists, but most drifted away until there were but two -- Louis Slaughter and Edward J. Carr. For reasons that seem a little misty in the retelling, these two guys, who seemed to have basically no interest in comic strips, began producing Butter & Boop. With starch money buoying up the self-syndicated operation and a big-hearted magnate encouraging these guys to "tell it like it is", a few papers were found to take the daily strip, which first appeared on May 15 1969.
The samples above are from two years into the run, and you'll have to take my word for it that the quality of the strip had already improved by leaps and bounds. The early stuff is quite militant and pugnacious in its desire to 'expose' inner city life to suburban newspaper readers. Although that flavor is still there two years later, Slaughter and Carr were toning it down and trying to entertain a little instead of beating readers over the head.
It was at this point that they were able to interest McNaught Syndicate in distributing the strip. McNaught took over syndication on May 17 1971. Despite the marketing push of a major syndicate, the strip found few new takers. The fact that the strip was still a little on the rough side, and that the similarly themed Wee Pals was in its heyday were the probable obstacles. Butter & Boop was with McNaught for a bit over two years; they seem to have parted ways in August 1973. The creators commented later in a February 1974 Ebony feature article that they didn't feel the syndicate did enough to market the strip and so they went back to self-syndication.
At that point the strip becomes really hard to find. Reading between the lines of the Ebony article the strip may have been down to two clients, the Kansas City Star and the Nashville Tennessean, neither of which I've had an opportunity to check. In the Ebony article, the creators seem to be saying that self-syndication was too much of a drain on their time and that if a syndicate couldn't be found then Butter & Boop was not going to continue much longer. The last indication I find that it was running is a citation that the co-creators got a Lord Calvert Whiskey Men of Distinction award in 1975.
# posted by Allan Holtz @ 8:07 AM 10 comments
Butter & Boop ran in the PHILADELPHIA TRIBUNE at one time, and also the DELAWARE COUNTY DAILY TIMES (Chester, Penna.) ran it from 17 May 1971 until 15 September 1973.
I remember seeing this strip in the LEXINGTON HERALD briefly around 1974 or thereabouts...
# posted by cartoonjoe : 9/23/2011 6:06 PM
I love the drawing style.
# posted by Tom Falco : 9/23/2011 6:47 PM
I saw some strips in the Tennessean microfilm archive. I wonder how long they ran it.
# posted by Brubaker : 9/29/2011 12:29 PM
Do you have any idea of Slaughter and Carr's birth years, and if they are still alive? A "Dewar's Profile" whisky ad of the two of them ran in 1975, saying they were were ages 25 (Carr) and 32 (Slaughter). I can do the math, but that is plus or minus a year. I ask because I'm writing an article for a reference book and I'm finding it near impossible to locate information on the pair. Here is a link to the ad: http://books.google.com/books?id=xEMdQgT54O8C&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=%22Louis+Slaughter%22+Kansas+City+comics&source=bl&ots=Mmi9AiO_gV&sig=0PaIuX3utgQHh_EbqIszpFtpRfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p5M9T8bJEunx0gGJ-uXfBw&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22Louis%20Slaughter%22%20Kansas%20City%20comics&f=false
# posted by Anonymous : 2/16/2012 6:48 PM
Just stumbled in here looking up "Butter and Boop." For anonymous, the age of Louis Slaughter was about right although I suspect that he might have been a couple of years older. I went to school with Louis and his brother, Michael, for a year or two in the Kansas City area in the early 1950s. As I recall, they moved to the area from Lexington, MO.
# posted by Anonymous : 11/14/2013 5:44 PM
I Have 18 of these strips can you tell me more info on them?what they would sell for and who to contact about these strips please?
Spotted "Butter and Boop" in the archived funny pages of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. As you noted, it's credited to "Black Light Inc." I had to look it up. Looks like B&B first appeared in the Press Democrat on Monday 14 June 1971, dropping NANCY to make room for it! Thanks for the info!
# posted by Benjamin L Clark : 7/08/2020 2:59 PM
I found "Butter & Boop" in the Virgin Island Daily News (news.google.com/newspapers), where it ran from 12/30/69 to 8/1/78.
# posted by Hans : 7/13/2020 5:10 AM
Dear Adam, Hi! My name is Judyth Hill, and I am editing a book for Lisa Garmon. Her husband, Gary Garmon, along with his friend, George Price, created the comic strip, Butter and Boop.
She would like to quote and cite your 9.2011 blog, Obscurity of the Day: Butter & Boop....
Would you please grant us permission for that?
My email is Judythhill@gmail.com
Judyth
# posted by Judyth Hill : 9/13/2020 3:49 PM
Ink-Slinger Profiles: Jerry Stewart
Gerald W. "Jerry" Stewart was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on May 18, 1923, according to the Social Security Death Index and an obituary in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (Indiana) on October 30, 1995, which said "he moved to Fort Wayne one year later."
In the 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Stewart was the oldest of three children born to William and Evelyn. They lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana at 1823 John Street. His father was a "car repairman" for a "rail road shop." Polk's Fort Wayne City Directory 1937 listed the Stewart family at 327 Melita Street.
The U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946, at Ancestry.com, show Stewart enlisted on February 26, 1943; he had two years of college; his civil occupation was porter; his height was 65 inches and weight, 124 pounds. Polk's Fort Wayne City Directory 1945 recorded Stewart and his father on page 493.
Stewart GW USA r327 Melita
Stewart Wm (Evelyn B) reprmn PRR h327 Melita
After Stewart's initials it said "USA" which, I think, referred to his service in the Army; he was a resident at the address. His father's listing included his mother's name, his father's occupation as repairman for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and home address. Indiana's Laughmakers: The Story of Over 400 Hoosiers: Actors, Cartoonists, Writers and Others (1990) profiled Stewart and wrote, "Stewart joined the News-Sentinel as a copy boy on March 25, 1946. He was promoted to staff artist three months later." The News-Sentinel obituary said, "Stewart was the first minority hired by The News-Sentinel and was a pioneer in the newsroom." His listing in Polk's Fort Wayne City Directory 1946, page 547, was, "Stewart Gerald W (Manda R) artist News Pub Co r327 Melita". Stewart married some time in 1945 or 1946. His listing was the same in the following years through 1949.
Polk's Fort Wayne City Directory 1950, on page 539, recorded him as, "Stewart Gerald W (Amanda R) artist News Pub h915 Horace". His comic panel, Little Moments, debuted in 1961.
Indiana's Laughmakers said, "In 1986 he received the Indiana Journalism Award from the Ball State University journalism department. In 1986 he retired after 40 years with The News-Sentinel. He and Amanda, his wife of 40 years, plan to remain in the Fort Wayne area, where Stewart continues to serve as a volunteer art teacher for inner-city children…" (The profile was based on the article, "Artist's 40-year Career Draws to a Close Today," published in The News-Sentinel, on May 30, 1986.)
Stewart passed away on October 29, 1995, in Fort Wayne, according to the Social Security Death Index and News-Sentinel obituary.
# posted by Alex Jay @ 8:00 AM 1 comments
I remember seeing Stewart's cartoons quite often when I was growing up, but I have to confess that his style didn't appeal to me back then. He had at least one or two books published locally, and it was always interesting to know that we had a real, live, local cartoonist amongst us.
# posted by Michael Fraley : 9/27/2011 11:35 PM
News of Yore: Death of Walter R. Bradford
The Camera, July 1925
Walter R. Bradford, the creator of those inimitable cartoons of the "Pickleweights," "Scow," "John Dubalong" and "Jingling Johnson," which featured for so many years in the daily pages of the North American, died at his home in Philadelphia, June 4th, of tuberculosis, against the inroads of which he had courageously fought for months, arousing the admiration of his associates by his heroic cheerfulness and unabated flow of humor.
The closing down of the North American, however, was a severe blow to him, as it seemed like a separation from all that he had so delighted in for years. His desk had become his playground as much as his workshop. When his newspaper passed to the hands of the Public Ledger, Bradford was the radio editor, and his creations in that role were of the same subtle humor which characterized his exploits in other roles.
Walter Bradford was 53 years old. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and began work in the Studebaker Carriage Works, at South Bend, Ind., but his inherent talent for sketching led him to attend the night classes for instruction in drawing and inadvertently to the [missing text] John T. McCutcheon [missing text].
He worked for some time on the Chicago Tribune and the North American, shifting to theBaltimore Herald, finally settling down again with the North American. Bradford's whole soul was in whatever he undertook and he enjoyed the children of his own brain probably as much as those who eagerly waited for their performance in the daily issue of the paper.
Leary and his Wonderful Tomato Can
Mr. Bradford said he loved his work and got fun out of his characters as if they had actuality. Enoch, Maria, Dill Pickleweight and Scow, the black cat. Walter Bradford's cartoon-sketches had an individuality. His characters remind us of the characters of Charles Dickens. They not only were intensely humorous, but they had that touch which made them real, reflecting the traits and frailties of human nature with geniality and sympathy, which made them more than comic representations, for Bradford had a fine mental organization and a subtle apprehension for the best in human nature, which he reflected in his cartoons. There was never anything cynical, for his sympathetic, kindly nature was foreign to anything pessimistic. Bradford was well read in English literature and could discourse on authors and analyze in a way that would have given him renown as a literary critic. He was an expert photographer and a pictorialist and his work possessed individuality of treatment, reflecting his peculiarity of temperament and his judgment in selection. He contributed papers to The Camera, written in his humorous style and illuminated by most original photographs, and arrangements were being made for his connection with the editorial staff when the sad news came of his death.
Walter Bradford's ability as a critic in art rendition by the camera gave occasion frequently for invitation to serve on jury awards, and his decision evinced sane judgment in analysis.
While insistent on the necessity of conformance to the time-honored rules and principles of art, he was broad in his views and appreciated all the advances made by the new photography, and was unbiased in his estimation of individuality of expression. Although he never put his own work in competition, it was characterized by possession of taste and originality and emphasized by the personal equation.
His literary contributions to the photographic journals were instructive, though instruction was conveyed in an Aristophanic way, which was most delightful, accompanied by illustrations intensely funny, but hitting off to perfection the idiosyncrasies of pictorial cults.
He is survived by his widow, who was born in England, and his son, William Bradford.
Mrs. Rummage
[Walter R. Bradford was born in Dayton, Ohio in May 1872, according to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census and numerous obituaries. In the 1880 census, Bradford was the youngest of five children born to Harry and Sarah. They lived in South Bend, Indiana at 46 General Taylor Street. His father was a painter.
In 1900 Bradford lived in Chicago, Illinois, at 301 Osgood Street, with his wife Sara, of six years, and son William. His occupation was recorded as typewriter. (Bradford's playful sense of humor at work!) At the Chicago Tribune, he produced Animal Land and Languid Leary and his Wonderful Tomato Can, and helped out on the strip Alice's Adventures in Funnyland. Some of his strips for the Philadelphia North American were Doctor Domehead, Tommy Tuttle, The Geteven Youngsters, and Fitzboomski the Anarchist.
In 1910 they were recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 1245 56th Street. Bradford was a newspaper cartoonist, and ten years later, he was still cartooning but in Willistown, Pennsylvania on Monument Road. Bradford passed away on June 4, 1925, in Philadelphia. Cartoons & Movies published an obituary in its June 1925 issue, which has some of the art training information that is missing in The Camera article.]
Labels: News of Yore
Obscurity of the Day: The Almost Family
More Walter Bradford today! This time The Almost Family, a Sunday strip he did for the Philadelphia North American from July 22 to November 25 1906. A relatively simple slice-o-life strip featuring a family with constant bad luck.
I'd like to point out an example of the subtle little things that, to my mind, set apart a great comic strip creator from a hack. Notice in the top strip that we never actually see poppa getting walloped by the coal man. Instead Bradford lets us fill in the blank by having Junior comment on dad's new cauliflower ear. A small point, surely, but when you read as many bad comic strips as I do, that sort of little thing is thrilling. It's a nod to the reader's basic ability to make a simple inference that few comic strip creators, even today, seem to grasp. When Junior makes his comment, the reader takes a beat and in a moment a mental image of pater saying something smart to the coal man and getting a knuckle sandwich in return is conjured. Draw the reader in, make him a co-conspirator -- good advice for any cartoonist, or for that matter, an artist of any stripe.
Thanks to Cole Johnson for the samples! I just heard that Cole is in the hospital, going into surgery this morning. I'm sure all Stripper's Guide readers join me in sending Cole best wishes for a most positive outcome and a speedy recovery.
Obscurity of the Day: That Smith Boy
Here's a real serious obscurity by one of my favorite funny page pioneers, Walter R. Bradford. Bradford's work is usually certifiably nutty, really inventive and off the wall. That Smith Boy, however, is none of those things, which probably explains why Brad dropped it after just two episodes in the Philadelphia North American. The first (shown) ran on May 21 1905, the second and last on June 4. It's of the "mother-babies-the-kid, father-bears-the-brunt" school, popular at the time. Brad figured out really quick that there was nowhere interesting for him to go on the topic.
I love these. More, please, sir.
# posted by Craig Zablo : 9/18/2011 9:08 AM
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4434
|
__label__cc
| 0.716058
| 0.283942
|
Stories from Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Bourbon County 4-H members attend livestock show (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Sixteen Bourbon County 4-H club members exhibited in the Kansas Junior Livestock Show in Wichita Sept. 24-26. There were over 1,215 entries during this three day show held at the Kansas Coliseum. There were 114 steers, 245 heifers, 273 barrows, 219 lambs, 197 ewes, and 167 goats exhibited during the 78th Annual event...
ROBERTA DAVIS (Obituary ~ 09/29/10)
Roberta Davis, 79, of Westwood, Kan., died Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 at the Kansas City Hospice House. She was born in August, 1931 in Fort Scott, Kan., where she graduated from High School. Later she attended Livingston College in Alabama where she met her husband, John Davis...
VIRGINIA L. YOAKUM (Obituary ~ 09/29/10)
Virginia L. Yoakum, 76, of Valley Center, Kan., formerly of Fort Scott, died at her home Monday evening, Sept. 27, 2010. Funeral arrangements for Virginia Yoakum are incomplete and will be announced later by the Konantz-Cheney Funeral Home.
Statue of Liberty photographer to be featured guest (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Photographer Peter B. Kaplan will be a guest of the Seventh Annual Gordon Parks Celebration October 6-9, 2010. Kaplan will present a program called "An Evening with Lady Liberty Photographer Peter B. Kaplan." The event will be held in the theatre of the Danny and Willa Ellis Family Fine Arts Center on the Fort Scott Community College campus starting at 7 p.m. ...
Blues guitarist to perform at tribute dinner (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Blues guitarist Guy Davis will appear at the Gordon Parks Celebration Tribute Dinner on Friday, October 8th to help honor his mother, Ruby Dee, who will receive the "Gordon Parks Choice of Weapons Award" at the event. Tickets are $25 each and may be purchased at the Gordon Parks Museum or in downtown Fort Scott at The Country Cupboard. The Tribute Dinner is part of the three-day Gordon Parks Celebration, October 6-9, at Fort Scott Community College...
Long-time FSNHS employee prepares for move along career path (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
After 31 years on the job, Mary Beth McClure will be moving on from the Fort Scott National Historic Site. In 1979, the City of Fort Scott donated property, which is now the FSNHS, to the National Park Service. When that happened, McClure, who had been working as the deputy city clerk for several years, decided to apply for an administrative position. ...
Milken Center conducts project kickoff (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
The Lowell Milken Education Center conducted a project kickoff on Tuesday at the center. Local students and educators attended the event to discuss new projects, and teachers from across the United States called the center to discuss ideas for new projects...
JV tennis picks up first and 2 seconds in Chanute (High School Sports ~ 09/29/10)
CHANUTE -- Fort Scott High School's junior varsity tennis team played its final tournament of the season here Monday with its No. 1 doubles tandem of Ashlyn Baugher and Bailee Hall taking first place. Baugher and Hall won all three matches they played in the eight-team bracket format. They defeated Alexis Ethridge/Tiffany Dillow of Chanute Gold, 6-0, Brea Harris and Kelsey Jump of Parsons, 6-2, and Alexis Thurston/Sarah Hernandez of Chanute Blue, 6-5 (7-5)...
Volleyball fourth at Louisburg (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
LOUISBURG -- Fort Scott High School's volleyball team went to a tough Louisburg Tournament here Saturday and came away with just one victory in five matches. Fort Scott (16-9) hosts Labette County and Independence Thursday night for a Southeast Kansas League triangular as the Tigers look to keep pace with Chanute and Pittsburg atop the league standings. ...
Tigers winners of two straight after 6-3 decision over Nado (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Fort Scott High School's soccer team won its second straight game with a 6-3 Southeast Kansas League victory over Coffeyville at Ellis Park Tuesday afternoon. Saturday afternoon Josh Buller scored the Tigers' only goal in a 1-0 triumph at Paola. Tuesday, Fort Scott pressured Coffeyville's defense all game long and were up by four goals before the Golden Tornado scored in stoppage time...
Nevada varsity, Fort Scott JV win duals (High School Sports ~ 09/29/10)
Although the Fort Scott High School varsity tennis team was defeated by Nevada, 8-1, in a dual Tuesday, Fort Scott head coach Lynn Barr felt that the outcome showed the progress the girls have made this season and prepares them for Saturday's Southeast Kansas League Tournament at Chanute, which starts bright and early at 8 a.m...
Golfers second at Pittsburg (High School Sports ~ 09/29/10)
PITTSBURG -- Fort Scott High School's golf team earned a season-best second-place finish by one stroke at Crestwood Country Club here Tuesday. Fort Scott finished with a four-woman score of 424 over 18 holes while Caney Valley followed at 425. Chanute was the winner at 379...
No. 5 Eagles sweep (High School Sports ~ 09/29/10)
CHETOPA -- Uniontown's volleyball team, now ranked No. 5 in Class 3A, swept rival Marmaton Valley and Chetopa in a Three Rivers League triangular here Tuesday night. Uniontown (5-1 TRL, 21-2 overall) moved into Class 3A in the latest enrollment figures released by the Kansas State High School Activities Association Monday. ...
Volleyball team hosts 'Dig Pink' awareness event tonight (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Fort Scott High School volleyball will hold "Dig Pink" Night, an event designed to promote October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month when the Tigers host Independence and Labette County high schools in a volleyball triangular at 5 p.m. tonight in the FSHS gymnasium...
Relay for Life Fall Festival is Saturday (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
The Bourbon County Relay for Life organization's 4th Annual Fall Festival is scheduled to take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at 2484 Limestone Road, the home of event co-organizer Lavetta Simmons. The event is a key fundraiser for the organization and will feature a wide variety of games and activities for people of all ages. ...
FSHS debate team continues to find success (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
The second week of the season found some Fort Scott debaters rising to the top as they traveled to three different tournaments. At Emporia, a two-day affair, two Tiger teams competed. The Emporia tournament is one of just a handful of Debate Coaches Invitational (DCI) qualifying tournaments. ...
Efficiency program aims for savings without sacrificing comfort (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
With the winter months coming, it may be time to think about ways to keep the warm air in the house and the cold air out. To provide funding for that very task is the purpose of the Efficiency Kansas Program. Created in November 2009, the Efficiency Kansas Program is a low-cost loan program that helps residents make energy-efficiency improvements to their homes. ...
'Forks and Corks' set for Friday (Local News ~ 09/29/10)
Preparations are being made for the Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce's Sixth Annual Taste of Fort Scott fundraiser. At this year's event, titled "Forks and Corks," attendees will be able to sample food specialties provided by 15 local restaurants and caterers, as well as unique beverages and liquors provided by a beverage distributor. ...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4436
|
__label__cc
| 0.542042
| 0.457958
|
National Day travel costs have reached a low point, the industry: this year's peak season is expected to be extended
This year's "October" will be the first tourist peak and consumption golden week of the year.
The 8-day National Day holiday is approaching. The price of Daoyuan’s Homestay has not been increased like last year's peak season. The price this year is only the price level of last year's off-season tourism. Liu Daoyuan, the owner of this high-end homestay, told reporters from China Business News that the luxury suites priced at 650 yuan/night on National Day last year were only priced at 450 yuan/night this year, and the overall price of all rooms was only about 60% of the same period last year.
This year's National Day travel prices are not the only thing that is going down. On August 8, Hubei Province announced the launch of "Walking with Love, Traveling in Hubei with Benefits". All A-level scenic spots in Hubei Province will be free of charge this year, including the National Day holiday. Statistics from the Ctrip Travel Big Data Lab show that there are more than 1,500 scenic spots across the country for free or discounts this year. At the same time, OTA platforms such as Ctrip and Fliggy have introduced travel subsidies, and local governments such as Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Jiangsu have also issued travel coupons. "After the ticket is free, there are indeed more tourists. We will also issue 50 yuan petrol cards to tourists who come by car."
The Suobuya Stone Forest in western Hubei is one of the scenic spots where tickets are free. Zhang Junhui, the marketing director of the scenic spot, told reporters that from the current ticket booking data, the number of tourists to Suobuya this year is expected to reach or exceed the level of last year's National Day.
According to the official report of Hubei Province, as of September 24 this year, the province's participating A-level tourist attractions received 21,981,600 tourists, and achieved a comprehensive tourism income of 1.95 billion yuan. Xi'an tour guide Pei Qing (pseudonym) and her husband are both tour guides. The couple obviously felt the increase in tourists recently: "There are quite a lot of tourists in Xi'an during this period, but this year there are'small groups' with less than 20 people. It will be more than in previous years."
A person in charge of the CYTS Travel Marketing Department told reporters that the average price of tourism products during the "11th" this year was around 5,000 yuan, which was a significant drop from last year’s average price of 15,000 yuan, mainly due to the stagnation of outbound travel.
According to the "China Domestic Tourism Development Report 2020" recently released by the China Tourism Academy, tourists' willingness to travel in the third quarter reached 80.2%, which is 90% higher than the same period last year.
With multiple preferential measures, many parties look forward to "good results" in tourism data for this year's National Day holiday.
Ctrip predicts that the number and proportion of domestic inter-provincial long-distance group tours and free travel products will hit a new high this year. This year's "November" will become the first tourist peak and consumption golden week of the year.
Professor Pan Helin, Executive Dean of the Institute of Digital Economics of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, told reporters that the idea of the first tourist peak during the year is valid. Everyone’s "May 1st" long holiday and other travel plans in the first half of the year may be concentrated on changes. During National Day. However, the overall number of tourists may still be affected by the epidemic. After all, the epidemic has not been fully controlled, and there is still a psychological acceptance process for everyone.
"This year there are many discounts on air tickets, scenic spots, and hotels. Local governments are also stimulating consumption. In addition, many businesses have also adopted large-scale promotions. This must be a time period when tourism costs are relatively low." Pan Helin said. The National Day holiday is one of the few long holidays available this year, and businesses may put their marketing expectations throughout the year into this time period. "The number of group registrations is still not as high as in previous years, less than 60% of previous years." A travel agency staff member in Wenjiang District of Chengdu said frankly that this year the travel agency reduced the group registration fee, but the number of applicants is still far less than in previous years. Faced with the long-overdue tourist peak, industry insiders hope that the tourist season can last longer.
A person in charge of the Cultural Tourism Bureau of Enshi City, Hubei Province told reporters that this year's tourism activities started relatively late. In October, the bureau will organize marketing trips to Shenzhen and Hangzhou, hoping to postpone the end of the peak season this year. Pan Helin said that tourism is not rigid consumption and can be delayed to a certain extent. The end of the peak season is related to the psychological impact of the epidemic on tourists. However, the intensity of "retaliatory consumption" this year may not be very high. If the epidemic is effectively controlled, the end of the peak season may be delayed.
Prev:The red tourism market is booming
Next:Fliggy National Day high-star hotel bookings up 100% year-on-year
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4437
|
__label__wiki
| 0.538964
| 0.538964
|
America – Where we came from (Article #2)
Posted on November 29, 2015 November 29, 2015 by surpassmagazine
Response to Terror in France
A taste of what’s to come in Surpass Magazine
What’s coming – Surpass Magazine – Entertainment & Lifestyle
What to expect upcoming-Politics & World
In our continuation of the series on America – Where we came from we explore the discovery of the new world and the ensuing colonization. In response to the challenges of opressive systems described in our last article people began to see the New World as an opportunity that they could only dream of in times past. They took their lives into their own hands to realize that dream into reality.
America – Where We Came From (Article#2)
From the band The Animals
In this dirty old part of the city
Where the sun refused to shine
People tell me there ain't no use in tryin'
Now my girl you're so young and pretty
And one thing I know is true
You'll be dead before your time is due, I know
Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin'
Watched his hair been turnin' grey
He's been workin' and slavin' his life away
Oh yes I know it
(Yeah!) He's been workin' so hard
(Yeah!) I've been workin' too, baby
(Yeah!) Every night and day
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!)
We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
'cause girl, there's a better life for me and you
When King Henry VIII of England was still an infant an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, convinced the Queen of Spain to finance and equip an exploratory mission to find a direct route to India via transatlantic voyage. He was a devout Christian and this effort opened opportunities to spread Catholicism as well as to enrich the Spanish crown. He landed in the outlying islands of North America (now called The Bahamas) in 1492. The landing of Spaniard Juan Ponce de Leon on the mainland of North America (in what is now the state of Florida) set off the largest land grab in world history. The discovery of South America in what is now Rio de Janeiro by another Italian explorer by the name of Amerigo Vespucci (after whom America derived its name) and the proof that the Americas were not part of the Asian continent as first thought set the atmosphere of exploration, discovery and conquer complete.
Soon after these discoveries rich and powerful men including monarchs began financing voyages of exploration. These were undertaken for a number of reasons including such things as searching for gold and other wealth, expansion of sovereign lands and to spread the gospel of the Church. Natives in these new lands lived in essentially Stone Age cultures and were perceived as inferior to the Europeans who had technology far in advance of the native.
The earliest attempts to establish colonies were met with little success. Entire groups of settlers died or simply vanished while awaiting resupply. Colonization was an exceptionally hazardous undertaking for the peasant and lord alike. The decision to drop all that they knew and to embark on a several months’ voyage bound for a wilderness world wrought with danger certainly is an indication of the fortitude of character which must have been present in these people. It is also an indicator of the sense of desperation that was prevalent among Europeans due to the lack of opportunity for the common man.
While history shows that the European did little to successfully befriend and commune with the natives of the new land (in fact the history is riddled with atrocities); the largest portion of these immigrants were true to their Christian values and attempted to not only establish good relations with the natives but also to convert them to Christianity and introduce them to a new way of life.
The first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia began 115 after the discovery by Columbus. At one time in the earliest history of Jamestown there were as many as 500 residents. However, survival was an exceptional challenge and a hard winter took the lives of 70% in less than a year. In fact, a resupply ship that returned found only 60 people remaining who were starving.
It also turned out that Jamestown was founded in the heart of a native empire. This was a hostile environment that this group was ill-equipped to deal with. Between native arrows and lack of food survival was against the odds.
Prior to this the Spanish had discovered a native favorite in South America. This plant would be a lynchpin in shaping the world and would lead to untold wealth and to wars. This plant was tobacco. The Spanish had maintained a monopoly on the product in Europe and had profited greatly from its new found popularity.
Tobacco seeds from Spain had been secretly smuggled out of Europe and were planted in Jamestown. The seeds took hold and grew well and thus began the American tobacco industry and a new economy for the colonies. In fact, tobacco was the largest export from the colonies for the next 150 years.
Among the immigrants that came included indentured servants from Europe who paid their way to the New World with a portion of their own lives which were paid off in their labor for a given period of time. Essentially these individuals were owned during the time of their indenture bond. Within two years of the introduction of tobacco to Jamestown the first indentured Africans began to come to the colonies. Full recognition of slavery was not recognized until 1654 when the first slave owner in the Americas (a black free man named Anthony Johnson) retained his servant John Casor beyond the term of his indenture and won ownership of Casor in a civil case in court setting the president for slavery.
People began to pour into the New World in droves seeking opportunities they would never have in their own homeland. There was great wealth and resources on the other side of the ocean. There was land to be owned. In Europe there were very few land owners and the general populous had to pay homage to the Lords who owned the land they lived on. (This is the origin of our modern term landlord). For a common man to own a piece of land was considered a fantasy until this moment in time.
Read the rest of the article in our upcoming issue of Surpass Magazine….
Posted in America, Politics & World, World Tagged America, Amerigo, Christopher Coloumbus, Colonization of America, Discovery of Amerca, Discovery of the New World, History, immigration, Next Issue, Surpass Magazine, The New World, Upcoming Issue, World exploration
Print Versions of Surpass Magazine Now Available
Meet High Class Hunnie – Leslie Ann Wall
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4440
|
__label__wiki
| 0.854416
| 0.854416
|
Home › Issues › Competing in Explanation Space
Competing in Explanation Space
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are on a collision course. Many readers are accustomed to thinking of the New-York-based newspapers as being quite different sorts of publications — tea and coffee for the reading classes.
But clearly the executives who run them are competing for the same space — dominance of the lofty region where short-term causal explanations of events are forged. They may operate rival explanatory standards at the moment. But it is in the nature of standards that one inevitably gains the upper hand.
The papers are the Hertz and Avis of the day-to-day truth business. Ultimately one of them is going to become generally preferred.
Among the major headings upon which they will be judged will be, of course, their respective interpretations of business, economic and political news.
Understand that independent full-service newspapers have become a rarity in the modern age. In America, there are only five: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Financial Times, a global paper edited in London but distributed nationally here.
Tribune Co. is an operator of high-quality regional newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Long Island’s Newsday among them). Gannett Co. publishes 94 local dailies besides the surprisingly lively but thin USA Today, with its hotel-padded circulation of 2.3 million, the nation’s largest. Knight Ridder Inc., with its 31 papers, is less a force in the industry all the time.
There are another dozen chains and a hundred family-owned newspapers, each capable of holding its own on a story in its own backyard. And of course a wide variety of other news organs — magazines, broadcast news organizations, wire services and newsletters — also compete to mold opinion. The result is a blooming, buzzing, and ultimately quite reassuring diversity of opinion.
But there is nothing quite like a top-notch daily newspaper. Not only are they, as news executive Jack Fuller has described them in his book News Values, “powerful engines for discovery of truth,” capable of committing dozens of thoughtful and experienced investigators to a major story on a moment’s notice. But by their very nature, newspapers also exist to communicate a sense of proportion. A good deal of their impact derives from the way they choose to play a story.
Great anxiety abounds today in the industry about what will happen as the next generation of technology is thoroughly built out. Clearly, many young readers prefer to get their news from the Web rather than paper and ink. And anyone witnessing the wholesale vertical disintegration of the broadcast television industry has to acknowledge the possibility that advertisers may find more advantageous ways of reaching the audiences that they seek.
The Financial Times shows how a cosmopolitan world view can be constantly refreshed and communicated on a shoe-string — barely three hundred full-time editorial employees around the world are required to put it out. But the bigger papers would prefer not to cut their editorial staffs of a thousand persons or more. No one willingly prunes that much.
In recent months, the competition has been heating up. Last fall, for example, the New York Times forced the Washington Post to relinquish its half of The International Herald Tribune, the Paris-based newspaper the two companies had published jointly for more than 30 years. Its plans for the small but influential daily are not yet entirely clear, but the Times acknowledges that it is thinking about changing its name. Last month The Washington Post agreed to send its content for use abroad to the Wall Street Journal, which already has Asian and European editions.
Last week a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal shined a bright light on how 51-year-old Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. had brought a new aggressiveness to The Times since taking over as publisher in 1997. Journal reporter Matthew Rose noted that, instead of protecting its newspaper franchise through the familiar strategy of diversifying into other businesses, “Mr. Sulzberger is deploying his company’s brand name more than ever by means of cable television, book publishing, national newspapering — and now international print journalism.”
The stock market has welcomed the Times’ new aggressiveness, Rose noted. Its stock had risen 50 percent in the five years since Sulzberger took over, compared with 28 percent for the Dow Jones Publishing Index. And the paper’s circulation had climbed 8 percent during the same period, to 1.2 million, at a time when many newspapers were losing circulation. The gains came almost entirely from its national edition.
The newspaper industry, on the other hand, has been somewhat taken aback by the Times’ “sharp elbows” and newfound tendency to “throw its weight around,” according to reporter Rose.
Meanwhile, The Journal has been moving towards the middle of the market from its former impregnable position as America’s business daily. For the last several years, its circulation has been flat, at around 1.8 million. More alarmingly, the average age of its readers has been creeping up — it is well over 50 now, not the youthful set, much favored by advertisers, that the Times is seeking.
On the other hand, the Journal’s web operations are the most successful in the industry — subscribers actually pay to read the paper online. And an extensive redesign last year made it look a little more like a regular newspaper — more color, less gray type, inviting graphics and a lively new personal finance section. Its next move may be to add a weekend section.
Dow Jones chairman Peter Kann has his share of peccadilloes — it is he who has run the parent company and its newspaper subsidiary for more than twenty years. His wife, former reporter Karen Elliott House, last year replaced him as the Journal’s publisher. (She doesn’t report to Kann.) During the 1990s, Dow Jones made a series of tentative and ultimately highly costly moves into electronic markets with its Telerate subsidiary. There has been grousing over the years among some of the beneficiaries of the family trust that controls Dow Jones. But there can be little doubt that Kann is among the most revered newsmen in the industry, a paragon of decency and fair play.
How is the battle between the Times and the Journal going to be decided? That is anybody’s guess. In part, it will be a marketing battle, like any other. In this respect, prizes will be an important adjunct to reputation. There is no clearer example of sharp elbows than the one The Wall Street Journal didn’t mention — the seven of fourteen Pulitzer Prizes for journalism awarded last year that were awarded to the New York Times, three of them for the paper’s 9/11 coverage. To some in the industry, that seemed a misleading picture of the distribution of top-quality work in the news business, even in a year when the major story was in New York.
What is important to understand is that beneath the glitz, newspapers actually operate as favor banks, to use novelist Tom Wolfe’s phrase from Bonfire of the Vanities. That is to say, newspapers are forever paying favors forward, in expectation of reciprocal acts of kindness from players yet unknown, accepting deposits of information and emphasis, making grants of credit and blame.
Newspapers reward their culture heroes and presidential favorites, penalize those with whom they disagree, further the activities of which they approve and ignore those which they do not, hoping all the while that the intricate web of transactions actually is in the black over time. No accountant could ever hope to make sense of it. That’s what they pay publishers and editors to do.
Still relatively differentiated, the two great newspapers are slowly becoming the Hertz and the Avis of the business of day-to-day truth. In time, one or the other of them will establish a dominant position. The initial skirmishes will take at least a decade to unfold. It will be a most interesting battle to watch.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4442
|
__label__cc
| 0.726511
| 0.273489
|
SMEs across Asia Pacific Get Cloud Transformation Boost with Oracle Digital Hub in Malaysia
on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 10:56:38 pm
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia and 21 other countries in Asia Pacific will get access and support to the cloud solutions and resources they need to power digital transformation with the opening of Oracle’s first Digital Hub in Southeast Asia. The new facility in Kuala Lumpur highlights Oracle’s commitment to better serving the SME market in the new cloud economy and to working with them in a way that matches their needs and how their businesses operate. Oracle’s new Digital Hub in Malaysia is set to help SMEs leverage Oracle Cloud solutions to streamline operations, boost innovation and build a platform for growth.
(L-R): Ir. Siva Ramanathan, Chief Strategy Officer of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC); Fitri Abdullah, Managing Director for Malaysia, Oracle; François Lançon, senior vice president, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific; Datuk Zainal Amanshah, Chief Executive Officer of InvestKL; Matt Hall, Head of Sales ODO (ANZ-KOREA-ASEAN SAGE); Cath Hodgson-Croker, Vice President – Digital Development Group APAC
The Digital hub houses a newly hired digital team focused on helping midsize organisations transition to the cloud quickly and easily. It complements Oracle’s broader Asia Pacific digital sales and support functions based in KL, which service the local market as well as 21 countries across the region. Exuding the energy of a start-up, its dynamic and diverse staff, is passionate in embracing the digital economy. The latest collaboration tools, techniques and technologies are used to transform the buying experience for the customers.
François Lançon, senior vice president, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific, said: “The cloud is democratising IT; you just need a web browser or a mobile phone app to take advantage of it. What’s more, it has incredible transformation potential for small businesses, enabling them to do things they have never been able to do before, at an affordable price, such as use technology to streamline business processes, gain access to an easy-to-use platform for innovation, and digitise their customer experience. We are simplifying the buying process to help these smaller organisations, as well as branch offices and line of business departments, digitally transform their business.”
Customers that want to buy entirely online can utilise the click-to-buy Oracle Accelerated Buying Experience. In addition to the simplified buying experience, Oracle’s Digital Hub offers a complete suite of cloud applications, platform, and infrastructure services as both standalone services and as bundles. The range of choices empowers small businesses to select solutions that directly address their goals or issues.
Fitri Abdullah, Managing Director for Malaysia, Oracle, said: “More than 67% of the world’s total micro and SME market is located in the Asia Pacific region, accounting for more than 266 million businesses that can benefit from cloud technology (Worldbank.org, 2015). With Oracle Cloud, SMEs now have access to the most modern solutions in the market, at an affordable price as well as timely, personalised and effective support. Using cloud and digital technologies in tandem, Malaysian SMEs can now be more competitive as they build a larger presence in the digital economy. This investment reiterates Oracle’s strong commitment to Malaysia.”
Ir. Siva Ramanathan, Chief Strategy Officer of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) said: At MDEC, we believe that Malaysia’s digital future has the potential to unlock significant economic, environmental, and social value within the nation. We applaud Oracle’s efforts in reaching out to our SMEs with access to the latest cloud technologies that are vital to their growth, and help them transform digitally. What Oracle is doing today contributes to our own national initiative, that aims to encourage digital adoption and future proof our SMEs and economy. We commend Oracle’s strong show of commitment in serving the Malaysian economy.
Datuk Zainal Amanshah, CEO of InvestKL, said: “We are delighted Oracle has chosen Kuala Lumpur for its Digital Hub. It is very much in line with our Government’s focus on the digital economy. Its arrival will help generate a positive impact on the local eco-system in terms of talent identification and development, benefits to the SMEs and collaboration with our local Universities.”
Pranabesh Nath, Research Director, IDC Malaysia, said: “SME digital enablement is one of the most important aspects of increasing the digital economy contribution to Malaysia’s GDP. IDC research indicates adoption of some of the 3rd platform technologies such as cloud and mobility has been increasing in the last 2 years. Based on our research most large enterprises in Malaysia have some sort of cloud adoption plan, while almost 50% are using cloud services beyond one or 2 simple applications. The situation for SMEs is not so bright though, and needs to be urgently rectified. SMEs have needs that differ from larger enterprises in this respect, so it is good to see Oracle targeting this segment specifically.”
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.
Singtel and VMware to accelerate digital…
ASEAN SMBs to Take New Stride into Cloud…
Digital Transformation for SMEs - different set of…
Businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan Lead the World…
Air Liquide continues its digital transformation…
VMware Cloud on AWS Expands to Asia-Pacific,…
ClouddigitalOracle
Alibaba Cloud and Fusionex Enter into Strategic Partnership
Aruba growing well in Southeast Asia
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4443
|
__label__wiki
| 0.939442
| 0.939442
|
Jewish World Review August 17, 2004 / 30 Menachem-Av, 5764
Will the ‘Palestinians’ learn to be careful about what they wish for?
By Michael Matza
They wanted the ‘occupiers’ out — and when they left, so did the jobs
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) GAZA CITY — The Erez Industrial Zone, a once-vital source of jobs for 4,000 Palestinian workers, is a virtual ghost town.
HABIBI, CAN YOU SPARE A ... ? West Bank Arabs waiting for employment
Forklifts weave between factory buildings, but their pallets are mostly empty. Fewer than 25 of what six months ago were 150 manufacturing plants even bother to open their doors inside the sun-baked Gaza complex along the border with Israel.
About 500 Palestinians, mostly skeleton crews assigned to mothballing duties, show up for work on a typical day.
Two months after Israel's announcement that it would abandon the industrial zone as part of its proposed evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, the 30-year-old site, hailed as a model of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation, is another casualty of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The disappearance of the carpentry, welding and sewing workshops — including some jointly owned by Israelis and Palestinians — undermines the economic base for 50,000 Palestinians living in the Strip, according to a recent United Nations estimate.
With unemployment in the Gaza Strip running at 70 percent, few Erez workers can expect to find equally good jobs inside the densely populated seaside rectangle, where 1.3 million Palestinians live sandwiched between the Mediterranean and a heavily guarded Israeli security fence.
Because Israel, citing security concerns, has severely curtailed the number of day laborers it permits to enter Israel, that option also is virtually foreclosed to the displaced workers.
"I don't know what I'll do," said Adeeb Zarouq, 41, a metal-furniture welder, who for the moment has his job at an Erez factory but knows his days of employment are numbered.
On a salary of $130 a week, Zarouq supports himself, his wife, his father and seven children. He rents a Gaza City apartment for $150 a month.
He is counting on Israel to recognize its self-interest in not letting the economic pressures inside Gaza reach explosive proportions that could affect the entire region.
"It's like surgery," he said on a recent night off. "If you operate on one of my arms, you have to give me a transfusion in the other."
Kobi Cohen, 40, chairman of the Erez manufacturers' association, runs a garment-manufacturing plant at Erez that formerly employed 350 Palestinian workers producing a line of men's clothing under the brand name Chaos.
Today, a half-dozen Chaos workers spend their days packing up sewing machines.
Cohen considered moving his plant to Israel to take advantage of a compensation package that Israel offered to displaced Erez businesses.
But the much higher minimum wage for workers inside Israel — about twice what he pays his Gaza workers — more than offset the benefits, he said.
Moreover, he did not want to entirely abandon his loyal Gaza workers, whom he credited for his company's success.
So instead of just closing up, Cohen sold his sewing machines — on what he says are generous payment terms — to a Palestinian in Gaza City, who will employ about 100 Palestinians in three workshops.
Cohen intends to supply raw materials to the workers through the Karni crossing, a mid-Strip passage where goods pass back and forth through an opening in the wall that separates Israel and the Gaza Strip. He intends to export the finished garments the same way and sell them in Israel and throughout Europe and parts of Central America.
Among the factors contributing to the deterioration of the Erez Industrial Zone are tensions caused by the suicide bombings that have rocked Israel in the last four years, and attacks on the zone itself.
The Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which wants to portray Israel's disengagement as a panicky flight under fire, has shot rockets into the gated terminal and tunneled around its perimeter to launch attacks.
In January, a 22-year-old woman sent by Hamas detonated explosives at the workers' entrance, killing herself, two soldiers, a border policeman and a private security guard. Since then, there have been three deadly attacks inside the zone, which also houses an Israeli army garrison.
"Hamas will say it forced the Israelis out," and the Israelis will respond with force, Zarouq , the Erez welder, said. "When that happens we, the workers, will be the losers once again."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider must-reading. Sign up for our daily update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
© 2004, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4446
|
__label__cc
| 0.640027
| 0.359973
|
Saddam Convicted
As expected, Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death yesterday. The timing is certainly "convenient" for the Bush administration, but there was something else that struck me when the conviction was announced.
Saddam was convicted for war crimes that he committed in 1982. Don't get me wrong, I am glad he was convicted, and his crimes were atrocious.
However, before you take this as a sign to vote for the Republican party, because they will rid the world of evil and protect us from bad guys like Saddam, it might be helpful to recall how the Republican Administration that was in the White House in 1982 responded at the time.
Saddam's crimes were apparently so appalling to Ronald Reagan and his administration, that they sent none other than Donald Rumsfeld as a Special Envoy from the President to meet with the dictator in 1983.
Rumsfeld met and shook hands with Saddam in December of 1983, a full year after the killings in Dujail for which Hussein was convicted and after the United States had confirmed that Iraq was illegally using chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war.
So when Saddam was actively using chemical weapons and killing his people, Donald Rumsfeld was busy shaking his hand. Yet 20 years later, when Saddam was contained by sanctions, no-fly zones, and weapons inspectors, then we go to war at the cost of nearly 3,000 US soldiers and thousands more Iraqi lives.
If you want to "stay the course" with this type of foreign policy, then vote Republican. Personally, I prefer a change.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4447
|
__label__cc
| 0.667479
| 0.332521
|
Jocelyn Pontes
University Projects
Classic Re-Design: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
This classic novel re-design was a project for my postgraduate course at Kingston University. I selected the novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because many of its editions use similar color schemes and imagery, and I wanted to subvert these and create something different. My aim for this project was to create a modern design that would look fresh and eye-catching, and would draw the attention of the average reader who may have avoided this book in the past due to its age.
My primary target market is students who are required to purchase this book for school; the attention-grabbing, modernized cover would spark their interest in the content. My other target markets include readers who love this particular book and may collect its various editions, and readers who collect artful editions of classic novels in general.
To achieve a modern look, I hand-drew and used Adobe Illustrator to create clean, geometric typography for the names Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I used solid blocks of colour against a solid, neutral background. For the remaining cover text — and for the chapter titles, running-heads, and page numbers — I chose Tw Cen MT Condensed, a sans-serif font that looks simple and streamlined. Many other editions’ covers use elaborate, ornamented typography to reflect the time period of the book’s publication. With my artwork and font choice, my design is unique among these other editions.
I selected Book Antiqua for the body text; I chose this to acknowledge the book’s time period despite the overall modern design. For the drop-caps I used Mistral, a messy and erratic handwritten font that captures the unwell mental state of the protagonist.
My cover captures the essence of the book as a work of mystery, gothic horror, and science-fiction. I selected colours that would evoke a sense of darkness and the protagonist’s mental state: dusky grey, deep turquoise, and sickly yellow-green. I doubled the names Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to symbolise the protagonist’s split personality. Other editions portray this concept with the figure of a man and his shadow upon a wall. Instead of this, I used the doubled typography to create this shadow. The sharp points of the letters also convey a feeling of danger, representing the horror apsect of the book.
Below are the stages of development for my cover artwork. Beginning by hand-drawing the letter forms, I scanned my sketches and then used Adobe Illustrator to outline them. I then duplicated them to create the shadow effect and filled them in with colour.
This project has inspired me to create other re-designs of classic novels in the public domain. In the future I intend to design covers and interiors for some of my favourites including Alice in Wonderland and Frankenstein.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4448
|
__label__cc
| 0.638338
| 0.361662
|
We have detected that your JavaScript has been disabled. By disabling JavaScript, some features on the website will not work correctly. Please enable it by going to the settings or options on your internet web browser.
In order to offer the best user experience possible, we use cookies which store information on your computer. You can find out more information on how we use cookies on our Cookie Policy page, either by clicking the purple 'Find Out More' button or the 'Cookie Policy' link in the bottom footer.
Do you accept our cookie policy?
YesNoFind Out More
Calendar Safeguarding Volunteer
Cubs Scouts
Chief Scout’s & Queen’s Scout Award
Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award
Shows & Large Events
World Scout Jamboree
Local Scouting
Campsites and Accomodation
Scout Districts
Scout Groups Map
Adult Volunteering (18+)
Join (6-25 years)
Communications & PR
Heritage About us
Join (6-25 years) Form
For more information or to ask a question about Scouting in your area use the form below
Select Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 23 24 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Select Month January February March April May June July August September October November December 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Select Year
Gender:*
Address Line 1:*
Post Code:*
Retype Email Address:*
Telephone or Mobile Number:
By supplying us with the data above, you agree to us sending you relevant information relating to your enquiry. In the future, Hampshire County Scouts may wish to contact you about other events and products. Please tick here if you do not wish to receive this.
Sign up now to receive it!
Visit the Scout Association website.
© 2021 Hampshire Scouting. All Rights Reserved. Hampshire Scouts Registered Charity Number: 1015788.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4450
|
__label__cc
| 0.647834
| 0.352166
|
+44 207 621 0338 reservations@hispanialondon.com
Marcos Morán
Lorenzo Castillo
Juan Murillo
The designer and antique dealer Lorenzo Castillo has decorated Hispania’s premises, both in London and Brussels. One of the world’s best interior designers, in Hispania, Lorenzo reveals his distinctive, elegant and contemporary style. Lorenzo has been recognized as one of the 60 arquitects and interior designers most influential in the world in 2017, and was nominated in 2014 as “The Best Designer in Spain” by the renowned magazine Architectural Digest.
Hispania was a challenge for Lorenzo Castillo for different reasons: the magnitude of the premises, the ambitious project of creating a multi-use space and the fact that it is part of a historical building that was declared a National Heritage site.
Previous: "Marcos Morán"
Back to "MEET THE TEAM"
Next: "Juan Murillo"
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4453
|
__label__cc
| 0.634268
| 0.365732
|
Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy
Recently, I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, veteran writer of children's shows and another YA series about a twisted Wonderland underneath New York. I will start off by saying that, if you haven't read the books, I will attempt to be as spoiler-free as possible, but no guarantees.
Click ahead to read the full review, acknowledging the probability of some small spoilers:
The setting of the series is a post-apocalyptic North America/United States in which, 75 years ago, a civil war broke out that ended in the creation of an incredibly tyrannical government (The Capitol) and 12 Districts. The 12 districts are responsible for one thing that helps the country as a whole function - agriculture, coal, electronics, etc. Each year, as punishment for the uprising, the various districts must randomly select 1 boy and 1 girl ages 12-18 to compete in something called The Hunger Games.
They put the 24 children in an incredibly high tech arena and watch as they slowly kill one another until one is named the victor. The victor's district gets increased food rations for the next year and the victor proper becomes something of a reality show celebrity for the rest of their life. They're given wealth and have no job, though they're expected to take up some kind of hobby.
All this is going along splendidly - annually killing off 23 children, keeping the country in a state of fear and immense poverty, hunger - until a girl volunteers as tribute in order to save her younger sister from entering the games: Katniss Everdeen. Katniss' games are different from other games in that there are 2 victors, because of some quick thinking, tenacity, and a desire to piss off the Capitol on the part of our heroine.
The following two books tell a story of a populace that saw, in Katniss' win, a Capitol that could be defeated. There is an uprising. A surprise appearance by a mysterious, nuclear powered District 13 and a second President who may or may not be a better option than the current tyrannical despot who is ruling things from his seat in the Capitol. There are twists, turns, beautiful men that wear nets for clothing, and many, many bumps to the head used as plot devices.
The trilogy is a very fun, fast-paced read. If you have a long weekend and very little to do (or if you're in the midwest and are snowed in), put this on your kindle or download the audiobooks and take a trip to Panem. It is well-written and rich with a whole new world to learn about that very much parallels our own. It is plausible, which is potentially the scariest part of the books.
A Lack of Faith
Something I found interesting in its absence was any notion of religion in this future world. Whether it was intentional on the part of Collins or not, I do not know, nor, am I sure, that I care. Because, her intention would not change the reading of the book.
Studies tell us that the more impoverished, uneducated, or destitute a population is, the more they tend to turn to religion, spirituality, magic, etc. What I found quite striking is that these people are impoverished, uneducated, destitute, and without much hope of any kind to speak of, yet they do not have any faith to turn to. There is no notion of saying a prayer for safety or hoping for the grace of a divine figure or even the image of a holy relic...anywhere. In any of the books. Odd.
One might think that, possibly, this tyrannical government forced out the very notion of faith, in order to take even that away from its people, but then where is the faith of the people in the Capitol? Where is the backstory to tell us how or why this sense of spirituality was removed from the world?
It is merely absent, as if it never existed. While it is a book for the Young Adult group, I suppose I found it a very odd and glaring item to omit. Would it have changed anything in the slightest? Well, I suppose the answer is yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that that small bit of faith might be enough to keep some members of the populace going through times of trouble.
No, in the sense that our world has a sense of the spiritual in it now, and...have you seen the news lately? People still do horrible, awful, terrible things, many times in the name of their faith.
But, it was an odd omission, nonetheless.
The Obligatory Love Triangle
WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY must every single Young Adult book series include a love triangle? WHY?! Is it a publishing requirement? We saw how popular Twilight got and decreed that all books must include one girl choosing between 2 guys?
Peeta and Gale, the two men in the triangle, are initially presented as co-tribute and friend, respectively. By the end of book one, this is who they remain. However, almost immediately in book 2 and throughout the remainder of the trilogy, the competing affections of the two young men become Katniss' basis for nearly every action she takes.
Our heroine began the series as a fully self-actualized, self-assured woman. She knows who she is, what she wants to do, and where she wants to go in life. She is written almost as though she were a male lead, which seems not only natural but novel and quite welcome. She does not need a man or anyone else to define her, as she is more than happy to define herself.
From the beginning of book 2, however, that girl is nowhere to be found. Yes, she survived the Hunger Games. Yes, she probably has some symptoms of PTSD. But, we don't get to experience her personal struggles, because she immediately changes everything about her personality and becomes a pawn of her burgeoning teenage emotions - a trait utterly and thankfully lacking in book 1 - and a pawn of the Capitol's whims.
The Love Triangle Requirement very nearly ruined the third book for me. I could stand it in book 2, because it wasn't quite as overwhelming, but by Mockingjay...I was very, very over it.
The Squandering
Collins had an amazing opportunity to write a new kind of heroine. The Girl Who Was On Fire in book 1 became, as one friend on Facebook told me, the Girl Who Weeps In Closets. She became Bella with a Bow. Bella from Twilight being, in my opinion, one of the single worst, most anti-feminist characters to appear in modern literature.
But Collins had created a female Harry Potter. A girl who could carry a series completely on her own, without the trope of a hormonal, sophomoric heart hurtling her from man to man in an attempt to make her appear...sexy? special? more complete as a character? Then, without any rhyme or reason, she took that girl from us.
Yes, we get some neat action sequences, and some ready-to-be-filmed stand-offs between her and a few authority figures, but the tenacious, defiant rock star of became almost a secondary character in her own trilogy.
If Katniss Everdeen from book 1 is the heroine, then Katniss from books 2 and 3 is her tragic, unlucky in love best friend.
At some point, I really hope my book club gets a chance to read this. I would very much love to discuss the book trilogy in a group setting and hear multiple viewpoints. Whether that happens or not, I will, in all likelihood, reread these books later this year. I want to read them past the disappointment of The Love Triangle Requirement. I want to read them for what they are, knowing what they are and see if I feel differently.
Despite my misgivings, the books are wonderful reads. The first is, in my opinion, the best, and the Katniss Everdeen in book 1 represents a new kind of heroine. She is one of the best-written women in modern literature, despite coming from humble YA genre origins. The Katniss from books 2 and 3...well, you know by now how I feel about her.
They are perfect for a road trip or a snowed-in weekend. They are escapist, political, and completely Riotous.
My ratings for the books were 5, 3, and 3 respectively, with an average of 3.7 for the entire trilogy.
Have YOU read the Hunger Games trilogy? What did YOU think?
Labels: Book Review
Katrina Ray-Saulis January 4, 2014 at 6:46 AM
She was truly Harry Potter. The Girl Who Lived. The girl who broke the Capital's rules. And although PTSD would be inevitable, for a girl who had spent her whole life breaking Capital rules to be able to do it in such a public forum as the Games I felt should have given her a STRONGER conviction. So her crying in closets over love and loss bull was just so annoying!
Hi i like you publish , but i wanted you sey thinks about all arnd word , because you say only north american !
I just finished the trilogy and thought it was great. I also noted the lack of any spirituality and would be curious to know Collins' rationale for that. In some ways, I think its absence enables us to see the purely human element. The lack of transcendence generally seems to be a part of the dystopia that is Panem, which makes the loves of the characters take on a desperate quality. Everything begins and ends with what is in front of them. This lack of transcendence is what, I think, contributes to Katniss nearly going mad and falling apart on multiple occasions in Mockingjay. She fights desperately to hold on to those she loves; but if she loses them, she finds she has nothing to hold on to.
I do think that human beings tend to be inherently religious and that it would not matter whether organized religion had faded in a society, people would still have a sense of or seek out the unknown. They would at least have superstitions. So I don't think that The Hunger Games is realistic in that respect; but for some reason it still works.
I was initially skeptical of the "love triangle" but thought that it worked in this series because of the selflessness of the characters involved. Had Katniss been obsessive over her *romantic* feelings for either, I think it would have been ruined early on. The fact that her main concern is loving both of them as family and waiting to figure out the other stuff later keeps the focus outward and the series moving along.
i like this review i have to admit i agree with ur reivew
(spoiler alert) I agree, I loved the first book, got through the second (as one will do in the second part of a trilogy) and hated the third. No one learns anything, you don't get the feeling that the world was a better place for all the of the hell everyone went through. The sister, who Katniss got into this mess for, DIES! By the end of the book, I'm rooting for the suicide because the whole darned thing was just so depressing!
suggested Complicated Bankruptcy Lawyer Minnesota, view website... July 30, 2014 at 5:31 AM
Truly a Amazing book with so many twists and turns I thought it was a good book post your review on what you think.
Of course I'm just guessing, so please excuse the nonsense I write. But the lack of any religious practices in Panem could be explained by the passage of time that has occurred from the 21st Century to our introduction to Panem. 75 years have elapsed since the Hunger Games began at the end of a revolt by the 13 Districts against the Capital. But there is no specific date mentioned as to when the configuration of the Capital and 13 Districts were established. However there are mentions of the seas rising thousands of years earlier and flooding out former shorelines. This would have reduced the land area and reconfigured what was left dry above water. Presumably, what remained of the original lower 48 states of the US were gradually reconfigured over hundreds of years at the same time the new hardships and food shortages reduced the country's population. (There's no mention of Canada or Mexico even existing) The continent, the country, the government, the population and the culture may have crumbled and been rebuilt in differing configurations many times as centuries passed, each time losing more and more habits and practices unessential to survival. Religious faiths as we know them today grew and flourished as civilization grew and life became more than just surviving. With their bellies full, people could turn their thoughts to God and support their holy men and the temples of faith they built. But when civilization began it's fateful disintegration, over time perhaps religious faith became hard to sustain and finally it became a burden which no longer had any impact or meaning in the daily struggles of survival of a starving population. Perhaps it came to be seen as a delusion and a luxury that contributed nothing and added more demands that a starving population was too tired to meet. Religion feeds, and in return thrives, on hope. But the people of Panem knew only hunger and fear; they had no hope until Katness Everdean defied the Capital by offering to share poisoned berries with Peeta rather than kill him in their Hunger Game Finale. And the Capital allowed her to live. The fervor with which the people worshiped and followed the Mockingjay may have come close to the beginning of religious faith in the people of Panem, for she inspired the first experience with hope they had ever felt.
Marlene Detierro September 13, 2015 at 6:08 AM
While the Hunger Games is written for an older teen audience, I all can enjoy this and there is something in it for everyone.
Get Best Info Surprise Moving Companies Website
Excellent review. PTSD
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4454
|
__label__cc
| 0.675498
| 0.324502
|
MDKE
Home > Vol 8, No 4 (2020) > MOTOC
Crisis Management and Resilience for Restaurants in Romania during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Adrian MOTOC
The world is going through a pandemic that is spreading and affecting all parts of society. Businesses throughout Romania have been affected and many are in a state of crisis because of the virus. There is a general fear spread among the population since the government has implemented restrictions for both companies and people. This crisis is impacting restaurants all across the country. Even though a large number of restaurants are going out of business it is also clear that some prevail and some even do better than before the crisis. Previous studies conducted during a crisis showed that some businesses were more resilient than others due to the successful integration of crisis management and strategic planning. This study aims to analyze the integration between crisis management and strategic planning of four different restaurants by focusing on their leadership and culture. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate up to what extend the restaurants are working towards resilience by conducting interviews with the leader of the restaurants and co-workers. This study showed that the crisis is changing the ways small restaurants are acting and tend to become more resilient as the crisis progress and in the face of an even more possible financial crisis. Moreover, this study showed new opportunities such a crisis brings and how small restaurants are adopting them.
Arond-Thomas, M. (2014). Resilient leadership for challenging times. The Physician Executive. 30(4), 18-21.
Barasa, E., Mbau, R., & Gilson, L. (2018). What is resilience and how can it be nurtured? A Systematic review of the empirical literature on organizational resilience. International Journal of Health Policy Management, 7(6), 491–503. https://doi.org/10.15171/IJHPM.2018.06
Bourgeouis, L.J. III, & Eisenhardt, K.M. (1988). Strategic decision processes in high velocity environments: Four cases in the microcomputer industry. Management Science, 34(7), 816-835.
Burnett, J.J. (1998) A strategic approach to managing crisis. Public Relations Review, 24(4), 475‐484.
Bratianu, C. (2015). Developing strategic thinking in business education. Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 3, 409-429.
Bratianu, C., & Bejinaru, R. (2019). The theory of knowledge fields: A thermodynamics approach. Systems, 7(2), Article 20, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems7020020
Bratianu, C., & Bejinaru R. (2020). Knowledge dynamics: A thermodynamics approach, Kybernetes The International Journal of Cybernetics, Systems and Management Sciences, 49(1), 6-21. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-02-2019-0122
Bratianu, C., Agapie, A., Orzea, I., & Agoston, S. (2011). Intergenerational learning dynamics in universities. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(1), 10-18.
Bratianu, C., Hadad, S., & Bejinaru, R. (2020). Paradigm shift in business education: A competence-based approach. Sustainability, 12(4), 134-1365. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041348
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3, 77-101.
CECCAR (Romanian Corp of Accountant Experts and Authorized Accountants) (2018). Hospitality Culture Institute: Valoarea Pieței Restaurantelor din București se Ridică la 4,89 Miliarde de Lei [Hospitality Culture Institute: The Market Value of Restaurants in Bucharest amounts to 4.89 Billion Lei]. Retrieved from http://www.ceccarbusinessmagazine.ro/hospitality-culture-institute-valoarea-pietei-restaurantelor-din-bucuresti-se-ridica-la-489-miliarde-de-lei-a3226/.
Collis, J., & Hussey, R. (2009). Business research: A practical guide for undergraduate & postgraduate students. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dartey-Baah, K. (2015) Resilient leadership: A transformational-transactional leadership mix, Journal of Global Responsibility, 6(1), 99-112.
Denhardt, R.B. (1985). Strategic planning in state and local government. State & Local Government Review, 17(1), 174-179.
Deverell, E., & Olsson, E.K. (2010). Organizational culture effects on strategy and adaptability in crisis management, Risk Management, 12, 116–134.
Euromonitor International (2019). Full-service restaurants in Romania. Retrieved from https://www.euromonitor.com/full-service-restaurants-in-romania/report.
GOV (2020). Guvernul Romaniei – Masuri [Government of Romania - Measures]. Retrieved from https://gov.ro/ro/masuri.
Henderson, JC., & Ng, A. (2004). Responding to crises: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and hotels in Singapore. International Journal of Tourism Research, 6, 411-419.
Ingirige, B., Proverbs, D., & Jones, K.G. (2008). Investigating SME resilience and their adaptive capacities to extreme weather events: A literature review and synthesis, International Conference on Building, Building Education and Research (BEAR), March, 582–593.
Jacobsen, D.-I. (2017). How to conduct surveys? - Introduction to social science methods, 2nd ed. London, UK: SAGE Publication.
Kennedy, P., Perrottet, C., & Thomas, C. (2003). Scenario planning after 9/11: Managing the impact of a catastrophic event. Strategy & Leadership. Chicago, 31(1), 4‐14.
Lee, A., Vargo, J., & Seville, E. (2013). Developing a tool to measure and compare organizations’ resilience. Natural Hazards Review, 14(1), 29-41. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000075
Leo, S., Alan, CB., & Stella, S. (2006). Crisis management and recovery: How restaurants in Hong Kong responded to SARS. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 25(1), 3-11.
Mafabi, S., & Munene, J. (2015). Creative climate and organizational resilience: The mediating role of innovation. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 23(4).
Meyer, A.D. (1982). Adapting to environmental jolts. Administrative Science Quarterly, 27(4), 515-537.
Mitroff, I. (2004). Think like a sociopath, act like a saint. The Journal of Business Strategy, 25(5), 42‐53.
Mitroff, I.I., Pauchant, T., Finney, M., & Pearson, C. (1989). Do some organizations cause their own crises? The cultural profiles of crisis-prone vs crisis-prepared organizations. Industrial Crisis Quarterly 3(4), 269–283.
Mitroff, I., Pearson, C., & Pauchant, T.C. (1992). Crisis management and strategic management: similarities, differences and challenges. Advance in Strategic Management, 8, 235–260.
Nussbaum, M. (2016). Assessing resilience: How plans, strategies, and after action reports can improve our understanding of organizational preparedness. PhD Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California. Retrieved from https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1029878.pdf.
Preble, J.F. (1997). Integrating the crisis management perspective into the strategic management process. Journal of Management Studies, 34(5), 769–791.
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2012). Research Methods for Business Students. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
Seeger, M.W., Sellnow, T.L., & Ulmer, R.R. (1998). Communication, organization and crisis. Communication Yearbook 21, 231–275.
Seville, E. (2003). Resilience: Great concept...but what does it mean?. Compete Briefing Bite – Paper Presented at the US Council on Competitiveness.
Seville, E., Brunsdon, D., Dantas, A., Le Masurier, J., Wilkinson, S. & Vargo, J. (2008). Organisational resilience: Researching the reality of New Zealand organizations. Journal of Business Management, 2(3), 258-266.
Spillan, J., & Hough, M. (2003) Crisis planning in small businesses: Importance, impetus and indifference. European Management Journal, 21(3), 398‐407.
Stiri Oficiale (2020). Conduita sanitara [Sanitary conduct]. Retreived from https://stirioficiale.ro/conduita.
Teo, W. L, Lee, M., & Wee-Shiong, L. (2017). The relational activation of resilience model: How leadership activates resilience in an organizational crisis. Education Office, National Healthcare Group, Singapore.
Vargo, J., & Seville, E. (2011). Crisis strategic planning for SMEs: finding the silver lining. International Journal of Production Research, 49(18), 5619–5635.
Walker, B., Nilakant, V., & Baird, R. (2014). Promoting organizational resilience through sustaining engagement in a disruptive environment. What are the implications for HRM? Research Forum, 1-20.
WHO (2020). World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019.
Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E., & Griffin, R.W. (1993). Toward a theory of Organizational theory. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293-322.
Copyright (c) 2020 Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy
© Faculty of Management (SNSPA)
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC
The opinions expressed in the papers published are the authors’ own and do not necessarily express the views of the editors of this journal. The authors assume all responsibility for the ideas expressed in the materials published.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4459
|
__label__cc
| 0.569207
| 0.430793
|
Book 37: New Kid At School
Woo hoo! Best end-of-the-summer party ever! My entire family went to Hampton Beach today, and met my friends’ families there. I rode in the van with Carolina, Mirisen, Harrisson, Mom, and Pete. Everyone else— Dad, Aunt Brenda, Uncle Joe, and baby Zachary—rode in Uncle Joe’s car.
We got to the beach around 8am. The adults set up some towels and a beach tent, and placed Zachary in his covered carseat under the beach tent. Since he’s only 22 days old, Aunt Brenda originally considered keeping him at home. But they decided that as long as they kept him out of the direct sunlight, and brought him into an air-conditioned vehicle if it started getting too hot, he would be fine.
Mom and Aunt Brenda relaxed on the beach next to Zachary, and Dad and Uncle Joe went with us kids—well, me, Harrisson, Mirisen, and Carolina—to check out the water. Pete stood around awkwardly, unsure of what to do, until I yelled out, “Come on, Pete! Join us!” and he ran to join us.
The water was freezing cold—not what you might expect on a 90-degree day in August. But, well, this is New Hampshire we’re talking about.
Mirisen, Harrisson, Carolina and I waded out further and further into the water, getting used to it. It actually wasn’t too bad once I’d been in it for a while. Once my legs were numb.
Finally, I spotted my friend Jack, standing in the water about a football field away. I called his name and he splashed his way over. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Good to see you! How’s your summer been?”
“Good,” I told him. Following him were our friend Stivre and Jack’s ten-year-old sister, Leah. We all talked for a little bit, and then Leah and Harrisson went back onto the beach to build sand castles, and Mirisen and Carolina waded out further into the water and started jumping waves. I stood and talked with Jack and Stivre until we noticed our friend Kim bodysurfing with her older brother, Rob, a short distance away. We went and joined them, then went on a search for our remaining friend, Shevea. We finally found her and her family situated way on the other end of the beach, and persuaded them to move closer to where the rest of us were.
“You guys are going to find this weird,” said Shevea as we headed back toward the water after helping her family relocate. “But this is the first time I’ve ever been to the beach!”
“Really?” exclaimed Stivre, surprised. “Like, in your life?”
Shevea nodded. “Yep. Um… there aren’t… sharks in the water, are there?”
Kim and I exchanged smiles. So typical Shevea, the worrier.
“No sharks,” said Jack. “Maybe a jellyfish or two, though… just kidding!”
“No jellyfish here,” Kim assured Shevea. “Although Rob and I did get stung once when we were vacationing in Florida.”
Shevea’s face paled. “You guys got stung?”
Rob laughed. “You’re freaking out your friend here. Yeah, we did get stung, but that was in Florida. Like four years ago. Jellies don’t like coming up here; the water’s too cold.”
Shevea still looked concerned, but I patted her on the shoulder. “Really, Shevea, you won’t get stung here. I don’t think there’ve ever been jellyfish this far up the coast.”
We reached the ocean and Jack, Stivre, Kim, Rob and I all charged in. Shevea hung back nervously until Kim grabbed her arm and dragged her along to where the rest of us were. It took Shevea a couple minutes to get adjusted to the temperature of the water, but pretty soon we were all jumping around and splashing and having a great time.
We spent the rest of the day in the water and on the beach. Harrisson and Leah built some amazing sand castles, one of which was so big that Shevea’s little half-siblings were able to sit in it. Then the rest of us got to work building sand castles, trying to outdo each other, but Harrisson’s and Leah’s were by far the best.
We got some pictures of all of us kids on the beach, and then my friends and I went back into the water. Kim and Rob taught us all how to bodysurf, and we were having so much fun I never wanted the day to end.
(And P.S.—nobody got stung by jellyfish!)
Waaaaah. This morning, Aunt Brenda, Uncle Joe, Carolina, and Zachary left. They’re going back to their house in Pennsylvania now, which is all fixed up from the flood that destroyed it back in June. I can’t believe it’s been nearly three months since they came to live with us! I’m really going to miss them. Carolina became like an extra sister! It’ll be so weird going back to just Mirisen, Harrisson and me. Even Carolina’s family’s gerbils, Mitzy and Cocoa, became members of our family. Of course, once they leave, we’ll still have our gerbils, Gretchen and Squeaky; our dog, Surprise; and our three cats, Sniffer, Leelee, and Tuxio, but still. Things are going to feel so weird. They already do.
Well, I’m glad today is Labor Day, because we at least got to do something fun to take our minds off of Carolina and everybody leaving. We went to a neighborhood cookout! We hung out with our friends, played a bunch of games, and ate some really yummy food.
I can’t believe I’m starting high school in just two days. That’s crazy! It won’t be a big adjustment or anything, because I’ll be going to the same school I’ve attended since sixth grade— Learner’s Academy, where Kim, Shevea, Jack, and Stivre also go. At Learner’s Academy, there isn’t much of a difference between middle school and high school, except that in high school, lunch is 95 minutes later (hopefully I won’t get too hungry), and there are more opportunities for classes. So it won’t be a super big change, but still… it’s high school! That makes me feel so old!
And… my first day of high school. Yippee! Mom was shaking her head in mock disbelief as we all got in the van for her to take us to school. “I can’t believe you girls are in high school already,” she said, referring to Miri and me. “And Harrisson, fourth grade… wow.”
She dropped Harrisson off at the elementary school entrance (our school goes from pre-K through 12th grade, but the elementary school section is called “Learner’s Cove” and has its own separate wing of the building), then brought me over to the middle/high school entrance. “Have a great first day,” she said, giving me a hug.
“You too,” I said. “And you, Miri. Don’t work too hard!” Like last year and the year before, Mirisen’s being homeschooled because she’s eleven and in ninth grade. Not to mention the fact that she’s still the height of a typical eight-year-old.
I looked around for my friends when I got into school, but I didn’t see any of them. So I picked up my schedule and headed to my first class, which was Algebra 1. And… yay! Jack is in that class! Our teacher is Mr. Louis, who seems decent.
My other classes this semester are World Studies, Physical Science, and Computers. All the teachers seem okay, and I have friends in each of my classes! Shevea in World Studies, Kim and Stivre in Physical Science, and ALL FOUR OF MY BEST FRIENDS IN COMPUTERS!!!! Yay!!!!!!
I think I like ninth grade so far.
Last night’s dinner conversation revolved around Harrisson getting a new bedroom. Since we moved into this house, he and Mirisen have always shared a room, and I’ve had my own room, and Pete has had his own room. When Carolina and her family came to stay with us, Pete moved downstairs to a room Dad fixed up in the basement so that Aunt Brenda and Uncle Joe could have his upstairs room.
I guess Pete decided he liked his basement room, because tonight Dad said that Pete’s old room is going to become Harrisson’s room. Mirisen jumped out of her seat and hugged Dad. “Thank you thank you thank you!” she exclaimed. “I finally get to have my own room! Thank goodness!”
Harrisson did not seem so excited. “Why do I have to have my own room?” he asked. “I don’t mind sharing with Miri.”
Mirisen gave him a look. “You get to have your own room because Mom and Dad are the nicest parents ever. Thank you so much, Mom and Dad.”
Harrisson still looked concerned. And then today, he tried to convince me that I should let him share my room. It didn’t work.
My friends and I have a special lunch table that we always eat at. Kim and Shevea and I started sitting there back in seventh grade, and Jack and Stivre joined us in eighth grade, and we kept the table all the way through the year. We weren’t sure if we’d get it this year, since it’s a whole different lunch period (now between third and fourth period instead of second and third) with a whole different set of kids. But guess what! On the first day of school, we claimed it, and we’ve been sitting there ever since.
Until today. We all met up with each other on the way into the cafeteria, and headed to our normal table. But there was already someone sitting at it.
It was a girl I didn’t know, with long, somewhat scraggly dirty-blonde hair. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a floor-length blue skirt. As we got closer, I noticed that she was wearing purple glasses, and that she was not smiling.
“Who’s that? I’ve never seen her before,” said Stivre.
“I think she’s in one of my classes,” said Jack, “But I don’t remember which one. She’s really quiet.”
“I’m pretty sure I recognize her from science,” said Shevea. “I think.”
“Well, come on!” exclaimed Kim, already bounding ahead of us. “Let’s go say hello!”
We all headed over to the table, and Kim sat down right across from the girl, who seemed to tense up. “Hey,” said Kim, smiling. “I’m Kim, and these are my friends Allisen, Shevea, Stivre, and Jack. What’s your name?”
The girl looked… terrified. Which is weird, since Kim is one of the least terrifying people I know.
Jack snapped his fingers. “Ella! That’s your name, right? You’re in my economics class.”
The girl’s eyes darted around as if she was looking for an escape. Finally, she whispered, “Ellie.”
“Ellie! Right. And it is economics we have together, right?”
Ellie didn’t say or do anything.
My friends and I looked at each other, trying to decide what to do. Finally, I slid in next to Kim. “We usually sit at this table, so do you mind—” I started, but before I could even finish my sentence, Ellie stood up and started gathering her stuff. “Wait!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t mean you have to leave! I was going to ask if it’s okay if we sit here with you. If not, we’ll find somewhere else to sit. It’s no big deal.”
Slowly, Ellie sat back down.
“So… is it okay if we sit with you?” Kim asked.
Ellie nodded.
Shevea, Jack, and Stivre all sat down as well, and we started talking like usual. A few times Kim tried to get Ellie involved in the conversation, but Ellie never said a word. The moment the bell rang for the end of lunch, Ellie shot up from the table and bolted into the crowd.
“Wow,” said Stivre sarcastically. “What a nice person.”
“Hey, lay off her!” exclaimed Shevea, a little angrily. We all turned to look at her, surprised.
“Well, what if she’s shy?” Shevea continued. “She’s probably just shy, and couldn’t think of anything to say, and all the sudden these five kids she doesn’t know come over to her table, and she’s probably feeling kind of awkward, because we all obviously know each other but she doesn’t know any of us…”
“Naw,” Stivre made a face. “I think she’s just plain old unfriendly.”
“Well, you don’t know what it’s like, do you?” Shevea retorted. “You’re not shy. You don’t have a problem talking to people you don’t know. I know what it’s like. I’ve… been in her position before.”
Stivre rolled his eyes. “Come on. How hard is it to talk to people? We were asking all the questions, all she had to do was answer them!”
“Just because something’s easy for you doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone,” snapped Shevea.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the next class we had was Computers, with all five of us. But Shevea and Stivre made sure to sit on the complete opposite sides of the row, with Jack, Kim and me in the middle. They ignored each other for the entire period.
“Ellie Ramsey stutters.” Those were the first words Shevea said to me when we met each other for World Studies this morning.
And the first word I said to her was, “Huh?”
“Ellie Ramsey—the girl we sat with at lunch yesterday?—she stutters. In science, our teacher asked her to read out loud from the textbook. And she refused. So the teacher had someone else read, but then she went over and talked with Ellie, and I heard Ellie stuttering. So maybe that’s why she didn’t want to talk to us. She was embarrassed.”
I shrugged. “Could be, I guess. I wonder if she’ll sit with us again today.”
We met Kim, Jack, and Stivre for lunch, and Shevea explained to them what she’d found out about Ellie. Then we looked to see if she was at our usual table, but she wasn’t.
“She’s over there,” Kim said finally, pointing toward a seat by the window. “Let’s go talk to her.”
We made our way over to where Ellie was sitting, Kim leading the way. “Hi Ellie!” she said cheerfully when we got close enough for Ellie to hear us.
Ellie looked up, then turned back to her sandwich without the slightest inclination that she recognized us.
“Isn’t that just the nicest person ever?” muttered Stivre sarcastically.
Shevea glared at him, then went and stood across from Ellie. “Hey Ellie. Do you mind if we sit with you again?”
Stonily, Ellie shrugged and continued eating. We all sat down around her.
“So…” said Shevea, when nobody started talking. “Is this your first year at this school, Ellie?”
“Where did you go before this?” asked Kim.
Ellie stopped chewing, hesitated for a moment, and then said very deliberately, “Homeschool.”
“Oh, hey, my sister’s homeschooled!” I exclaimed. “She loves it. I was homeschooled too, when I was really little.”
“So is this your first time ever going to, like, an actual school-school?” Kim asked Ellie. Ellie shook her head.
“Why aren’t you homeschooled anymore?” asked Jack. “Were you just ready for a change, or did you want to get involved in more activities, or did your parents not feel comfortable teaching you all the high school stuff, or—”
He broke off, because Ellie stuffed her last piece of sandwich in her mouth, shoved her potato chips and brownie into her lunch bag, and got up.
“Wait!” exclaimed Kim. “No, don’t leave! We’re just trying to get to know you!”
Ellie didn’t answer. She just kept walking away.
“We know you stutter!” Kim called after her. “And that’s totally fine! We really don’t care! We’re just trying to be friends with you!”
Ellie still didn’t look back.
Stivre turned to Shevea. “Still think she’s a nice person?”
“Yes, I do,” said Shevea fiercely. “And you will too, once she comes out of her shell. You’ll see.”
I’d like to believe Shevea. I really would. But… I’m sort of starting to believe Stivre on this one.
We looked for Ellie in the lunchroom again today, and couldn’t find her. I hope we haven’t scared her off. Shevea said she was in science class today. Is she avoiding us?
September 11. What more can I say? The whole school had a special assembly, commemorating the people who died in the terrorist attacks seven years ago. Kim got to sing in the assembly—“God Bless the USA.” Some other students sang too, and we had some time to sit and pray and reflect.
At lunch, once again, we couldn’t find Ellie. Jack said he saw her in Economics earlier.
On Friday, no Ellie, but Jack and Shevea said they saw her in class. So that leads me to believe that she is avoiding us. Whatever. I don’t even know why we’re trying so hard to be friends with her, to be honest. She clearly has no interest in being friends with us. But Shevea still believes in her, so… I guess we’ll keep trying.
Anyway, last night was fun. Harrisson’s been sleeping in his own room for a couple nights now, and he’s finally starting to get used to it. His friend Sam came for a sleepover, and after dinner, the two boys made chocolate chip cookies. I came in and helped (or at least, helped them eat the dough!). When Mirisen came in and saw us eating the raw dough, she gasped. “Does that dough have eggs in it? You guys shouldn’t be eating it! Raw eggs can carry salmonella!”
“It’s only two eggs in the whole thing,” I told her. “And have you ever actually known anyone who got sick by eating raw dough?”
“There’s always a first,” said Mirisen prissily. But two minutes later, she grabbed a little bit of the dough and popped it in her mouth.
“Um, guys?” I said a couple moments later as I scraped the remaining dough into twelve measly cookies. “The recipe says this yields four dozen total. We’ve only made one dozen, and they’re tiny.”
“So? Let’s just make more!” suggested Sam.
“Not another whole recipe,” I said quickly, thinking about how much flour and sugar and butter that would take. “How about a half recipe? Or a quarter?”
“Two-fifths!” exclaimed Harrisson. “That way I can practice fractions!”
So we made two-fifths of a recipe, and of course ate some of it, and then Harrisson and Sam left to watch a movie, claiming they were sick. Mirisen and I finished, and by the time we’d baked all the cookies, cleaned up, and eaten some more raw dough and fresh cookies, we felt a little sick too.
Well! No Ellie at lunch. BUT Shevea talked to her in science today! She told us that at lunch, and Stivre said, “What, was it a one-sided conversation?”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Shevea, flashing Stivre a disgusted look. “Ellie and I both learned a lot about each other. Ellie told me that she’s been homeschooled since fourth grade, and that she went to public school in Merrimack before that. She lives in Merrimack, and she has three older brothers, two cats, two dogs, and a tank of fish. Her birthday is in January, she likes country music, she plays the piano, and she loves to run.”
We all looked at Shevea with surprise. “Ellie actually told you all this?” asked Jack.
Shevea nodded. “She’s really nice once you get to know her. I told you guys.”
“Well, tell her to start sitting with us at lunch again! We want to get to know her too!” exclaimed Kim.
Ellie sat with us today! She mainly talked just with Shevea, while Stivre texted his girlfriend, and Jack, Kim and I talked about random stuff. But I kept one ear on Shevea and Ellie’s conversation the whole time, and I was really surprised at how easily they talked with each other. I mean, Shevea’s fine talking just with us, but she isn’t a socialite or anything. And Ellie… well, I’d never really heard her talk at all before, aside from a couple words here and there. But she and Shevea kept up a steady conversation about pets, classes, and favorite books throughout the whole lunch period.
When lunch was over, Ellie left to go to her French class, and the rest of us went to Computers. “See?” Shevea said to Stivre on the way. “In case you didn’t notice, Ellie and I spent all lunch talking to each other. She’s perfectly friendly and social once she feels comfortable talking to you.” Shevea turned to me. “It’s so weird. Usually I’m the one who’s shy and quiet, and whoever’s talking to me is initiating the conversation and asking the questions and stuff. But with Ellie, I’m the one who’s starting conversations, because… I kind of have to. You know what I mean? ‘Cause I know what it’s like to be in her position, and I know she feels awkward not saying anything, but she can’t think of anything to say… it’s like watching me a couple years ago. It’s interesting.”
“It is interesting,” I agreed. “People are interesting. I now believe you, by the way. That she’s a nice person and could become friends with us.”
Okay. Well. I thought everything was going well. Ellie ate lunch with us on Friday, and again today, and today she was even somewhat part of our conversation. “What did everyone do over the weekend?” Jack asked.
“I skateboarded,” said Stivre.
“I played Barbies, Polly Pocket, and stuffed animals with my little sister,” laughed Kim.
“I d-did homework,” said Ellie.
“Me too,” said Shevea, wrinkling her nose.
“I did the one-legged hop with my brother,” I volunteered.
“And what in the world is the one-legged hop?” Jack asked.
“It’s a game Harrisson invented. It’s kind of like tag except everyone hops on one leg. When you tag someone, you switch to your other leg and the person you tagged is it. Pretty tiring, but sort of fun.”
At that moment, Ellie just got up and walked away. Voom. Without a word. The rest of us stared at each other. “Um… was I too boring for her?” I asked.
Shevea looked befuddled. “I’m going to follow her,” she decided.
We all watched as Shevea followed Ellie through the cafeteria, finally catching up to her at the doors… and then going through the doors. Shevea didn’t come back for the rest of lunch.
She met up with the rest of us for Computers. “Where did you and Ellie go?” Kim asked.
“To the library,” Shevea answered. “She wouldn’t tell me why she left, though. I asked, but she just said she was done eating and wanted to go read.”
“That so wasn’t the real reason,” said Kim.
“I know. But we have to be patient. I’m sure she had a real reason, and I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.”
WOW. Shevea was right— we would find out eventually. I found out today.
We went on a family bike ride after school. All of us— Mom, Dad, Mirisen, Harrisson, me, and even Pete. We were on a biking/walking trail, and we stopped after a little bit to catch our breath.
While we were resting, some joggers came into view— two tall teenage boys, and a shorter teenage girl. As they grew closer, I realized that the girl looked like Ellie. And as they passed us, I realized that the girl was Ellie!
“Ellie!” I exclaimed, jumping up. The two boys stopped and turned around, but Ellie kept running.
“Ellie!” one of the boys called, and she stopped. She turned around and faced me with a ferocious scowl on her face.
“Hi,” I said uncertainly.
Her expression didn’t change. She took a step closer to the boys—her brothers?—and kept glaring at me. “Yeah, s-s-s-so what if I have a p-p-prosthetic leg? It’s none of y-your b-b-b-business.”
I looked down at her legs. It was the first time I’d seen her wearing anything other than a floor-length skirt. She was wearing shorts, and sure enough, her left leg wasn’t a real leg—it was a prosthetic!
“I—” I stammered. “Ellie, I— honestly, I didn’t know. And— yeah, it’s none of my business. I don’t care what kind of leg you have. I just wanted to say hi.”
“Uh-huh, yeah, sure y-you d-d-d-don’t care. W-whatever.”
“Ellie,” The taller of the two boys looked exasperated. “Relax. Not everyone in the world is against you. Geez.” He turned to me. “Learner’s Academy?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Ellie eats lunch with my friends and me sometimes. I’m Allisen.”
“Nice to meet you, Allisen. I’m Martin, and this is Nick.” He motioned to the other guy with them. “We’re Ellie’s brothers.”
Ellie had already started running again. I bolted ahead and caught up with her. “Ellie,” I said. “Please. Just listen. Maybe you’ve— I don’t know, had some bad experiences or something in the past, but my friends and I— we really don’t care if you stutter or have a prosthetic leg or any of that stuff. We’re just trying to be friendly. I hope you know that. It’s your choice whether you want to be friends with us, and I understand if you don’t want to, it’s just— we really are nice people. We’re not going to make fun of you or bug you about your leg or anything. We just— we just want to be your friends.”
Ellie slowed down and stopped running. I did too. She stared me down, and then finally said, “Y-y-you have e-enough friends. You d-d-d-don’t ne-need me.”
“There’s no such thing as having enough friends,” I told her. “It’s always possible to make more.”
She looked at me for the longest time, then finally said, “F-fine. I’ll sit w-with you g-g-guys tomorrow.”
True to her word, Ellie did sit with us at lunch today. And the first thing she said once we were all there was, “I h-h-have a p-prosthetic leg. S-s-say whatever y-you want. I d-d-don’t care.”
Stivre, Jack, Kim, and Shevea all just looked at each other, then at Ellie. “Wow,” Jack said finally. “I never would have guessed. It—I mean, you walk just like anyone else.”
“I’ve h-had it s-s-since I w-was six,” said Ellie. “I d-don’t like t-talking about it.”
“That’s fine,” said Kim. “Let’s talk about something else. Did anyone see the new Narnia movie over the summer? It was amazing.”
We all started talking about movies, and Ellie seemed surprised. And happy. And more relaxed than I had ever seen her.
My birthday! I am fourteen years old. Wow. 1.4 decades. .14 of a century. 168 months. Fourteen! I had a nice small family party today, with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake and some presents at home (a sweatshirt, a pair of cute earrings, two books, some boots, and some fuzzy socks). Mom and I also made brownies for me to share with my friends tomorrow.
And guess what! I don’t even have to wonder whether Ellie will be sitting with us tomorrow, because I’m almost positive she will!
I brought the brownies to school and gave them out at lunchtime. Ellie at first didn’t take one, but Jack said, “It is her birthday and she orders you to take one! Just kidding. But they’re really good.”
Ellie looked surprised. “Oh, it’s y-y-your b-birth-day? H-h-happy birthday.” She took a brownie and bit into it. “Mmm, th-this is g-g-good. D-did you make them?”
“My mom and I did.”
Ellie’s gaze fell to the table, and her eyes filled up with tears. I immediately felt bad, although I didn’t know what I’d said or done that had made her sad. “What’s wrong, Ellie?” I asked.
Ellie started to get up, but then she hesitated, and looked around at all of us through her wet eyes. All five of us—even Stivre—were looking at her concernedly.
Slowly, Ellie sat back down. “It— it’s my m-m-mom,” she said, her voice shaking. “She h-h-has l-leukem-m-mia. Th-that’s wh-why I’m n-n-n-not h-homeschooled anym-m-more.”
I thought back to that time a couple weeks ago, the first time she just got up and left our table. It was right after Jack had asked why she wasn’t homeschooled anymore, wasn’t it? I cringed inwardly. We’d all been asking questions like that.
“Oh Ellie,” said Shevea sympathetically, putting her hand on Ellie’s arm. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pray for her. Every day.”
“I will too,” I said. “And I’m sorry we were asking you questions about why you stopped being homeschooled… it must have made you think of that.”
Ellie nodded, wiping her eyes. “It’s o-o-okay. I think about it l-like all the t-t-time, e-except when I’m r-r-r-running.”
“When you’re running?” exclaimed Stivre incredulously. “But you’re— I mean, you have a fake leg, right? You can run?”
Ellie nodded defensively.
“No, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you can’t or anything. I just— that’s amazing. That’s really cool.” Stivre was looking at Ellie with admiration.
Ellie looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then gave him a tiny smile.
I’ve been thinking about Ellie since we got out of lunch today. I think she trusts us now— more than she used to, anyway. And I understand now why she was so touchy about certain topics. I’ll be careful about mentioning those topics in the future.
But I think that, over time, Ellie will come to trust us more and more, and eventually, she’ll be another one of my closest friends, along with Kim, Shevea, Jack, and Stivre. I just have that feeling.
Book 38: Important Words
Book Details page
Go to "Extras" page
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4461
|
__label__wiki
| 0.559975
| 0.559975
|
Review: The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages
Harry Potter fans will love these new editions of The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages, which build on the world created in the Harry Potter series.
Both titles are referred to in the series, with The Tales of Beedle the Bard playing a special role in the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and of course Quidditch features in all of the books in one way or another.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a special collection of fairy tales, often read as bedtime stories for young wizards and witches. In the introduction, J K Rowling explains that the tales help explain that 'magic causes as much trouble as it cures.'
There are five tales in total:
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
The Fountain of Fair Fortune
The Warlock's Hairy Heart
Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump
The Tale of the Three Brothers
Beedle the Bard lived many years ago, in the fifteenth century, and each of his stories is accompanied in the book by explanatory notes and footnotes, written by Professor Dumbledore and used with permission from the Hogwart's Headmaster's Archive.
Quidditch Through the Ages is quite a different book, a comprehensive guide to everyone's favourite wizarding sport, written by Kennilworthy Whisp, a famous Quidditch journalist.
Following an introduction by Professor Albus Dumbledore, it explores the history of Quidditch, beginning with the evolution of the flying broomstick, and progressing through other broom games like Creaothceann, the most dangerous of all, to eventually learn about the first golden snitch.
Kennilworthy also discusses the importance of keeping the game secret from Muggles, and how Quidditch has changed over the years. There is a section dedicated to the various teams, and chapters about the world game and the futuristic racing broom.
The publicaton of these two books is in support of two charities. In the case of The Tales of Beedle the Bard it is Lumos, an international children's charity founded by J K Rowling herself; and Quidditch Through the Ages supports Comic Relief.
Convincing and entertaining, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages are bound to be enjoyed by young readers.
Title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages
Illustrator: Jonny Duddle (cover) and Tomislav Tomic
Publisher: Bloomsbury, $12.99
ISBN: 9781408883099 and 9781408883082
Type: Junior fiction
Labels: Junior Fiction, Reviews, Reviews by Sarah, Sarah Steed
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4463
|
__label__wiki
| 0.759698
| 0.759698
|
Any Questions? Call Us: 513-381-4KMG (4564)
KMG’s Matt Tunnacliffe Excels at Coach Zauner Camp for Long Snappers
March 14, 2019 /in Featured, Football /by Jesse
Matt Tunnacliffe, a 2019 NFL Draft eligible, participated in Coach Zauner’s Long Snapping Camp held in Arizona in February. Coach Zauner’s Camps have produced numerous NFL alumni, from kicker, Sebastian Janikowski, punter, Johnny Hekker, and long snapper, John Weeks. Matt excelled under the guidance of Coach Zauner and his staff, rating in the top 15 of participants.
Matt’s skills will be on display on March 19, at the University of Toledo’s Pro Day.
Information on Coach Zauner’s Camps can be found on his website, https://www.coachzaunerslockerroom.com/.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/tuna.jpg 255 198 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-03-14 14:06:142019-03-14 14:06:15KMG’s Matt Tunnacliffe Excels at Coach Zauner Camp for Long Snappers
After Another Impressive Year, KMG Football’s Rico Murray signs with Hamilton Tiger-Cats
March 5, 2019 /in Featured, Football /by Jesse
After leading the CFL in interceptions with 5 in 2018, Rico Murray agrees to a deal to return to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Rico spent the 2018 season with Ottawa Redblacks (selected as their defensive MVP) and the 2017 season with Toronto Argonauts after spending 4 seasons with Hamilton. Rico, a three time All-Star selection (2014, 2017, and 2018) and a Grey Cup Champion in 2017, looks to continue his CFL success in his 11th professional football season (3 seasons in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals).
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/rico_murray.jpg 480 640 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-03-05 19:32:062019-03-05 19:32:07After Another Impressive Year, KMG Football’s Rico Murray signs with Hamilton Tiger-Cats
KMG Football’s Heath Harding Signs with CFL’s Calgary Stampeders
KMG Football client, Heath Harding, signs professional contract with CFL’s Calgary Stampeders. Heath, a native of Englewood, Ohio, and a graduate of Dayton Christian High School and Miami (Ohio) University, will begin his CFL career this May. He joins the CFL after a stint with the Atlanta Falcons in 2018.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Heath-Harding-Signs-e1551813085526.jpg 4032 3024 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-03-05 19:12:412019-03-05 19:13:36KMG Football’s Heath Harding Signs with CFL’s Calgary Stampeders
Super Bowl Champion, New England Patriots reportedly Showing Interest in KMG’s Adonis Davis
March 5, 2019 /in Featured, Football, Uncategorized /by Jesse
Adonis Davis might be considered a small school prospect, but in no way is he going under the radar of teams. After finishing an incredible career at Florida Tech, Daniel Supraner of Florida Tech Sports and the Space Coast Daily believes Davis will go down as one of the best players in program history. Davis finishes his collegiate career as Florida Tech’s record holder for sacks (23), sacks in a single season (8.0), career tackles for loss (52.0) and tackles for loss in a single season (21.0). He was named a three-time All-GSC First Team selection. In 2017, Davis was a finalist for the Cliff Harris Award given to the Small College Defensive Player of the Year as well as recognized as an All-American by four separate organizations, including the Associated Press.
Based on his awards and accomplishments, it should be no surprise to hear Davis’s name being mentioned alongside the reigning Super Bowl champion, New England Patriots. Doug Kyed, a Patriots beat reporter for NESN.com, tweeted on March 3, 2019, “Florida Tech defensive end Adonis Davis is an under-the-radar draft prospect who has received interest from the Patriots. 6-3, 260 pounds and had eight sacks in 2018. He wasn’t invited to the combine.”
NFL teams will have the opportunity to work out Adonis at his scheduled Pro Day on March 27.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/adonis.jpg 263 191 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-03-05 18:15:012019-03-05 18:15:03Super Bowl Champion, New England Patriots reportedly Showing Interest in KMG’s Adonis Davis
KMG Football signs OL Jordan Rigg
January 15, 2019 /in Featured, Football /by Jesse
Jordan Rigg, offsensive lineman from Miami (Ohio) University has agreed to representation for the 2019 NFL Draft with KMG Sports of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Jordan, a native of Springboro, Ohio, played in and started all 12 games at left tacklehis senior year, helping Miami rush for 159.8 yards per game. In addition, Jordan scored two touchdowns on the season, one being a had a two-yard rushing score versus WMU and the other was a recovered fumble in the end zone at Akron. Jordan was a Third Team All-MAC selection in 2017 and 2018.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/J-RIGG.jpg 957 1300 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-15 19:00:142019-01-15 19:00:14KMG Football signs OL Jordan Rigg
KMG Football signs Notre Dame TE Nic Weishar
Nic Weishar, TE, Notre Damn University, has agreed to representation for the 2019 NFL Draft with KMG Sports of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nic, a native of Midlothian, IL, played in all 13 games his senior year. He was named to the Wuerffel Trophy Watch List (2018, 2017), Allstate AFCA Good Works Team (2018), and Irish Around the Bend Award (2017) recipient.
Besides football, Nic has been active in the community. Nic helps with Weish4Ever — the Andrew Weishar Foundation, whose mission is to serve as an all-purpose resource for the families of children and adolescent cancer patients, providing financial, emotional and moral support, along with understanding and wise counsel.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nic-2.jpg 287 400 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-15 18:27:392019-01-15 18:27:40KMG Football signs Notre Dame TE Nic Weishar
KMG Signs Offensive Lineman, Dakota Tallman
January 12, 2019 – Cincinnati, OH
Dakota Tallman, offensive lineman from Eastern Michigan University has agreed to representation for the 2019 NFL Draft with KMG Sports of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dakota, a native of Elyria, Ohio, was named to the NCAA Rimington Trophy Preseason Watchlist his final two seasons at EMU. Dakota started all 13 games his senior year and was selected Fourth Team Preseason All-MAC by Athlon Sports.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/tallman.jpg 183 275 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-15 17:36:202019-01-16 18:31:18KMG Signs Offensive Lineman, Dakota Tallman
KMG Football Signs OLB/DE Adonis Davis
January 14, 2019 /in Featured, Football, Uncategorized /by Jesse
Adonis Davis, Defensive Lineman and Outside Linebacker, from Florida Tech, has agreed to representation for the 2019 NFL Draft with KMG Sports of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Adonis, a native of Columbus, Ohio, transferred to Florida Tech after beginning his career at Iowa Western CC. At Florida Info Tech, Adonis tallied 154 tackles and 21 sacks, to go along with 8 forced fumbles. Following the 2018 season, Adonis was named Division II – All-America Team, Honorable Mention.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Adonis-Davis.jpg 320 580 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-14 16:56:022019-01-21 19:01:08KMG Football Signs OLB/DE Adonis Davis
KMG Football Announces Signing of WR David Eldridge
KMG Football has agreed to a representation contract with James Madison University Wide Receiver, David Eldridge.
David, a native of Bealeton, VA, finished his career with JMU totaling 847 receiving yards, 64 receptions, and 4 touchdowns. Prior to JMU, David played collegiality at the University of Virginia.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/DE.jpg 165 305 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-14 16:45:152019-01-14 16:45:16KMG Football Announces Signing of WR David Eldridge
KMG Football Announces Signing of JMU’s Darrious Carter
January 7, 2019 – Cincinnati, OH
Darrious Carter, defensive end/linebacker, from James Madison University, has agreed to representation for the 2019 NFL Draft with KMG Sports of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Darrious, a native of Indiana, Pennsylvania, was a key component to James Madison University’s recent success. Darrious began his collegiate career at Virginia University before transferring to JMU. His senior season, he played in 10 games, making five starts, had 29 total tackles (19 solo), to go with 7.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
http://www.kmgsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Carter_Darrious_NDSU_2017-e1547234361314.jpg 141 250 Jesse /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Logo-1.png Jesse2019-01-12 19:32:082019-01-14 16:57:23KMG Football Announces Signing of JMU’s Darrious Carter
Bob Huggins
KMG Office Photos
Athletes Training
KMG Archives
KMG Blog
Beckham Square Suite 130
12500 Reed Hartman Highway,
KMG Sports Management
KMG promises a commitment to doing whatever it takes our clients reach their highest level of personal and professional success
© Copyright - KMG Sports | designed by Cincinnati WebTec
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4464
|
__label__cc
| 0.724872
| 0.275128
|
Lela London / March 5, 2013
Styled from head to toe: UK fashion from north to south
When it comes to tracing the development of the fashion industry, most people turn their attention to international trips which take in the major fashion cities of the world: Paris, Milan and London. However, turn your attention a little closer to home and you might be surprised by the fashion tips you could pick up right here on home soil.
The Scottish capital, Edinburgh is perhaps best known for its association with arts and culture. Yet alongside the annual Fringe festival, Edinburgh is also home to some of the best fashion styles around. Whether you’re interested in traditional Scottish attire or something a little more contemporary, this is one city which will provide both in plentiful supply.
To get your hands on opulent kilts, stunning jewellery and the latest on-trend clothing, head to one of the city’s many shopping districts. Lothians Shopping and Livingston Designer Outlet are great places to find high quality garments at affordable prices while the Royal Mile should be your first port of call for unusual trinkets and one-off statement pieces that are sure to make an impression on the fashion world.
Turning your attention to the English capital, London hosts a number of high profile fashion events for a reason – it’s a melting pot of inspiration and diverse tastes. Whether you’re hitting the markets of Camden Town or trawling the exclusive boutiques and designer stores located around Oxford Street, you’re sure to find something that is fashionable.
Head off the beaten track to explore some of the deeper corners of the city and become surrounded by vibrant and colourful individuals who have plenty of style inspiration to share. One of the best things about London is its multicultural status and this means you’ll witness fashion styles which have been influenced by trends from throughout the world.
If you want to compare the fashion styles of these two capitals then why not journey between them? Weekend trips are more than possible thanks to rail services operated by firms such as East Coast Trains and you can find plenty of cheap train tickets online so that you have more money to spend in these fashion centres.
Of course, it’s not just capital cities which are known for their contributions to the fashion world – virtually every city or county in the UK can boast some claim to fame when it comes to creating their own style. The southern coastal town of Brighton is a perfect example and is known as a hive of vibrancy and eccentric tastes. Journey down the quaint Lanes and stumble across unique shops which stock virtually everything you can think of before marvelling at the individualism which is painted on every street corner, shop front and outfit.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4470
|
__label__cc
| 0.689469
| 0.310531
|
Tag: infrastructure
Online seminar video: The Lives and Careers of Professional Online Streamers
The Lives and Careers of Professional Live Streamers
This talk examines the careers and backgrounds of professional “live streamers” broadcasting on leading platform Twitch.tv. I begin by outlining the rapid growth of this site to the point where millions of individuals are broadcasting to well over one hundred million viewers on a regular basis. Drawing on five years of interview and ethnographic data, I focus on examining the pasts, presents and (predicted or considered) futures of live streamers. How did these individuals (often lacking any professional media training) find their way in to being professional streamers, what does the everyday labour of streaming entail, and what do they expect will embody the future of their chosen career? Throughout these elements I consider the associated entanglements – digital game culture, online celebrity, platform infrastructure and governance – which shape this new media form, and show how live streaming is increasingly influencing both amateur, and professional, content production.
Mark R. Johnson is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on live streaming and Twitch.tv, esports, game consumption and production, and gamification and gamblification. He has published in journals including ‘Information, Communication and Society’, ‘New Media and Society’, ‘The Sociological Review’, ‘Convergence’, ‘Games and Culture’, and the ‘Journal of Virtual Worlds Research’. Outside academia he is also an independent game designer, a regular games blogger and podcaster, a freelance writer for numerous gaming publications, and a former professional poker player.
The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones Symposium and Book Launch
Friday 17 August, 3pm – 5.30pm
MECO Seminar Room S226, John Woolley Building A20, University of Sydney
RSVP via Eventbrite
The rapid uptake of mobile phones in the Pacific Islands over the last ten years has created a complicated moral economy. We understand the moral economy of mobile phones to imply a field of shifting relations among consumers, companies and state actors, all of whom have their own ideas about what is good, fair and just. These ideas inform the ways in which, for example, consumers acquire and use mobile phones; companies promote and sell voice, SMS and data subscriptions; and state actors regulate both everyday use of mobile phones and market activity around mobile phones. Ambivalence and disagreement about who owes what to whom is thus an integral feature of the moral economy of mobile phones.
This symposium reports on research in Fiji and Papua New Guinea funded by the Australian Research Council, including two documentary films. It concludes with a book launch for The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Perspectives, an edited volume published in May 2018 by the Australian National University Press and is available for free download here.
Confirmed presenters include: Heather A. Horst (University of Sydney), Robert J. Foster (University of Rochester), Lucas Watt (RMIT University), Wendy Bai Magea (University of Goroka), Romitesh Kant (University of South Pacific/LaTrobe University), and luke gaspard (University of Sydney). The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Perspectives will be launched by Professor Gerard Goggin (University of Sydney).
Media@Sydney: The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones in the Pacific Symposium https://t.co/G9R21e3wGb
— MediaAtSydney (@MediaAtSydney) August 17, 2018
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4475
|
__label__wiki
| 0.937786
| 0.937786
|
PATRICK COMERFORD: an online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
Meet me in Lichfield
Thinking about 1916
Limerick Cathedrals and Churches
Visiting Synagogues
A ‘virtual tour’ of a dozen
sites in Jewish Thessaloniki
during this long ‘lockdown’
The Jewish community of Thessaloniki is unique because of its continued presence throughout the city’s 2,300-year history (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
I had planned to be in Greece for Holy Week and Easter, which fell last weekend in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, and I was due to fly back from Chania this evening (22 April 2020). But the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic has cancelled all my travel plans.
I now even wonder whether I am going to get to Thessaloniki and Halkidiki at the end of August and the beginning of September, or whether I can plan to visit Crete later this year.
Meanwhile, I am offering a series of ‘virtual tours’ of favourite places in Greece, with a ‘virtual tour’ this evening of a dozen sites in Jewish Thessaloniki.
This is offered in the spirit of my recent ‘virtual tours’ of a dozen historical sites in Thessaloniki, a dozen sites in Athens, a dozen churches and chapels in Crete, a dozen churches in Thessaloniki, a dozen monasteries in Crete, a dozen churches in Rethymnon, and a dozen restaurants in Rethymnon.
Most of my visits to Thessaloniki in the 1990s were working visits as a journalist. But I have often returned since then on city breaks and on family occasions, to visit Mount Athos, and to see the area where my grandfather was posted during World War I and where he caught the malaria that eventually led to his death.
Thessaloniki is the second city of Greece. This is the city of Aristotle and of Alexander the Great. In Byzantine times, this was second only to Constantinople as a political and cultural city, and with its walls, towers, churches and historical and archaeological sites, Thessaloniki remains a Byzantine city.
1, The Jewish Museum:
The Jewish Museum on Agiou Mina tells the story of a unique community (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Thessaloniki was once the largest Jewish city in the world. The Jewish Museum at Agiou Mina 13 opened on 13 May 2001 and is a reminder of this unique Jewish community of Thessaloniki with its continued presence throughout the city’s 2,300-year history, a rare fact in Jewish history, even for Jerusalem or Alexandria.
Alexander the Great granted legal equality to Jews in 331 BC. This new freedom attracted many Jews to settle in Hellenistic cities and to become Hellenised. Jews settled in the newly-established Thessaloniki in 315 BC and there were new Jewish arrivals from Alexandria in 145 BC.
The Jewish community in Thessaloniki so influenced the Sephardic around the world, both culturally and economically, that the city was known among Jews for centuries as ‘la Madre de Israel’ or ‘the Mother of Israel,’ and to non-Jews as ‘the Jerusalem of the Balkans.’
Until World War II, Thessaloniki had a major Jewish community, and for centuries it was the only major European city with a Jewish majority.
The Jewish Museum is housed in a listed building that dates from to 1906. In the early 20th century, this building housed the Bank of Athens and the French-language Jewish newspaper L’Intependant.
2, The Monasterioton Synagogue:
The Monasterioton Synagogue … the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Monasterioton Synagogue at the top of Syngrou Street is the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki, which once had 40 to 50 synagogues. It was built in 1927 by Jews from Monastir in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The synagogue was saved during World War II because it had been requisitioned by the Red Cross as a warehouse. The building was structurally damaged by the earthquake in 1978, but it was restored by the Greek government.
In all, Thessaloniki has three functioning synagogues. The Yad Lazikaron Synagogue in the community offices at Vassileos Herakliou Street opened in 1984 and is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It was built on the site of the small Bourla prayer centre (Cal de la Plaza, or Market Synagogue) that had been operating since 1912, serving the many Jews who worked in the market nearby. The Saul Modiano Synagogue is a small synagogue in the Old People’s Home.
3, The Holocaust Memorial, Plateia Eleftherias:
The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Liberty Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at the south-east corner of Plateia Eleftherias (Liberty Square) in the city centre recalls the 50,000 Greek Jews exterminated in the Holocaust. The memorial is a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid of a seven-branch menorah whose flames are wrapped around human bodies in death.
In the inter-war period, new laws were passed aiming to Hellenise the city. Slowly, the Jews became segregated and turned into second-class citizens. This policy legalised anti-Semitic activities and forced many Jews to emigrate. The Jewish population of the city fell from 93,000 people to 53,000 on the eve of the war.
With the arrival of the Nazis, hundreds of Jews joined the Greek resistance, while many others tried to go into hiding. On 11 July 1942, the ‘Black Shabbat,’ all Jewish men in Thessaloniki aged from 18 to 45 were rounded up in Plateia Eleftherias. Throughout the afternoon, they were forced at gunpoint into humiliating physical exercises.
4, The former Jewish Cemetery:
The Jewish Memorial at the Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki, on the site of the ancient Jewish cemetery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The centuries-old Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki was razed during the Nazi occupation, and the new campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was built on the site.
Recently, the university unveiled a memorial to the graveyard destroyed by the Nazis. The monument is a series of gravestones in a bed of green grass next to a broken menorah, and was seen as a late but significant move by the university and the city to recognise the past.
Last year (January 2019), however, vandals smashed the campus monument just days before the annual observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
5, The Jewish Studies Centre:
The Jewish Studies Centre at the Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has re-established its Jewish studies programme, over 80 years after it was abolished by the Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas. The university had a Jewish studies programme from 1930 to 1935 before it was abolished.
‘The establishment of a chair of Jewish Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has a special significance in a city whose history is directly linked to Jewish culture,’ the university said in a statement.
The decision was taken in co-operation with the city’s Jewish community, which agreed to fund the programme for its first year. The programme began in 2014-2015, offering undergraduate and graduate studies.
6, Yahudi Hamam:
The Yahudi Hamam … the name means ‘Bath of the Jews’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Yahudi Hamam (Γιαχουντί Χαμάμ) is an Ottoman-era bathhouse, but despite its name it was not built by the Jewish community. The bathhouse stands at the junction of Vasileos Irakleiou and Frangini streets and dates from the early 16th century. Its name means ‘Bath of the Jews’ and is a reminder that this area was predominantly settled by Sephardi Jews.
Sephardic Jews began to migrate to the city in large numbers when they were expelled from Spain in 1492. The first Sephardic Jews to arrive were said to have come from Majorca and were ‘repentant’ Jews returning to Judaism after forced conversions to Christianity. Later arrivals came from other parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy, and each new group set up its own synagogue, with names such as Castilla, Aragon, Old Catalonia, Old Italy, Sicily, Apulia, Lisbon, Portugal and Otranto.
The 20,000 Sephardim or Spanish and Portuguese Jews who settled in Thessaloniki brought an economic revival to the city. They were engaged in international trade, finance, medicine and pharmacology and introduced new crafts such as manufacturing arms and gunpowder, as well as textiles.
By the turn of the 16th century, when other Greek cities were in decline, Thessaloniki had 29,000 inhabitants. More than half of them were Sephardic Jews, and there were 31 independent synagogues. The new arrivals gave Thessaloniki an international character and made it the second most important port in the Ottoman Empire.
The 16th century was the ‘Golden Age of Salonica,’ when the Sephardic communities established libraries, an important Talmudic academy, a printing press and a conservatory for Jewish religious music and singing. Almost all the Jews of Thessaloniki spoke Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish. For more than four centuries, 50 per cent of the city’s population was Jewish, so Ladino was the main language, spoken too by many Christians and Muslims.
This building was also named Pazar Hamam, because of its location in the Bazaar or central market-place of the city. Yahudi Hamam served the local community until the early 1900s. Now, it is generally not open to the public, but it is occasionally used for cultural activities. It is surrounded by cafés, restaurants and shops, and the colourful flower market in Louloudadika (Λουλουδάδικα).
7, The Modiano Market:
The Modiano Market … built by the Modiano family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Between 1878 and 1914, flour mills, hotels, cafés, brick factories, breweries, soap-works and silkworm nurseries, carpet and shoe factories and several large tobacco workshops were established in Thessaloniki, mainly by Jews. They built markets such as the Modiano Market, synagogues, schools and orphanages. All four theatres established at the time were by Jewish-owned.
Yet most of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki was working class and lived in poverty. The Workers’ Union, formed in 1909 by Jewish workers, became the most important socialist organisation in the Ottoman Empire.
The Modiano Market is Thessaloniki’s largest sheltered market. It was built in 1922 to designs by the Jewish architect Eli Modiano, and stands on the site of Kadi, a Jewish district destroyed in the fire in 1917. The market opened in 1925 as a central food market.
This impressive building, with its a glass roof and into four galleries, nowadays is home to many charming little tavernas and food shops.
8, Stoa Saul:
The Stoa Saul, built by Saul Modiano in 1867-1871(Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Stoa Saul, at the junction of Ermou Street, Venizelou Street and Vassileos Irakleiou Street, is a commercial arcade complex built by Saul Modiano, a renowned Jewish banker, in 1867-1871. It connects Vassileos Irakliou Street with Ermou Street and Venizelou Street and Ionos Dragoumi Street.
The arcade housed the offices of architect Eli Modiano and the Modiano Mortgage Bank. A a section of the arcade was destroyed in the fire of 1917. It was rebuilt in 1929, modifying the arcade to a Γ-shape. It is a tribute to and a reminder of the Modiano family, which began with Saul Modiano, a poor worker who became one of the richest men in the Ottoman Empire.
9, The Malakopi Arcade:
The former Bank of Thessaloniki founded by the Allatini family … now the Malakopi Arcade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Malakopi Arcade was once the building of La Banque de Salonique (Bank of Thessaloniki), founded by the Italian-Jewish Allatini entrepreneurial family. It was built on Chrimatistiriou Square built in 1907 to designs by the renowned architect Vitaliano Poselli.
The clock on the façade of the building is stuck at 11:07, the time a major earthquake struck Thessaloniki on 20 June 1978, devastating many buildings and leaving 45 people dead.
Today this is a shopping gallery known as the Stoa Malakopis.
10,Vasilissis Olgas villas:
The Salem Mansion was built in 1878 and has been abandoned since 1978 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Leoforos Vasilissis Olgas or Queen Olga Avenue is lined with once elegant fin de siècle villas, some now decaying and crumbling. This was once the most elegant and one of the richest areas of the city, and the home of many ruling families at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and each villa tells its own unique story. Some are galleries, others house cultural and historical institutions. Many retain their detailed colourful decorations, some even their impressive furniture, all influenced by the eclecticism of the 18th and 19th century.
Several villas have been preserved after painful restoration efforts, including the Villa Mordoch, the Villa Ahmet Kapanci (1890), the Villa Mehmet Kapanci (1893) and the Villa Bianca. Others are still sadly awaiting restoration after many decades, including the Villa Hirsch and the Salem Mansion at No 20.
The Salem Mansion was designed in 1878 by Xenophon Paionides (1863-1933) for the wealthy Jeborga (Τζεμπόργκα) Jewish merchant family in 1878. It was bought in 1894 by Emmanuel Salem, the most important lawyer in the city and an eminent member of the Jewish Community. It remained in his family for over 20 years and the family gave it its name, the Salem Mansion (Η Επαυλη Σαλέμ).
The three-storey Salem Mansion has an elaborate façade and is built with luxurious materials. It has baroque pediments, and its architectural styles combine elements of classicism, renaissance and baroque styles. The Salem family left in 1915 and the villa became the Consulate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was bought by the Italian state in 1924, and for it served as the Italian Consulate for more than half a century, until 1978.
The Salem family came to Thessaloniki with the wave of Sephardic Jewish refugees fleeing Spain and the Spanish Inquisition after 1492. They first appear as a prominent family in Thessaloniki around 1550, when Avraam Salem was practicing as a medical doctor. Other members of the family became involved in commercial life and were generous philanthropists.
Emmanuel Salem (1859-1940) was the first general secretary of the Bar Association of Thessaloniki and was one of the three most important lawyers in the city. He was a son of Rabbi Raphael Salem and became a leading member of the Jewish Community in Thessaloniki and one of the most prominent jurists in the field of international law. He was involved in founding a new water company, gas company, tram and electric company, and also in founding the Banque du Salonique.
After World War I, Salem was involved in negotiating the Lausanne Treaty in 1923. He received honours from many countries, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, France, Belgium, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and the Vatican, and Greece conferred on him the Order of the Saviour. He spent his later years of in Paris, where he died in Paris in February 1940.
The Salem Mansion was damaged extensively by the earthquake that devastated Thessaloniki in 1978, and was abandoned by the Italian Consulate. The house still belongs to the Italian State and is deserted. Although this is a listed building and the grass is cut from time to time, all requests from the Greek State for its restoration have gone unanswered.
11, The Old Railway Station:
The old railway station in Thessaloniki … more than 46,000 Jews were sent by rail to Auschwitz and Belsen in 19 convoys in 1943 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The devastating fire that raged through Thessaloniki in 1917 destroyed two-thirds of the Jewish districts, 45 synagogues, schools, shops and businesses. About 52,000 Jewish people were made homeless and most Jewish monuments and archives were destroyed.
In the rebuilding programme, the historic centre of Thessaloniki lost the Jewish character that had enriched it for centuries. But the city’s port continued to close on Saturdays as well as Jewish holidays until 1923.
The final act in the Jewish tragedy in Thessaloniki took place at the city’s Old Railway Station between 15 March and 2 August 1943, as Jews were stacked into livestock carriages and sent off to the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, where most of the 60,000 deported people died.
In all, 96 per cent of the members of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community were murdered in 1941-1945. Jewish cemeteries were erased, and most of their cultural wealth and surviving Jewish character of the city was destroyed.
The tracks to Auschwitz … old railway tracks at the port where the convoys left for the death camps (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Since 1951, the Old Railway Station has been used as a goods station. An old railway administrative building, built in 1871, has a monument with historic details of the Baron Hirsch Jewish district, established in 1892 to house Jews displaced by a fire.
More reminders of the Jewish presence were lost with the post-war reconstruction of Thessaloniki, which reached its peak in the 1960s, and then with the earthquake in 1978.
Only 1,200 Jews live in Thessaloniki today. The former Mayor of Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris, and the President of the Jewish Community, David Saltiel, were partners in honouring the pre-war Jewish presence and contribution to the city and ensuring the story of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki continues to be told.
12, Stumbling stones, Vassilisis Olgas Avenue:
‘Stolpersteine’ or ‘Stumbling Stones’ on the pavement on Vassilisis Olgas Avenue commemorate Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Throughout Europe, I regularly come across the Stolpersteine or ‘Stumbling Stones’ by the German artist Gunter Demnig. His project places engraved brass stones in front of the former homes of Holocaust victims who were deported and murdered by Nazi Germany.
Demnig’s Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-sized brass memorials set into the pavement or footpath in front of these apartments or houses. This project began in Germany and has spread across Europe. So far, at least 73,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in at least two dozen countries across Europe, making this dispersed project the world’s largest memorial. I have seen them in Berlin, Bratislava, Prague, Venice, Vienna and in Thessaloniki.
‘Stumbling Stones for Thessaloniki’ was created by two Humanity in Action senior fellows, Regina Frentzou and Evanthia Panagiotou, as a social art project to recovery of collective memory and individual commemoration of the victims of Nazism in Thessaloniki. They were inspired during their experiences in Berlin in 2014, and felt there was a lack of commemoration for the victims of the Holocaust in Greek cities, particularly in Thessaloniki.
El Malei Rachamim (‘God full of compassion’) is a prayer for the departed that asks for comfort and everlasting care of the deceased. It is said at Jewish funeral services, but different versions exist for different moments.
This version for the Shoah (Holocaust) is found in the Reform prayer book, Mishkan T’filah:
Fully compassionate God on high:
To our six million brothers and sisters
murdered because they were Jews,
grant clear and certain rest with You
in the lofty heights of the sacred and pure
whose brightness shines like the very glow of heaven.
Source of mercy:
Forever enfold them in the embrace of Your wings;
secure their souls in eternity.
Adonai: they are Yours.
They will rest in peace. Amen.
Prayer books in the Monasterioton Synagogue on Syngrou Street in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Posted by Patrick Comerford at 18:30 No comments:
Labels: archaeology, Architecture, Greece 2020, Holocaust, Judaism, Local History, Sephardim, Synagogues, Thessaloniki, Virtual Tours
Praying in Easter with USPG:
11, Wednesday, 22 April 2020
‘Lord, as we mark Earth Day today …’ a sculpture at the Library in Trinity College Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
I am continuing to use the USPG Prayer Diary, Pray with the World Church, for my morning prayers and reflections throughout this Season of Easter. USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is the Anglican mission agency that partners churches and communities worldwide in God’s mission to enliven faith, strengthen relationships, unlock potential, and champion justice. It was founded in 1701.
Throughout this week (19 to 25 April 2020), the USPG Prayer Diary has taken as its theme the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe – Central Africa Province. This theme was introduced on Sunday in the Prayer Diary.
Wednesday 22 April 2020:
Lord, as we mark Earth Day today, we pray for all the projects different members of the World Church have initiated to tackle the effects of climate change.
The Readings: Acts 5: 17-26; Psalm 34: 1-8; John 3: 16-21.
The Collect of the Day (Easter II):
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
Grant us so to put away the leaven
of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Labels: Easter 2020, Environment, Mission, TCD, USPG
Prize-winning blog
‘Highly Commended’ in the ‘Blog’ category in the communications awards at the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, 2013; Runner-up, 2010; Winner, 2009; Runner-up, 2008
A ‘virtual tour’ of a dozen sites in Jewish Thessa...
Praying in Easter with USPG: 11, Wednesday, 22 Apr...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4478
|
__label__cc
| 0.625045
| 0.374955
|
More Poetry
Robert's Blog
Kerouac Softball Game...with George Wallace
Three Italian-American Poet Laureates at the Gazebo. Maria (Queens); Lorraine (Nassau) and Robert (Suffolk).
Princess Ronkonkoma Production 2015 Award Winners Adult Category
Princess Ronkonkoma Production 2015 Recipients & Representatives - Childrens Category
Announcing the winners with Judy Turek.
Long Island Sounds 2015
Hofstra Italian American Festival 2015
Hosting the All Souls Church Monthly Poetry Series
With Barbara Reiher-Meyers at the Art in the Park Festival in Northport
Grand Marshall of the Columbus Day Parade in Huntington
Italian-American Heritage & Culture Honoree
Sachem Library outdoor poetry
With Edgar Carlson and Nancy Keating
Cornelia Street Café reading with myspace friends.
Oceanside Gazebo
NYC with Gladys Henderson
Cornelia Street Café 2008
Nelson DeMille at the Walt Whitman Birthplace
At the LI Poetry & Arts Archival Center
2015 Jack Kerouac Softball Game................................................................................................and with J.D. Schraffenberger, Editor North American Review
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4480
|
__label__wiki
| 0.614482
| 0.614482
|
Suckers (Synapse Films) Blu-ray Review
Released by: Synapse Films
Released on: August 25th, 2020.
Director: Roger Nygard
Cast: Lori Loughlin, Daniel Benzali, Louis Mandylor
Suckers – Movie Review:
Written and directed by Roger Nygard, 1999’s Suckers introduces us to a man named Reggie (Daniel Benzali), who works as a used car salesman and who will stop at nothing to get the sale. In fact, he’s made a bit of a name for himself training the other recruits on his team to use similar tactics to his own and to simply not take no for an answer. He’s got plenty of tricks, but more importantly than that, he gets results.
Donna DeLuca (Aunt Beckie herself, Lori Laughlin), desperately wants her husband Bobby (Louse Mandylor) to get a job and is pressuring him to apply at the dealership where Reggie works. Bobby’s in pretty dire straits, financially speaking, owing a sizeable amount of cash to the kind of people you don’t want to be in debt to, and so without much in the way of options, he enlists. Under Reggie’s tutelage, Bobby soon becomes adept at swindling customers out of their hard earned cash in exchange for less than perfect used cars, but it isn’t long before the loan sharks that Bobby is in debt to find out where he’s working and start paying him visits on the job.
If you’ve ever had a job in sales, this one might hit a little close to home, particularly the training scenes and the Saturday morning meeting scenes where Reggie is getting his equally greedy cohorts amped up to really bringing those big weekend dollars. There are moments that will seem way too familiar to anyone with an attachment to the business, because as over the top as some of his tactics might seem, they’re very commonly used in sales training courses all over the globe.
With that out of the way, as cringe-inducing as this might be for some viewers, more importantly than that Suckers is funny without ever feeling forced. The script, specifically the dialogue, all feels very real and does a great job of capturing the relationships that evolve out of a highly competitive work place. It’s quite blunt in its depiction of how all too many sales people see their customers not as people with needs to fill, but as money and nothing more. This leads to some very effective and believable comedy, with the different cast of salespeople trying hard not to show their true colors or, against type, occasionally having a change of heart and doing the right thing. Most of the salespeople in the film are shown not as villains, but as humans, doing what they need to do in order to make the money they need to survive, so the movie wisely opts not to paint everyone with the same brush that it paints Reggie, but it is frequently less than flattering in this area.
Production values are decent enough for a scrappy little indie comedy. It’s paced well and nicely shot. Performances are all pretty solid, with Daniel Benzali stealing quite a few of the scenes from the rest of the cast.
Suckers – Blu-ray Review:
Suckers arrives on Blu-ray from Synapse Films taken from an ‘all-new 4K remaster supervised and approved by writer/director Roger Nygard.’ Presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition and framed at 1.78.1 widescreen taking up 27.5GBs of space on the 50GB disc, the transfer is pretty much spotless. There’s very strong detail and clarity noticeable throughout and excellent color reproduction as well. There are no problems with noise reduction, edge enhancement or visible compression. The picture quality here is great.
The disc also includes a brand-new DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix, in the film’s native English language. Clarity is very strong, no problems with any hiss or distortion to note at all. The levels are properly balanced throughout. Optional subtitles are provided in English and the original DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track is also included.
The main extra for Suckers is an audio commentary with writer/director Roger Nygard, writer/actor Joe Yannetty, cinematographer Nathan Hope, actor/composer Jimmie Wood and composer JJ Holiday. It’s a busy and engaging track with a lot of information about where the ideas for this picture came from, shooting the film, writing the script, research that was done for the movie, what it was like on set, casting the film, location work and loads more.
Also on hand are two-minutes’ of full frame, tape sourced with time code deleted scenes. There are two scenes here in total, Ice Cream vs. Bills and Donna Held Hostage During Robbery. The Raw Takes section is seven-minutes of just that, raw footage, four takes in general of the boardroom meeting scene. A theatrical trailer for Suckers is also included.
The disc also contains a bonus feature in the form of bonus film Six Days In Roswell, presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition taking up 17.7GBs of space with a DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track in English. There are no subtitles or alternate language options offered. This was released on DVD back in 2000 by Synapse but this offers a substantially better looking and sounding presentation.
Shot in 1997 on the fiftieth anniversary of the supposed Roswell crash, this ‘documentary’ is hosted by Rich Kronfeld, a quirky man who heads to the site hoping that he can somehow himself be abducted by aliens. Here, Kronfeld finds himself among a wacky cast of UFO aficionados and believers of various kinds, joining in the celebration and occasionally even taking part in the festivities himself. Along the way, Kronfeld interviews various people who are a part of UFO culture, and learn very quickly how many of the people who have played a part in this hope to make money off of the celebration. It’s seriously entertaining stuff, a wild look at some of the fringe elements of American culture, with Kronfeld serving as the perfect master of ceremonies for this veritable circus.
Extras for Six Days In Roswell includes an audio commentary with producer/editor Roger Nygard, director Timothy B. Johnson and actor Rich Kronfeld. It’s an interesting track that covers pretty much all you’d hope that it would, such as the origins of the project, working with limited means to finish the film, shooting out in the desert, working with the different people we see pop up in front of the camera and a whole lot of other stuff related to the picture’s history.
A featurette called The Making Of Six Days In Roswell is also included. It's a twenty-minute featurette that includes interviews with director Timothy B. Johnson, Roger Nygard and video producer/director Brian Dellis. It's an interesting enough look behind the scenes even if it does cover some of the same ground as the commentary track. There is a fair bit of behind the scenes footage here but there are some pertinent clips and photographs used throughout, though it's the interview clips that have the most worth.
The original trailer for Six Days In Roswell is also included and the disc contains menus and chapter selection options for both features.
Suckers – The Final Word:
Having known absolutely nothing about Suckers before going in, the film turned out to be a pleasant surprise, a comedy with some edge to it that works quite well. Synapse has done a very nice job bringing it to Blu-ray with a very impressive presentation and a host of extra features. Recommended.
Click on the images below for full sized Suckers screen caps!
Tags : blu-ray, blu-ray review, daniel benzali, lori loughlin, louis mandylor, roger nygard, six days in roswell, suckers, synapse films
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4481
|
__label__cc
| 0.589375
| 0.410625
|
Iceberg B-15 (Antartica).
Iceberg B-15 was the largest ever recorded iceberg. It had an area of 3,100 km², making it larger than the island of Jamaica, and was created when part of the Ross Ice Shelf broke off in March 2000. In 2003, it broke apart, and one of the larger pieces (called B-15a) drifted north, eventually smashing into a glacier in 2005, breaking off an 8-km² section and forcing many antarctic maps to be rewritten. It drifted along the coast and eventually ran aground, breaking up once again. In 2006, a storm in Alaska (that’s right, Alaska) caused an ocean swell that travelled 13,500km, over 6 days, to Antarctica and broke up the largest remaining part even more. Almost a decade on, parts of the iceberg have still not melted, with the largest remaining part, still called B-15a, having an area of 1,700 km². The picture above shows B-15a (top left) in 2005, after drifting west into the Drygalski Glacier (bottom), breaking the end off into several pieces.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4482
|
__label__cc
| 0.706191
| 0.293809
|
Michele McGough of solutions4networks Named CEO of the Year Finalist at Tech 50 Awards
You are here: Home / News / Michele McGough of solutions4networks Named CEO of the Year Finalist at Tech 50 Awards
Michele McGough, founder of solutions4networks, a leading network engineering, modern collaboration, and technology security firm, was named as one of nine finalists for 2019’s CEO of the Year at the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Tech 50 Awards.
McGough gained extensive management experience at Fortune 500 companies, where she noted the cultural and organizational deficiencies present in these organizations. She founded solutions4networks in 1999 and continues to be a leader in technology services in the Greater Pittsburgh Area. The foundation of the company remains the dedicated team, who value innovation and superior client services. McGough serves as a board member for several local non-profit organizations.
The Pittsburgh Technology Council Tech 50 Awards recognizes technology companies from the southwestern Pennsylvania region based on a variety of factors including job growth, sales success, corporate citizenship and innovative technologies.
solutions4networks is a certified woman-owned business and Disadvantaged Business Entity (DBE) that provides highly experience professional services and equipment procurement for unified communications, wireless and network infrastructure, data center, cloud and network security, and project management and collaboration. Started in 2000, s4nets has been recognized with numerous awards, the latest from the Pittsburgh Business Times for being the “Best Place to Work” in Pittsburgh. We hold every team member accountable to our core values of empowerment, leadership, integrity, trust, and excellence. To learn more about solutions4networks, please visit: www.s4nets.com.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4484
|
__label__cc
| 0.526402
| 0.473598
|
Whale Watching in Vancouver
Photo by Dick Martin: Orcas off Vancouver Island
The Prince of Whales
Story by Paul Hughes, 2019
Every year more thn 30,000 humpback whales migrate past where we live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, sometimes with 500 metres of the shore, so one might wonder why we would go whale-watching in Canada.
The answer is simple. We were keen to see Orcas, or killer whales as they are known, and a half-day whale watching tour was recommended to us by one of our travel supporters, Vancouver Tourism.
It was certainly well worthwhile.
We were fortunate that the tour was with a company known as Prince of Whales because the departure port was at Granville Ferry, which was only a 15-minute stroll from our hotel in downtown Vancouver, plus a 10 minute ride with False Creek Ferries.
A great aspect of the trip was that everyone at Prince of Whales is very friendly, accommodating and really knows their stuff.
Our first available day was a Wednesday but the weather forecast meant it might be a little rough for some (and also more difficult to see the whales), so the tour was cancelled. We took the following morning as our schedule was jam-packed and we were leaving on a cruise to Hawaii on the Saturday.
While the weather was a bit breezy it suited me fine; I used to fish 30-kilometres out to sea in my 24-foot game fishing boat, so I enjoyed the fast ride in the big cruiser that comfortably catered for the 57 passenger plus crew.
The cruiser had three passenger levels and we took the top open deck, only to catch plenty of water spray as we powered out for almost an hour. On the way we were brief by a very passionate marine scientist Wilma, who shared with us many stories of the whales found around Vancouver; the work that has been done over many years identifying and naming all of the local Orcas; as well as ensuring everyone had an idea of what to watch for and to call out if they saw a whale or even a splash they thought might have been a whale.
It was comforting to know there were no “false” sightings - the captain and crew were happy to advise that the sighting was a seal, dolphin or even a floating log, rather than miss a potential whale sighting.
About 25 kilometres from port in the Salish Sea we sighted a tail splash about 500 metres ahead of the boat and the for the next hour we were entertained by what Wilma confirmed as two families of Orcas that had joined forces to fish, guessing they were possibly herding a sea lion by the way they were swimming back and forth. There were at least two males, readily identified by their large flukes that often cruised side-by-side, a number of females and at least two babies.
Although we were close to the whales, it was challenging to both watch the Orcas while trying to video or photograph them with my iPhone (above), especially as they were appearing on both sides of the boat on occasions, so some of the images are not as clear as the orcas below, reproduced from the North Island Gazette.
While we were excited, Wilma and the other crew members were over the moon because sometimes they see only a few Orcas, and often for a much shorter time. Their excitement and passion for the whales and other wildlife was contagious and I was moved by their stories about the plight of some of the whales.
Apparently two “groups” of Orcas frequent the nearby waters - a relatively small number of whales live in the region and are known as Southern Resident Killer Whales. The team has a book that identifies and names each whale by its markings, and they have great records of sightings over the years.
Above: Leaving Vancouver and powering out to sea; and a sketch of our trip and sighting location
Where possible the Prince of Whales team try to find the transient Biggs Killer Whales or Hump Back Whales to take pressure off the local Orcas. Wilma related how earlier this year one of the resident killer whales known as J35, or Tahlequah, gave birth to a baby female, but unfortunately the calf did not survive. Although the boats kept their distance from the local whales, the whole team and their guests were amazed to see Tahlequah carrying her dead calf for days on a tour of grief across their normal territory before letting her go.
They believe a scarcity of salmon, seals, sea lions and other fish that make up the Orca’s normal diet is causing great distress among the resident Orcas, which is another reason why they passionately implore guests to take better care of our oceans.
I was also impressed that Prince of Whales is part of the Pacific Whale Watching Association, which has voluntarily extended the distance in approaching the local whales from 100 metres to 200 metres. Previously boats had to slow down to seven knots when within 700 metres of the whales, but this has also been voluntarily been extended to 1,000 metres, although the speed limit distances remain at 100 metres and 700 metres respectfully for transient Orcas and Hump Back Whales.
If you are on a whale watching tour and you see a whale much closer than 200 metres, firstly thank your luck stars and secondly don’t criticise the captain. Whales are a wild species with a mind of their own and are often known to dive out of sight then surface near a boat, either to have a look at what is going on or perhaps looking for their prey which perhaps was trying to hide under the boat!
About Prince of Whales
When we were in Vancouver the Prince of Whales was the largest family-owned whale watching and eco-adventure company in British Columbia, employing more than 100 staff in summer and with 14 boats operating from Seattle, Telegraph Cove, Vancouver and Victoria.
The business was launched in 1996 with a purposed-design Zodiac rigid hull inflatable boat and today operates with a huge 95-passenger catamaran, two cruisers and a network of Zodiacs.
The company donates one percent of revenues to organisation that support marine conservation and also spends a great deal of time and effort on research and education.
Whether or not you are into conservation, taking a whale-watching tour with Prince of Whales is certainly well worthwhile, especially if you are choosing from the many options of tours available.
To find our more or contact the Prince of Whales team directly, click here.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4485
|
__label__cc
| 0.704887
| 0.295113
|
ITHENTIC is an award-winning digital content company focused on developing, producing and distributing narrative-based properties for all platforms. We are digital storytellers – equal parts genre-bending live action, wisecracking comedy, trailblazing animation, and indie film with a dose of social conscience. We create our digital content for traditional broadcast, OTT platforms, iOS and Android tablets and smartphones, and social media. HQ’ed in Toronto, we also have offices in New York and Los Angeles in hot pursuit of “the good stuff” seen on iFestivus.
iFestivus is a CAVCO approved online video service, launched in 2006 as ITHENTIC, that aggregates and distributes the very best video content. The company is headquartered in Toronto with offices in New York City and backed by three engaged and prominent shareholders: eOne Entertainment, Canada’s largest entertainment company, the founders of iThentic LLC (founded by Catherine Tait), and Smiley Guy Studios, an award winning animation and new media studio. Smiley Guy Studios is the operating partner with Jonas Diamond as CEO
iFestivus provides a tastemaker service that helps viewers navigate the overabundance of online video. We offer a curated library of short-form video content – including short films and web series – that does all the hard work in order to bring you professional, innovative, properly licensed videos that can be comfortably labeled ‘the best’.
We strive to unite communities that include our creators, curators and viewers. Our management team has a depth of experience in global production, distribution and marketing and is connected to a powerful international network of writers, directors, producers, animators and artists. This ensures that iFestivus showcases the very best new work. Our creative network is rooted in the independent film and television industry and has generated some of the most groundbreaking entertainment of the last two decades.
Canada’s 2012 Digital Company of the Year
2013 International Emmy Award Winner
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4488
|
__label__cc
| 0.505987
| 0.494013
|
Organisation and Management Model
Anti-Corruption Representative
Policy for bribery prevention - UNI ISO 37001:2016 Certification
Whistleblowing Platform
Governance >
SEA believes that compliance with the ethical principles that inspire its work is essential, particularly by all its stakeholders. These principles have been identified, inter alia, in the Code of Conduct approved by the Board of Directors; similarly, SEA believes that compliance with all applicable regulatory provisions is essential. In this perspective, the Company has implemented a system for the management of reports on illicit facts or facts contrary to the above mentioned ethical principles (the so called "Whistleblowing") which consists of an IT platform whose technical support is entrusted to a primary operator in the sector for sending reports by all parties involved (employees and collaborators of the Companies, consultants, suppliers and any other third party who has a relationship or carries out activities on behalf and/or in the interest of SEA).
The platform guarantees the confidentiality of the personal data entered and the content of the reports, in particular, the personal data and the identity of the whistleblower, without prejudice to any legal obligations.
SEA also undertakes to comply with the applicable legislation currently in force on the protection of personal data.
The platform is located on a site outside SEA and access is not tracked.
How to access the platform
The whistleblowing platform is accessible with a browser such as Google Chrome or Internet Explorer version 10 or higher, at the following link: Whistleblowing SEA
Upon access, the whistleblower must first select the Company for which he/she intends to send the report (SEA, SEA Energia, SEA Prime), then proceed according to the instructions proposed in the platform.
At the end of the filling process, the platform will release a code - no longer available after the report has been sent - to be kept by the whistleblower; this code will allow only the whistleblower to check the status of the report at any time and to communicate to the relevant entity any further information or documents that may be useful for establishing the facts reported.
What to report and whom to direct the report
Reports may be sent to one of the following relevant entities - each having a distinct access channel on the platform - in relation to the specific content of the report:
Ethics Committee:
For reports of conduct in violation of the Code of Conduct (e.g.: alleged bribery, conflicts of interest, misuse of company assets or negligence in their use). For the complete case history, refer to the SEA Code of Conduct at the following link
For reports relating to the alleged commission of crimes covered by Legislative Decree 231/2001 (e.g.: environmental crimes, violations of health and safety regulations in the workplace, crimes against the State or other public bodies, etc.) or for failure to comply with company procedures. For a complete list of the offences identified by Legislative Decree 231/2001, refer to the Organisation and Management Model pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/2001 SEA - General Section, at the following page link
The relevant bodies listed above (Ethics Committee and Supervisory Board) rely on the Auditing Department for the investigation of the received reports managing process.
Auditing:
For procedural violations, fraud, non-compliance with contractual clauses and for any reports not falling within the area of responsibility of the above mentioned bodies.
Director of the Control, Risk and Sustainability Committee:
Exclusively in cases in which the report relates to conduct by the Auditing management of SEA or in cases in which Auditing has an interest, even if potential, in relation to the facts reported, such as to compromise impartiality and independence of judgement.
For commercial or operational communications (e.g.: complaints, commercial information, etc.), other dedicated channels are available and indicated on the Company's website.
Confidentiality on the identity of the whistleblower and the content of the reports
The report shall be managed by the responsible bodies so that the confidentiality of personal data and the content of the report is guaranteed, in particular, the identity of the whistleblower who, if declared, will not be disclosed, except in cases provided for by regulatory provisions.
During the fact finding procedure related to the report, every right of the whistleblower is guaranteed and, in no case, proceedings will be initiated against him/her in the absence of concrete evidence on the truthfulness and validity of the report. The whistleblower will be protected at all times, both during the reporting process and afterwards, from the possibility that sanctions, discriminatory measures, retaliation of any kind, directly or indirectly resulting from or related to the report made, are directed against him/her. In particular, where the whistleblower is an employee of the Company outside the cases of liability for malicious intent or gross negligence or outside the cases of slander or defamation or also in cases of reports made in bad faith, the application of any discriminatory, disciplinary and/or retaliatory sanctions or measures, directly or indirectly connected to the report, is expressly prohibited. SEA expressly reserves all action to protect its interests, both direct and indirect, in the event of reports made in bad faith or defamatory or slanderous, which may cause damage or prejudice of any nature to its employees, members of its corporate bodies or third parties in business relations with the Company. The disciplinary system of SEA provides for sanctions for those who make intentional or grossly negligent reports that prove to be untrue or unfounded.
To access the platform use a browser (Google Chrome or Internet Explorer version 10 or higher)
Whistleblowing SEA
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4490
|
__label__wiki
| 0.889903
| 0.889903
|
RMS Titanic was a British registered vessel, her actual port of registry was Liverpool. The vessel was a 4 funnelled ocean liner which was built for use as a transatlantic passenger and Royal Mail service between Southampton and New York. The vessel was constructed at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Ireland Titanic was, on her maiden voyage, the largest vessel afloat and was owned by White Star Line.
Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches (269.11 metres) in length and 92 feet (28.04 metres) in breadth. Her gross tonnage was 46,328 tons. Three propellers were driven by two four-cylinder, triple-expansion, inverted reciprocating steam engines and one low-pressure Parsons Turbine. Steam was provided by 25 double-ended and 4 single-ended Scotch-type boilers fired by 159 coal burning furnaces that gave her a theoretical top speed of 23 knots.
RMS Titanic under construction at Harland & Wolff
On April 10th 1912 RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton with 2,200 passengers and crew on board. She collided with an iceberg at 11:40pm on the 14th April and later sank at 02:20am on the 15th April 1912. 1517 people died and 700 survived. On the night of the collision the temperatures were freezing and the sea was calm. In the days leading up to the collision there had been a number of iceberg warnings which resulted in a new course being drawn up. A further warning from the vessel Amerika warned the Titanic that icebergs lay in its path. Lookout officers spotted the iceberg ahead and sounded the bell alarms 3 times. 37 seconds later the Titanic scraped the iceberg on its starboard side (right side)this caused the hull to buckle in several places and rivets below the waterline popped out over a length of 299 feet (90 m). This opened the first six compartments (the forward peak tank, the three forward holds and Boiler Rooms Nos. 5 & 6) to the sea; the ships design allowed for a total of four compartments to be flooded whilst remaining afloat.
The entire impact lasted approximately 10 seconds. Captain Smith, alerted by the force of the impact, arrived on the bridge and ordered a full stop. The watertight doors had been immediately shut by Murdoch (the first officer). Within ten minutes of the collision the five forward compartments were completely flooded to a depth of 14 feet (4.3 m). The fifth and sixth water-filled compartments weighed down the ships bow enough to allow more water to flood the vessel, accelerated by secondary flooding as regular openings in the ship’s hull became submerged. Additionally, about 130 minutes after the collision, water started pouring from the sixth into the seventh compartment over the top of the bulkhead separating them. Following an inspection by the senior officers, the ships carpenter J. Hutchinson and the Titanic’s shipbuilder Thomas Andrews (which included a survey of the half-flooded two-deck postal room) it became apparent that the vessel would sink. The lifeboats were ordered and a distress call sent out with an estimate of an hour before sinking. The vessel pumps could buy just a few extra minutes.
It later transpired that the vessel lifeboats were built for a total 1,178 passengers, but they did not sail to capacity. The first lifeboats capacity was 65 passengers but sailed with just 28.
This was the largest peacetime maritime disaster in history. Of the 2,223 passengers there were passengers of clear wealth but yet also severe poverty from a variety of nationalities.
It took 3 years to build the Titanic, after setting sail on the 10th April 1912 it was the maiden voyage which was never completed. Higher proportion of men died to women due to the “women and children first” policy.
The wreckage was subsequently discovered and investigates in 1985. It is said that the ship design and the increased steerage and middle class accommodation was met at the expense of safety. The ship was luxurious and contained a telephone system, a lending library and a large barber shop onboard. The first-class section had a swimming pool, gym, squash courts, Turkish bath, electric bath and a verandah café. The first class common rooms were adorned with ornate wood paneling, expensive furniture and other decorations while the third class general room had pine paneling and sturdy teak furniture. First-class passengers paid a high fee for the luxury. The most expensive one-way trans-Atlantic passage was £870 (equivalent to almost £64,000 in 2012) or $1,363 ($31,000 in 2012).
RMS Titanic hull fragment
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4496
|
__label__wiki
| 0.824936
| 0.824936
|
Dances of Universal Peace
Contact Akal Dev
The Flutist
Ms. Sharonne wins accolades wherever Akal Dev goes. From the mountains of Southern France, to major metropolitan centers, to the coastal plains of North Carolina, audiences are moved by her powers of expression, beauty of tone and delightfully engaging manner. She is equally at home as a recitalist in Boston’s famed Jordan Hall; as a soloist with the Boston Pops; as a chamber musician in Carnegie Recital Hall. Ms. Sharonne was on the roster of North Carolina’s prestigious Visiting Artist Program for three years and has toured throughout the Carolinas. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras in New York, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Her versatility extends to expertise in East Indian music and other genres of musical improvisation.
Akal Dev has been the recipient of Meet The Composer grants in recognition of her improvisatory compositions, and has received fellowships from the Regional Artist Project of NW North Carolina for innovative proposals. Ms. Sharonne is the artistic director of “A Musical Feast,” a chamber ensemble of outstanding musicians who perform in venues around western NC. She maintains a private teaching studio in Boone, NC, accepting a limited number of talented and dedicated students each year.
Flute Instruction
JOHANNES BRAHMS Sonata in F minor, Op. 120, No. 1 “Allegro Appassionato” from Stolen Goods by Akal Dev Sharonne and Bair Shagdaron. Released: 2002. (8:02) LISTEN
“Rasalila” from Solitary Flute by Akal Dev Sharonne. Released: 2014. LISTEN
“She displayed a virtuosity and mastery of her instrument that was truly wonderful.”
~ THE JOURNAL-PATRIOT
“Ms. Sharonne’s flute playing was superb.”
~ THE BOSTON PHOENIX
© Akal Dev Sharonne, The Healing Muse
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4499
|
__label__cc
| 0.620958
| 0.379042
|
Tag Archives: Action Comics
DC Comics Bronze Age Read-through Project: January 1972
Superman questions his existence, Superboy meets Jules Verne, and Batman solves a murder. All this, and more, in the comics cover-dated January 1972.
Superman 247: A giant cluster of yellow seed pods are hurtling through space, threatening disaster to any planet it makes contact with. Since Green Lantern rings are powerless against yellow, the Guardians of the Universe declare that this is a job for Superman. To solve this problem, Superman basically creates a planet for the pods make contact with, but due to red solar energy in the area, this really wears down Superman to the point that he blacks out. While recovering in the Power Battery on Oa, the Guardians implant in his mind that he may be holding humanity back by always saving them. Fully recovered, he heads back to Earth, where he spots a child about to be beaten. Turns out the kid refuses to work because of the poor working and living conditions provided by his employer, and the employer was about to make an example of him. Superman, angered that the rest of the workers are suddenly also really to stand up to their boss now that he is there, begins to explain that they need to take care of themselves and not rely on others to do it for them, but since it has been several pages since Superman did something super, an earthquake hits. After working to limit the earthquake, he is then kind of forced to rebuild their homes, but finishes his speech anyway. And in the backup, the first “Private Life of Clark Kent,” Clark manages to talk some gang members out of killing a police officer.
This issue reprints a Superman 2966 story from Action Comics 338 (Jun 1966).
Superboy 181: While tearing down a building in Metropolis, a large metal box is found that no one can open, so Superboy is called in to lend a hand. Inside is Jules Verne, in a time machine of his creation. Since his writings have inspired so much of more modern technology, Superboy takes him on a tour of various top secret military installations to see the latest developments. Glad to see that he has made such a contribution to the future, Verne decides its time to head home and his time machine disappears in a cloud of smoke. It is later revealed that Verne was actually a secret agent in disguise, and the US was testing Superboy due to him having such a high level clearance. They think he’s failed since he showed “Jules” all those secrets and allowed him to take pics, but various clues, such as clothing that was too modern, allowed Superboy to figure things out for himself, and he used his x-ray vision to fog the film before “Jules” tried to head home. In the backup, Lana dreams about being married to Superboy once he’s a Superman, and how she’d make him get a real job, such as a salesman. But his morals wouldn’t allow him to be a very good salesman, so she decides it might not be a good idea to marry the Teen of Steel.
This issue reprints a Legion if Superheroes story from Adventure Comics 355 (April 1967).
Action Comics 408: The Argo project is a series a space flights to send 1 man to the moon, rather than a team like in the Apollo missions. The current mission was returning to Earth but has just mysteriously stopped in space for no apparent reason. With only 8 hours of oxygen left, Superman is called in to save the astronaut. However, a strange mental compulsion prevents him from going out to the space capsule, or even check on it with telescopic vision. After ridicule from the public, and a second failed attempt, Superman decides to build a ship to take him to the scene. This succeeds and he learns the astronaut is caught in some sort of energy warp that is causing him to evolve rapidly, and it was his new mental powers that kept Superman from rescuing him. After the astronaut uses his new powers to clear Superman’s name, Superman makes his rescue. In the backup, taking place back in Clark’s college days, the younger Superman is exposed to some artificially created bacteria. To keep others from becoming infected, he has to wear a special suit for 24 hours, including using a rubber mask and rubber gloves to mimic his face and hands when he’s Clark.
This issue reprints an Atom story from The Atom 9 (Oct/Nov 1963).
Adventure Comics 414: A new villain calling himself Vortex uses a tornado to steal a building. Supergirl investigates and learns that he is doing this for revenge against the owner of the building. Supergirl steps in and takes down Vortex. In the 2nd Supergirl story, little Judy, the little alien girl from a few issues ago, is kidnapped, and the kidnappers also discover that Linda is Supergirl. They use Judy to blackmail Supergirl into committing crimes for them, but eventually Supergirl finds the kidnappers. But before she can confront them, they are basically killed by Judy’s grandparents who have come to retrieve their granddaughter. After a heartfelt goodbye, things go back to normal. In the backup, Zatanna and Jeff, her manager, escape from the warriors and find the dimensional portal they can use to get home. But the ensuing battle ends with Jeff being turned to stone, and the story ends with Zatanna crying in front of the portal.
This issue reprints an Animal Man story from Strange Adventures 184 (Jan 1966).
Detective Comics 419: A man is found drowned in the river, held underwater by several gold Batman statues. While the police investigate, Batman checks out the nearby Irish festival, and discovers that the murder was set up to keep Batman and the cops too busy to deal with a drug smuggling operation. In the backup, Batgirl has realized that the stepson is innocent of the stepfather’s murder due to the fact that the shooter’s glasses did not have lenses in them (therefore, they also didn’t reflect the muzzle flash that allowed Batgirl to see his face in the first place.) Batgirl helps the cops take down the real culprit, the stepfather’s bodyguard.
This issue reprints a Roy Raymond story from Detective Comics 213 (Nov 1945), and a story from Gangbusters 61 (Dec/Jan 1947).
I’m going to probably upset some people when I say that “Must There Be a Superman?” is not what I would consider a great story. It doesn’t really have any affect on future stories, and the main point of this story is rendered moot by an Earthquake (which even Superman points out). It is a good, well told story with great art, but I don’t see it as one of the best. The backup was not great either. For one thing, the ending a rushed, and rather unrealistic. Also, it wastes story space with Superman giving smoking a try (editorial mandate maybe?).
Man, the government went to a lot of work to test Superboy. Maybe it is due to my age and being jaded by knowledge of behind-the-scene politics (remember, this is pre-Watergate), but I just do not see government agents going to this much effort in real life. The Lana story was pretty pointless, although it was nice to see that the creators remember that she exists. But, like John Byrne’s take on Lois Lane, her characterization here makes me wonder why Superboy likes her.
The Action story was very frustrating. I don’t understand why Superman didn’t even attempt to tell people that he was mentally being stopped from making the rescue. I also don’t understand why it took him so long to make a second attempt. The backup was frustrating too, since Superman could have gone into the sun to burn off the bacteria, like he has done in the past and will do in the future.
The main Supergirl story was forgettable, and the backup story felt more like a “tying up of loose ends” type a story. And the kidnappers getting killed seemed a little extreme, especially since Supergirl just lets Judy’s grandparents get away with it. The Zatanna story was rather decent, and the ending was pretty shocking. Really enjoying Gray Morrow’s artwork too!
The Batman story in Detective was well crafted. Denny introduced several seemingly unrelated characters or events, and tied them all together beautifully. And while I am proud to say I figured out who the killer was as soon as he was introduced, the mystery of how and why played out really well. The Batgirl story was also good. They really had to play up Batgirl’s photographic memory for it, but it worked.
And thus ends another trip in the time bubble. Next month, thanks to issues cover dated February usually being released in December, there looks to be at least 1 Christmas story. Should be fun!
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Clark Kent, Detective Comics, Legion of Superheroes, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, Zatanna | 2 Replies
DC Comics Bronze Age Read-through Project: December 1971
Algae cleans up Metropolis, Batman and Robin fight Nazis and the Reaper, we get a new Green Lantern, Ollie considers politics, the JLA take on the youth of America, someone discovers Superman’s Fortress, Supergirl really doesn’t do much, Batman gets beat up by the Creeper, and Superboy leads a pack of wolves. These are the comics cover-dated December 1971.
Superman 246: After Superman picks up some algae from the bottom of the Marianas Trench for an anti-pollution experiment at STAR Labs, Clark returns home in time for a meeting of everyone in his building in which most of them want to get guns in response to the rise in crime. Clark voices his opposition to this idea, but it does no good. Meanwhile, the algae experiment literally goes down the drain and eventually causes trouble for the city as it considers everything to be a form of pollution. While Superman takes care of things, one of Clark’s neighbors is mistaken for a prowler and is shot, bringing an end to the gun issue. In the backup, we learn of the computer that Kryptonians used to determine if a couple could marry.
This issue reprints a story from Superman 40 (May/Jun 1946).
Batman 237: Dick Grayson and his buddies go up to Vermont for a super-hero parade and party, and see a kid dressed as Robin getting beat up. This leads Dick on the trail of the attackers, but is taken out by a man dressed as the Grim Reaper. He ends up landing face down in water, but Batman shows up in time to save his ward. He gets him to a nearby doctor, and we learn that Batman was in town because the doctor, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, recently saw a former Nazi general who has been on the run since the end of the war. Batman manages to stop the Nazi soldiers who are after him, but fails to prevent his death. Meanwhile, Batman realizes that his doctor friend was the Reaper all along.
This issue reprints a story from Detective Comics 37 (Mar 1940) that is actually the last Solo Batman story before the introduction of Robin.
Green Lantern 87: This time out, Green Lantern and Green Arrow split off into separate features. In the GL story, Guy Gardner is seriously injured while trying to save a little girl, so the Guardians have to chose a new backup for Hal. Enter John Stewart, who, despite being an angry young man, also proves that he can handle being a Green Lantern. In the GA story, Elliot S! Maggin’s first ever story, the mayor of Star City is ready to retire, and wants Ollie Queen to be his party’s candidate for the job. After talking it over with his fellow Justice Leaguers, and watching an innocent kids killed during a riot, he decides to accept the offer and run for mayor.
This issue reprints a story from Green Lantern 16 (Oct 1962).
The Flash 211: After watching Iris getting taken out at a roller derby, Flash is called into action when Central City experiences a major earthquake. That is supposed to be geologically impossible, so Flash investigates, and discovers that the source is the roller derby. It turns out that the giant, Amazonian woman in the roller derby is actually an alien, and the roller rink actually sends energy down to earth’s core, causing quakes that will cleanse the surface of the planet so her people can invade and take over. Flash saves the day and has her arrested. In the backup, we learn about a chicken farmer who has been pumping his chickens full of chemicals to make them bigger. Unfortunately, this chemical can make the people who eat the chicken sick. When one person dies, Kid Flash helps to expose the farmer and have him arrested.
This issue reprints Jay Garrick’s final solo Golden Age appearance from Flash Comics 104 (Feb 1949).
Justice League of America 95: The transporter problem from the end of last issue appears to be related to a Zeta Beam from Rann. Superman flies off to investigate. Meanwhile, we learn of a Vietnam vet who gained a mutant power to control people with his voice. He uses that power to control the angry younger people, but he has a hard time controlling them, causing more harm than good. He realizes that the only way to stop them is for them to take him out, so he orders them to attack. He barely survives, but loses his mutant power. Next issue, Starbreaker!
This issue reprints the Doctor Mid-Nite’s first appearance in All-American Comics 25 (Apr 1941), and Doctor Fate’s first appearance in More Fun Comics 67 (May 1941).
Action Comics 407: A pilot crash lands in the arctic, just outside Superman’s Fortress. He is knocked out, but not before memorizing the coordinates. After recovering, he hires an electronics expert to help break into the fortress, and has his son kidnap a hostage to keep Superman away. The kid chooses Clark Kent, who has to figure out how to protect his Fortress, while also handling disaster alerts that come up while he’s a prisoner. The electronics experts turns out to be Luthor in disguise. He kills the pilot, but Superman stops him before he can cause any more damage. This whole situation causes the pilot’s son to decide to reform. In the backup, Superman, on his way home from a mission in another galaxy, is attacked by a small planet that wants to eat him. Fortunately, it can’t process humanoid life forms, so the locals help him escape.
This issue reprints the second half of the Flash/Atom team-up in Brave and the Bold 53 (Apr/May 1964).
Adventure Comics 412: After going a little crazy on a shopping spree, Linda has to go to the back to move some money from her savings account to he spending account, but there is a robbery in progress. She changes to Supergirl, but is unable to stop the robot from escaping. She follows it to a island compound, and meets the man in charge, who has a vendetta against humanity, and bankers in specific. There’s flashback to his son being injured and needing an expensive surgery to save his sight. He went to the bank president, but was denied a loan, so he robbed the bank, and although he had to spend 10 years in prison, his son’s vision was saved. So now he’s taking out his anger in the bankers, specifically the one who declined the loan, but after he sends explosive robots to 2 banks, he learns that his son works at one of them. Supergirl goes after one while he saves his son, but the explosives are so powerful, he is unable to get the robot far enough away without being caught in the explosion. Supergirl stops the other one off panel, and later, her news crew investigate the wreckage and find the body of the criminal. In the backup, Zatara is attacked by some demons in his study while Zatanna practices some tricks with her manager. They go up to see Zatara, and he quickly sends them to a different dimensional world. And since Zatanna isn’t as powerful as her father, she can’t get them back to Earth. As they make their way to a dimensional rift, their only way home, they are attacked by a band of barbarians and knocked out.
This issue reprints a Hawkman story from The Brave and the Bold 44 (Oct/Nov 1962), Detective Comics 178 (Dec 1951).
Detective Comics 417: The Creeper is robbing drug firms of monofragilic acid in the hopes that a scientist can cure him. In reality, the scientist plans to duplicate the serum that created the Creeper, and then kill the original. This plan backfires, and with Batman’s help, the Creeper wins. Also, the scientist manages to poison the Creeper, but it appears that rather than killing him, it turns the Creeper back into Jack Ryder. In the backup, the subject of a movie called “The Stepfather” is killed at the opening of the movie. Barbara Gordon, already in attendance, rushes off to investigate as Batgirl. A muzzle flash from the gun that killed the mobster illuminated the face of his step-son. But when Batgirl investigates, she determines that it couldn’t have been him. Meanwhile, the step-son and his “associates” are aware that she is hiding in his garage.
This issue reprints a Casebook Mystery from Gangbusters 40 (Jun/Jul 1954), and a Sierra Smith story from Dale Evans Comics 1 (Sep/Oct 1948).
Superboy 180: An alien probe lands on the moon, somehow turning Superboy into a werewolf. Meanwhile, a Warlock is in town with plans to corrupt the town’s most moral citizen, Jonathan Kent. Hjinks ensue, Superboy inadvertently works with a pack of wolves to drive out the Warlock, and they all live happily ever after, until the backup. In the backup, Clark realizes that someone is trying to kill his rich uncle. Rather than explain this to is parents, he acts completely out of character, and asks for a trial adoption with his uncle. Then he is forced to act reckless to save his uncle from various assassination attempts without revealing his secret identity, until he his sent back to Smallville, at which point Superboy is able to solve the case.
This issue reprints a Legion story from Adventure Comics 301 (Oct 1962).
This month started out strong, then went downhill pretty quickly. Superman was a great read. Len Wein was very good at writing Superman stories, and this was just part of his first stint on the title. He’s got a few more issues, and then he’ll come back in 78 or 79. This was also the introduction of STAR Labs, and the first time since I started this project that we actually got Clark’s address (not the first time ever, as is pointed out in the letters page). Batman was not only a good story, but was also part of an unofficial DC/Marvel crossover, where a few stories from both companies take place during this festival. Even the Golden Age reprint was enjoyable, which I only read because I really haven’t read any pre-Robin stories before. The GL/GA book was also pretty great. I didn’t like John Stewart much in the GL story, which means Denny did something right, and it was interesting to see Guy Gardner before he became an a—hole. Elliott S! Maggin gets his first story in the GA feature, and also appears to be possibly making a status quo change. Then again, that’s hard to tell, since there is only one more issue of new stuff before GL/GA becomes a backup feature in Flash.
Speaking of the Scarlet Speedster, this is where things started going downhill for me. While the Kid Flash story was good, the Flash taking on alien who is using a roller derby to destroy earth? Well, at least it was original, if not well executed. On the plus side, this was my first opportunity to read a Jay Garrick story from the Golden Age, so I took the opportunity, and found it to be my favorite story of the issue. And it is the introduction of Rival, who comes back in JSA, so that was a nice little bonus.
The Justice League story was super boring. Took me forever to get through it, mostly because I didn’t feel engaged. And I don’t know if it is because I’m reading it 40+ years later, but I’m really getting tired of Mike Fredrich using the book to preach about social issues rather than creating stories as a means of escape from those same social issues. It really stands out here because he focuses so much on the social issue, that the rest of the story suffers.
The stories in Action were pretty good, but the first story spends several pages changing the main point of the story from “protecting the Fortress” to “performing super rescues while protecting his secret identity.” Supergirl really didn’t do much of anything in her story, but the Zatanna story was enjoyable, with great Gray Morrow art and Len Wein scripting.
The Batman/Creeper story wasn’t bad, and was dedicated to Steve Ditko (Creeper creator), but relied on back issue notes rather than flashback for the character history. This wouldn’t have been bad except that the issues noted were from several years earlier, and may not have been easy to obtain in 1971. The Batgirl story didn’t really have much happen, and ends in a weird spot, but does manage to set up the mystery, and gives a slightly humorous nod to “The Godfather.” The Superboy stories were even more boring than the Justice League issue. Bob Haney wrote the first story, which was just weird. And the backup used a Silver Age trope that has always annoyed me. There is no reason why Clark couldn’t tell Jonathan and Martha about his plans. This would have saved them a lot of heartache thinking that their son wanted to leave them.
And that brings 1971 to a close. A very up-and-down year full of up-and-down months. I’m hoping for less “social issue” stories in 1972, and more entertaining stories. Here is what I do know is coming: Superman gets a new 2 new super-villains, one of which will return several times throughout the rest of the Bronze Age; Supergirl gets her own title, causing a temporary format change in Adventure Comics; and issues will drop down to 20¢, but that means we lose the reprints.
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Kid Flash, Robin, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, The Flash, Zatanna | Leave a reply
Autumn 1971: kids return to school, football starts, baseball ends, and National Periodicals continues pumping out comics.
Batman 236: In yet another, somewhat mystical story by Frank Robbins, the ghost of the victim of an unsolved murder from the 1930s calls Batman into action. Batman manages to solve the murder and arrests both the murderer, and his accomplice. But, he refuses to believe he saw a ghost, instead crediting his sense of Justice and his imagination for urging him on. In the backup, Robin helps the commune fight the fire, then heads to town to get more help. Eventually, the National Guard is called in to snuff out the fire, leaving Robin free to go after Whalon, who he quickly takes down.
This issue reprints a story from Batman 30 (Aug/Sep 1945).
The Flash 210: Barry and Iris head to 2971 to visit her parents, and for Iris to help set up a news outlet. They are quickly met with news that John Wilkes-Booth has just killed President Lincoln, which has Flash run off to investigate. While Iris keeps an eye on things with orbiting news cameras, Flash follows the killer, saves Lincoln (who survived due to his own ingenuity), and arrests the big man behind it all. In the backup, Elongated Man is called into action to help a magician, forced to help with a robbery in order to ensure the safety of his kidnapped daughter. Also, the first Bronze Age appearance of Sue Dibny.
This issue reprints story from The Flash 111 (Feb/Mar 1960).
Justice League of America 94: The Sensei, head of the League of Assassins, sends Merlyn (archery villain) to kill one of the members of the Justice League. While Batman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman dodge one assassin, Merlyn takes out Superman and Atom. We eventually learn that Batman is the target, and he ends up being the one in the least amount of danger of dying. Also, Deadman had taken over Aquaman to help, but didn’t really do much. And while The Sensei vows to kill Batman, some of the other Leaguers apparently teleport up to the satellite, but never arrive.
This issue reprints the first Sandman tale from Adventure Comics (Jul 1939), and the first Starman tale from Adventure Comics 61 (Apr 1941).
Superman 244: A being of electrical energy, that also puts off a purple aura of quark energy, attacks Metropolis, and it is strong enough to knock Superman around. After several tussles, involving Superman saving the WGBS building, a transmission station, and a nuclear reactor, Superman realizes it is somehow tied to WGBS’ news super-computer network. When he gets to the main hub, he’s able to shut down the system, and stop the “Electronic Ghost.”
This issue reprints the debut of Superman 2965 from Superman 181 (Nov 1965), and a Captain Comet story from Strange Adventures 34 (Jul 1953).
Superboy 179: Superboy comes to in Lincoln City, which has been destroyed. The survivors blame him for the destruction, and melt whenever he gets near them. He doesn’t remember anything that happened, but quickly learns that Luthor is behind it all. Then, another Superboy shows up to confront Luthor, and we learn that this is the real Superboy and that the teen we’ve been following, and the survivors, were all advanced androids built by Luthor. The Android Superboy sacrifices himself to save the real steel deal, and Luthor goes back to juvie. In the backup, Superboy saves a “city” of outcasts from being driven out, and their homes destroyed.
This issue reprints a tale from Superboy 92 (Oct 1961).
Action Comics 406: Clark is sent to do a story on a commune, and ends up meeting its leader, a bearded man with amazing abilities. Eventually, he learns that this man is actually a Kandorian, who is sent back to the bottle city after he’s exposed. In the backup, we have a man who used alchemy to become immortal back in 1665, but this also caused anyone around him to get sick. He spent over 300 years locked alone in the Tower of London, and Superman inadvertently helps him finally die.
This issue reprints the first half of a Flash/Atom team-up in Brave and the Bold 53 (Apr/May 1964).
Adventure Comics 412: After investigating a fake Supergirl who has been committing crimes, the real Supergirl (wearing a new costume without any explanation) ends up going to another planet to help a young couple (the current rulers) stay in power when they are challenged by an evil would-be dictator.
This issue reprints the first appearances Animal Man in Strange Adventures 180 (Sep 1965).
Detective Comics 417: Jan Paxton is a reporter who writes about people by living their lives for a night. He’s been a wrestler, the Gotham City Police Commissioner, and now he wants to be Batman. Even though Batman finds valid reasons to not allow it (too emotional, and threatens a guy with a gun), he allows the reporter to go out in costume. But it isn’t until his sister is killed in a robbery that Paxton learns what really drives Batman. In the backup, Batgirl manages to save her father, but accidentally calls him “Dad” in the process. She then pretends to be the fake Batgirl to learn who the real cop-killer is, and Gordon shows up to make the arrest. The story ends with Gordon wondering if Babs will ever tell him that she is Batgirl.
This issue reprints an Alfred story from Batman 31 (Oct/Nov 1945), and a story from Gangbusters 49 (Dec/Jan 1956).
This was a strange month. Once again I am reminded how Frank Robbins’ Batman seems very much like the Silver Age Batman in slightly darker, less jovial, stories. His story in Batman was alright, but the Batman story in Detective was seriously messed up. Batman only tested Paxton’s fighting prowess, and still found a good reason to not let him go out as Batman, but still allowed him to anyway. Then Mason picks up a gun, giving Batman another very good reason to shut him down, but he still allows him a second night as Batman. Not a fan of this story at all. The 3-part Robin story ended pretty satisfactorily, as did the 2-part Batgirl story, although Don Heck’s art in the latter one really took a step back from last month.
The Flash story was weird, and I felt like I was missing something. We’ve only seen Barry and/or Iris venture to the future twice to see her family, but here they are well known. Flash is well known enough that they know his powers, and that he’s married to Iris. The only thing I can figure is that this was Cary Bates’ first time with a Flash story in the future, so maybe he was confused. Also, the gimmick to have Lincoln in the future makes me think the cover came first, and Bates wrote a story to fit the cover. The Elongated Man story was good, and it was nice to finally see Sue this time.
The JLA story was pretty good, but I really cannot wait for Joe Giella to leave for other assignments. His ink work is really holding the artwork back in the Silver Age while to stories are trying to move forward. This issue emphasizes it thanks to a few pages of Neal Adams art, and the use of the League of Assassins in the story. Also, the cliffhanger kind of has me confused because it looked like the JLAers down on Earth couldn’t use the transporter, but when Superman flies up to check on things in the satellite, Black Canary acts like they did use it, but never arrived. Hopefully this will be explained next issue, but i won’t hold my breath. On the other hand, while I am kind of enjoying the way the stories keep flowing from issue to issues, I’m sure it creates a huge headache for those to worry about chronological continuity.
Denny O’Neil is still writing Superman, although it seemed like the difficulties he said he had while trying to write Superman stories were coming through a bit here. I liked the story, but it felt a bit padded. Then again, there are no ongoing subplots, or new concepts to introduce, so there was less stuff to fill the pages with. I am still amazed at how quickly Clark has gone from newspaper reporter, to TV field reporter, to news anchorman. It’s been less than a year in real time since Superman 233, so it has probably been even less time in-continuity. Also, it appears that Lois has also started doing some WGBS work as well. The Action stories were not as good. Actually, the backup was okay, but the lead story was not great, and at one point Superman acts way out of character when the Kandorians ask for help to repair their census machine. I don’t really have any complaints about the art, although there were a few instances of Superman striking some weird poses during take-offs and landings.
Superboy has been disappointing, especially since Leo Dorfman took over as writer. The main story sounds a lot more interesting in concept than it is in execution, and the backup ended too abruptly and neatly. The Supergirl story wasn’t bad, but it would have been nice to acknowledge that she’s wearing a different costume than she was wearing the last 2 issues. And considering how close that costume was to the costume she will be wearing for most of the Bronze Age, this change was surprising.
Overall, this was an okay month. Not terrible, but nothing great. Next month is the last month with a 1971 cover date. Hopefully it ushers ‘71 out with a bang.
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Black Canary, Deadman, Detective Comics, Elongated Man, Justice League of America, Robin, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, The Flash, The League of Assassins | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: October 1971
Another lighter month (lighter based on the number of books, not subject matter), and, unfortunately, quite a step down from last months offerings.
Superman 243: Returning to Earth from a mission in deep space, Superman is drawn back in time to an alien world where he’s basically forced to help a couple reconnect. The aliens have evolved to Super-intelligent brains, but the female wants a body again. In the back up, we learn the origins of the mysterious green mists that make up the Trails of Trolius.
This issue reprints the infamous “Battle of the Atoms” story from Superman 38 (Jan/Feb 1946).
Superboy 178: Superboy’s career is in jeopardy when he keeps transforming into giant animals and causing destruction during super-rescues. It turns out to be a movie producer using red Kryptonite on Superboy to make a monster movie. More on this below. In the backup, Superbaby meets a young boy named Gary, who just so happens to be a witch. They bond quickly thanks to both having special powers, and inadvertently help the police capture 2 escaped cons.
This issue reprints a Legion story from Adventure Comics 320 (May 1964).
Action Comics 405: In an imaginary story that takes place in the near future, Superman is called when the President of the United States receives a death threat from someone calling himself Maserpun. By trading places with the President, Superman is able thwart the assassination, but is unable to learn who was behind it all. In the backup, a bug is planted on Clark, who eventually has to go into action as Superman to prevent a ship from an anti-matter universe from making contact with anything in our universe. Fortunately, the bug only picks up audio, and the anti-matter aliens spoke to Superman telepathically, so, once Clark learns of the bug, he’s able to pass it off as watching a video of Superman doing super-feats.
This issue reprints Vigilante tale from Action Comics 192 (May 1954), and an Aquaman tale from Adventure Comics 206 (Nov 1954).
Detective Comics 416: While working to destroy everything associated with his Man-Bat formula in his museum lab, a combination of a new sonic-bone scrubber and a full moon, cause Kirk Langstrom to once again transform into Man-Bat. Fortunately, Batman is eventually able to get him to take a stronger version of the antidote, and he reverts back to human form. In the backup, Commissioner Gordon is looking for a cop killer, but a fake Batgirl appears to be leading him to the wrong guy. Meanwhile, the real Batgirl is trying to prevent her father from making a terrible mistake.
This issue reprints a Rex the Wonder Dog tale from Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog 3 (May/Jun 1952), and a Casebook Mystery from Gang Busters 30 (Oct/Nov 1952).
Adventure Comics 411: An alien comes to San Francisco, and we get a story about the social issue of judging someone based on their looks. Oh, and we also get men telling a Super-powered, Kryptonian woman how much better they are than her due to their manliness. Sigh!
This issue reprints a Legion of Superheroes story from Adventure Comics 337 (Oct 1965), and a non-superhero tale from Star Spangled War Stories 18 (Feb 1954).
Green Lantern 86: This is the story I️ thought we’d get last month, but Green Lantern isn’t a monthly title yet, so we skipped last month. Anyway, after Ollie puts on his Green Arrow costume and slaps Roy around a bit, he heads out to stop the dealers and supplier from last issue. Green Lantern eventually helps Ollie, while Roy goes through withdrawals with only Dinah to comfort him. In the end, the heroes win, Roy has kicked his habit and heads off take down more of this drug organization. I️ should also point out that this issue also shows one of Roy’s junkie friends shoot up, overdose, and die in a span of 2 pages.
This issue reprints a Golden Age Green Lantern story from All-American Comics 92 (Dec 1947).
Like I️ said above, this month just did not measure up to last month. The Superman issue was okay, but nothing great. The Superboy story should not have worked because of the established properties of Red Kryptonite (unpredictable, only affects a kryptonian once, etc), but Leo Dorfman has made similar mistakes before (lead blocking super-hearing for one). These Superbaby stories are kind of predictable at this point. Clark uses his powers when he shouldn’t, and inadvertently stops some bad guys without anyone realizing it was him.
Action was pretty good this month though. The main story was imaginary (aren’t they all?), and involved Superman being driven crazy, but the mystery behind it, and the tension it created, had be glued to this story. The backup did not have a great premise, but executed it well.
I’m currently at a point in my life where I️ kinda like Frank Robbins art (I️ used to really dislike it), and his women look especially good, but with this issue, it becomes apparent that it was Neal Adams’ art that made the previous Man-Bat stories enjoyable for me. As for the Batgirl backup, the tension of the story really grabbed me. Something tells me that Gordon will somehow see through the ruse, but Batgirl running into trouble while trying to help her father was fun (if you aren’t Batgirl).
Supergirl’s story started off somewhat interesting, and then plummeted into bad pretty quickly. Just a pointless, depressing story. the GL/GA story was also devoid of happiness, other than Roy being able to kick his drug addiction. Watching the one kid OD was quite an experience, and O’Neil actually made a pretty good argument for why people turn to drugs. It was kinda of nice to see Ollie not have all the answers for once.
Here’s hoping that November of 1971 is more consistently enjoyable.
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Superbaby, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: September 1971
Another month o’ fun from the folks at National Publications!
Wonder Woman 196: Diana spends most of the issue protecting an ambassador from assassination attempts, then has to take him down when it is revealed that he is an assassin in disguise (the real ambassador has already been killed) with plans to assassinate the President.
This issue reprints Wonder Woman’s first appearance in All-Star Comics 8 (Dec/Jan 1941), and an completed but unpublished story from the Golden Age.
Superboy 177: Superboy has the Kents jailed when they are threatened by a villain named Cerebron, who is actually Luthor is disguise. In the back up, After helping Lana and Professor Lang out of a cave in, he helps them with their archeological discovery (the remains and accessories of an ancient Egyptian wizard). After Superboy opens a sarcophagus and unleashes the “Curse of a Thousand Deaths,” which pretty much kills everyone in Smallville in less than an hour, he uses another one of the wizard’s magical objects to turn back time an hour (not travel back in time, but actually turn back time), and opens the sarcophagus in space where no one can be hurt.
Superman 242: After a powerless Superman has surgery to repair his brain damage, he and the Sand-Superman work together to stop the Quarrmer inhabiting the Chinese warrior statue. They are then show a vision of what could happen if the 2 Supermen fought, which causes the Sand-Superman to renounce his powers and head back to Quarrm. As for Superman he’s seen what can happen if you have too much power, and decides to remain at roughly half power. This does last beyond the final page of this story.
This issue reprints Superman tale from Superman 96 (Mar 1955), and a non-superhero take from Strange Adventure 54 (Mar 1955).
The Flash 209: After Flash “dies” battling Captain Boomerang and The Trickster, Gorilla Grodd threatens to end them as well. Meanwhile, Flash’s soul is actually in the unknown area between life and death and traveling at the speed of life (not a typo). He’s been pulled there by The Sentinel to defeat The Devourer, which he manages to do. He then returns to the normal world, and makes short work of Grodd and the other 2 villains. In the backup, Wally’s ring is accidentally switched with the ring of the smartest kid in school, who just so happens to be planning to use the knockout gas in his ring to take down a mob boss and his crew. Unfortunately, when he goes to release the gas, the Kid-Flash costume comes out instead. Fortunately, the mis-coloring of the costume causes enough confusion for Kid-Flash to take them all out at Super-speed, wearing a similarly mis-colored backup costume.
This issue reprints a Flash tale, co-starring Elongated Man, from The Flash 119 (Mar 1961)
Justice League of America 92: After basically getting their rear ends handed to them by Solomon Grundy, the JLA and JSA retreat to regroup. Meanwhile, the alien and his pet are getting closer to death, while elsewhere the Robins complain to each other about how the older heroes treat them, and decide to show them what they can do. The heroes converge on the dying alien, and the Robins are able to get Alan Scott’s GL ring from him. While the Earth-1 Hawkman returns it to its owner, the Robins realize that the alien is dying and suggest bringing the alien pet over to Earth-2 to see what happens if they are together. While the two GLs work together to stop Grundy and keep him trapped in Slaughter Swamp, the alien and his pet are reunited, restoring both to full health. Their rejuvenated life energies allow the alien’s buddies to track him and his pet down, and they are able to retrieve them and head home.
This issue reprints a story of Barry Allen as a one-man JLA in The Flash 158 (Feb 1966), and a villain becoming, basically, and one-man Injustice League long before that was actually a thing in Mystery in Space 29 (Dec/Jan 1956).
Batman 235: One of Ra’s Al Ghul’s scientists has developed a special compound, but it turns out that prolonged exposure to the air turns it into a deadly plague. The scientist is on the run from Ra’s, Talia is after the scientist because she thinks he’s killed Ra’s, and Batman has been brought in by Ra’s to stop them both. In the backup, Robin joins the commune, earning their trust, and convincing them to allow him to take the cop-shooter into custody. The criminal runs off however, and starts a brushfire in the surrounding woods.
This issue reprints a double-sized Batman & Robin story from Detective Comics 329 (Jul 1964).
Action Comics 404: Clark is assigned to do a story on a local science institute, but an Earthquake while en route is a job for Superman. While making sure everyone and the institute is okay, Superman is introduced to their super-smart genius who is also one of Superman’s biggest fans. The genius tricks Superman into a device to siphon Superman’s powers into his body so he can rule the world. Superman’s powers are too much for a human body to handle, and not only are Superman’s powers returned to him, but the process also leaves the genius as a vegetable. In the backup, back in his Metropolis University Days, we learn how Clark showed a fraternity how dangerous hazing can be.
This issue reprints an Atom take from The Atom 5 (Feb/Mar 1963), and an Aquaman tale from Adventure Comics 220 (Jan 1956).
Adventure Comics 410: while apartment hunting, Supergirl has to save a man named Mike from bird people. Later, while Linda is on a date with Mike, the bird people return, taking them to their native island. The bird people were natives that were experimented on by Mike and the scientist he was assisting. They also stole a gem from the natives, but the scientist died in the process. Mike helps Linda escape, she changes to Supergirl to save him, but her powers fade out and she is knocked out, so he has to save her. While she’s out, he reveals that he still has the gem, and knows that Linda and Supergirl are one, and he runs off. In the backup, Supergirl is look for Mike and has to stop a giant gorilla from a nearby circus. Supergirl meets and befriends an alien girl with powers, but it turns out she has been sent to kill the Girl of Steel. However, due to Supergirl’s kindness, the girl refuses, and has her powers taken away. Meanwhile, her boss was watching too closely in his ship, and gets blown out of the sky by the military.
This issue reprints a Legion take from Adventure Comics 326 (Nov 1964).
Detective Comics 415: Batman prevents an assassination, and while investigating ends up uncovering an extortion racket as well. In the backup, while Batgirl follows the physical evidence from last issues assassination attempt, Jason Bard focuses on the killer’s voice, and both end up confronting the killer together.
This issue reprints a tale starring Mysto: Magician Detective from Detective Comics 211 (Sep 1954), and a story from Gangbusters 54 (Oct/Nov 1956).
This was one of the best months so far in my opinion. This is Mike Sekowsky’s last issue as editor on Wonder Woman, and he only writes one more, but the book has been going in the right direction lately by allowing her to actually be the hero in her own book. Hopefully this continues with the new creators coming in. Superboy was okay but not great. At least he learned a lesson in carelessness in the 2nd story. I liked the Superman story, although it did seem a bit rushed. It was nice to see the rogues return to the pages of The Flash, and I found Cary Bates’ first Flash story to be quite refreshing. The Kid Flash story was pretty good too, although, as I mentioned above, his costume is miscolored throughout the entire story, giving him yellow pants and red boots rather than red pants and yellow boots. Still not a fan of the JLA story, so I’m glad it is finally over, but it does leave us with an interesting cliffhanger for next issue. Denny O’Neil’s Batman story shows he really likes Ra’s Al Ghul, as these stories have been the best ones he has written. However, I hope we get a short break so there is no risk of over-exposure. The Robin story was better than I had feared. The commune members were trusting of Robin, and came around to allowing the arrest fairly quickly. Interesting that Superman’s powers would be siphoned away in Action the same month he gave away half his power in Superman. Either way, he’ll be back to 100% next month. I’ve decided to add Adventure Comics now that Mike Sekowsky is not on Supergirl anymore (not a fan of his work on the title), and found it to be somewhat enjoyable. I hope this temporary power loss thing goes away pretty quickly though. I did like how the backup picked up where the main story ended though. Frank Robbins’ Batman story in Detective was good, but he writes a very different Batman than O’Neil. This was one of his best stories though, and could easily have been adapted to the Animated Series. The Batgirl story was fun, in that it shows her and Jason solving the same case 2 different ways.
Here’s hoping next month is good too!
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Kid Flash, Robin, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: August 1971
This month, DC raised the cover prices to 25¢. To lessen the blow, extra pages were added, but those extra pages were pretty much just reprinted material dubbed Demand Classics. As such, I’m going to change up the format of these posts a bit so I can note what happened in each issue as clearly as possible.
The Flash 208: In the main story, Flash secretly (i.e. he vibrates at super-speed to appear invisible) helps out some kids who not only want to get out of the gang they are in, but return the stolen goods they obtained in order to be in the gang. Not sure why Flash had to do this secretly other than so that it can appear to be a miracle in order to satisfy the cover image. In the backup tale, Elongated Man visits a town founded 50 years ago by a relative to Lewis Carroll. To celebrate, the town his having a festival and parade with an Alice in Wonderland theme, and Elongated Man has to stop the theft of a First Edition printing of the story.
This issue’s reprint is a double-length Flash tale from The Flash 149 (Dec 1964), co-starring Kid Flash.
JLA 91: While flying around in that “blind-spot” area of space that connects nowhere and somewhere, an alien and his pet are thrown from their spaceship. The alien ends up on Earth-2, and the pet on Earth-1. Being apart, plus the Earths’ environments, make these beings incredibly powerful and angry. While Black Canary watches over an injured Flash, the JLA and JSA team up to stop the aliens, discovering that their language can not be translated by GL’s Power Ring. As it turns out, the heroes are not strong enough to stop them, and they end up chasing the aliens into Slaughter Swamp, where they run into Solomon Grundy.
This issue reprints a Knights of the Galaxy Story from Mystery in Space 6 (Feb-Mar 1952), and an Hourman story from Spectre 7 (Nov-Dec 1968)
Batman 234: When a pair of of clowns steal a balloon from the Gotham Merchants Parade, Commissioner Gordon calls in Batman to help with the case. The Dark Knight quickly figures out that Two-Face, who escaped a few months ago, has returned. Harvey’s main goal this time around is to obtain a treasure hidden on an old schooner docked in Gotham. After stealing the treasure, and knocking out Batman, Two-Face is about to escape and sink the boat, except his coin tells him he needs to save an innocent who happened to also be stuck on the boat. This gives Batman time to recover, take out Two-Face, save the innocent, and escape the sinking ship. In the backup, Robin’s search for the shooter of a police officer leads him to a commune. Robin figures out who in the commune shot the cop, but the rest of the commune don’t plan on allowing the Teen Wonder to take the shooter to jail.
This issue reprints a double-length Batman and Robin tale from Detective Comics 335 (Jan 1965).
Superman 241: Picking up right where the last issue left off, I-Ching uses his mystical abilities to separate Superman’s psyche from his body, and sends it out to recover Superman’s powers. It finds the Sand-Creature and absorbs his powers, leaving the creature weak and scratching open a hole in reality. Meanwhile, Superman’s psyche returns to Superman, restoring his powers. Soon, however, it is obvious that something is wrong with Superman as he starts acting out of character and making mistakes, thanks to the brain damage he suffered when he was hit in the head last issue. Consulting with Wonder Woman, I-Ching tries talking to Superman, but he thinks the old man is just jealous. Once again using his mystical abilities, I-Ching and Wonder Woman track down the Sand Creature, learning that he is a formless being from Quarrm. As they go off to try to steal away Superman’s powers again, another Quarrmer escapes from the hole in reality. After tricking Superman into an encounter, the Sand Superman sticks close to the Man of Steel, slowly draining his powers, just as the other Quarrmer attacks, having taken the form of an ancient Chinese warrior. At this point, Superman loses all of his powers, and consciousness, and the warrior drags his body toward the city.
This issue reprints stories from Superman 112 (Mar 1957), and Superman 176 (Apr 1965)
Green Lantern 85: After Green Arrow is mugged by a group of addicts needing money for another hit, he calls in Green Lantern to give him an assist. They quickly find the muggers, and find Roy (Speedy) Harper with them. Thinking he is undercover, they leave him behind while the muggers take them to their supplier at a private airfield. But the muggers double-cross the heroes, knocking them out. In order to discredit the heroes, the supplier and his men basically force the unconscious heroes to inhale some of their product. Fortunately, Roy is there to delay the police until he can save the heroes. After GL creates a horrific monster with his ring, he is basically scared into using all his will power to fight off the drug enough to fly him, GA, and Roy to safety. As the heroes comes down from their high, they decided to get some rest, so GL heads home. GA sees him off, and then returns to see if Roy wants to of his famous chili, and ends up catching his former sidekick shooting up.
This issue reprints a double-length tale from Green Lantern 11 (Mar 1962)
Action Comics 403: When a criminal is fatally wounded trying to escape from Superman, he claims that he is a Zohtt, and will have his revenge.
The next day, Superman is called to the year 3458, where he is exposed to a micro-virus created by the now-dead woman the Zohtt was inhabiting. Now that the Zohtt has inhabited the virus, it is affecting Superman, leaving him with 48 hours to live. After thwarting all of his attempts to remove the virus, Superman is left with no choice but to fly off to die in peace. Once Superman’s heart stops, the Zohtt leaves Superman’s body and learns that Superman is on an asteroid, with no one else around to inhabit. Fearing death, it goes back to Superman’s heart to try reviving him, but actually ends up in the “heart” of a robot. The real Superman recovered from the virus now that the Zohtt isn’t inhabiting it, and then switched places with a robot while the Zohtt was distracted. Now inhabiting a fake heart that contains sulfur (the Zohtt’s weakness), the Zohtt is trapped, and Superman heads home. The backup story flashes back to Clark’s college days, where a professor tries taking advantage of a janitor with the power of Skrying (which may be misspelled in the story). Eventually this backfires on the professor who ends up getting himself killed in an explosion that not only removes the janitor’s ability, but causes him some brain damage as well.
This issue reprints a Vigilante story from Action Comics 176 (Jan 1953), and a Superboy story from Adventure Comics 310 (Jul 1963).
Detective Comics 414: According to legend, the keeper of the Keymoore Lighthouse was too busy getting lucky with a lady to turn on the light, causing a ship to crash into the rocks. The keeper was so upset by this that he killed the woman, and now haunts the lighthouse waiting for a chance at redemption. In the present, Batman has traced a group of gunrunners from Gotham to Florida. He takes down the muscle, but the lady of the group offers to take him to where they were going to make the drop, the Keymoore Lighthouse. There, they meet up with a South American General and his soldiers, who were actually planning to take the guns and kill the gunrunners. Batman takes down the soldiers, but the General escapes. However, the girl, even though she’s been shot, manages to damage the boat enough for Batman to catch up. Unfortunately, the storm rolling in causes the boat to lurch, knocking Batman into a railing, leaving him open to an attack by the General. But, a blinding light from the lighthouse sets the General on fire, and he becomes so scared that he jumps in the water and attempts to swim away. However, the storm has cause the water to be a very dangerous place, and the General is crushed by the pounding waves. Our story ends with Batman heading up to the light tower to find that no one has been up there for years, and he thanks the ghost of the lighthouse keeper, who, according to the caption, is now at peace. In the backup, Barbara Gordon and Jason Bard go to see a play, and end up foiling an assassination attempt during the show. With only minimal clues, Barbara runs off to follow a hunch.
This issue reprints 2 non-superhero related detective stories: one from World’s Finest 66 (Sep-Oct 1953), and one from Strange Adventures 83 (Aug 1957).
Review: This was not the best of months. The Flash story was weird, mostly due to the fact that Flash stayed invisible the whole time for no reason. The Elongated Man story was fun and enjoyable, and had some beautiful Dick Giordano art. The JLA/JSA story was just “meh.” This is the 2nd JLA/JSA crossover during this read-through, and so far I am underwhelmed. The Two-Face story in Batman was disappointing. This was O’Neil and Adams bringing back one Batman’s oldest villains. I was expecting some kind of psychological drama, and instead I read a very straightforward, cookie-cutter story. If you are interested in a more of a psychological drama, check out the stories in Batman Adventures, Batman & Robin Adventures, or Batman: Gotham Adventures. They are great. Anyway, the Robin backup story was just kind of boring.
The Superman story was enjoyable, and it feels like we’re ramping up towards a big conclusion, but I may feel this way because I’ve read it before and know what to expect. I will complain that O’Neil keeps hopping between Metropolis and New York like they are the same city. He does better with the GL/GA story, which was pretty good, but could not live up to all the hype that has been built around it after more than 45 years. Interesting that while they were allowed to show drugs and paraphernalia, they couldn’t use any drug names. Also, while being shown as a bad thing for the whole issue, the dope that GL and GA were forced to inhale seems to have fixed Ollie’s arm, which was injured during his mugging and apparently no longer needed to be wrapped and in a sling after the heroes came down from their high.
The story in Action was entertaining, but after reading Superman, and then the GL/GA story, Action seems to still be stuck in the late Silver Age, although they did show a guy dying in a helicopter crash. Same thing with the backup. I look forward to this book catching up with the others. The Batman story in Detective was a good, solid story, typical of most of the stories from this period, even if it was another story with a mystical element. The Batgirl story didn’t have much to it. It was basically all one scene. I’m guessing this will be a 3-parter like the Robin story, but I’m not looking ahead to find out.
My favorite this month would probably be the Superman story, and I only pick that over the drug issue because the Superman story was allowed to be fun due to the subject matter.
Next month, the big Superman story concludes with a final showdown between Superman and the Sand Creature. Also, unless it is delayed due to Adams’ inability to do a monthly book for very long, we get GA angry at Roy and slapping him around a bit, and then Roy going through withdrawals.
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Robin, Superboy, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: July 1971
Another mostly magically, mystical month in the DCU. After being stuck in a snow storm, Diana and I-Ching, along with some escaped convicts, take shelter in a mysterious inn. Meanwhile, Superman, who just isn’t as affective with the lower power levels, accepts an offer of help from I-Ching, who offers to uses the mystic arts to try to heal him. In the process, he receives a blow to the head which will have repercussions fairly soon.
Superboy technically gets a new sister when Martha’s childhood friend dies in a car crash, leaving her daughter in the Kents’ care until her father can return from out of the country to get her. Shenanigans ensue. Meanwhile, the Legion try to figure out how to stop a criminal with the same powers as Invisible Kid. In Action, Superman figures out the secret to the “Indian magic” that is removing his powers, and discovers the real reason why Haldine refuses to stop construction on the sacred land. In the backup, Superman and Supergirl hate each other and use their powers to fight over possession of the Fortress of Solitude. Over in Detective, Batman solves the mystery behind the “haunted” town of Phantom Hollow while also dealing with the social issue of tolerance. And Batgirl closes the case of the skull crushing wigs.
The Wonder Woman story was actually pretty good, although being stuck in a snow storm in an issue published in late spring/early summer is ironic. Also, I got a chuckle over the novelist trying to impress and “protect” Diana, and she hardly seemed to notice him. Denny O’Neil’s year-long Superman story begins it’s final phase with this issue, beginning the setup for the finale. Interestingly, this is the only non-team up book to acknowledge the Wonder Woman is still part of the DCU. The Superboy story was interesting, although the title is misleading. I thought the Kents were going to adopt another kid or something, not basically play babysitter. The Legion story was cliché, and I’m not a fan of the George Tuska art, but Invisible Kid trying to figure out how to defeat himself was somewhat interesting.
So, the mysterious “Indian magic” at the end of last month’s Action story was not magic at all, but the explanation of it makes sense. The plot twist with Haldine, however, came right out of nowhere. And, I highly doubt the government would give back land with all the treasure under it, I’m sorry to say. The backup was pretty good though, as both characters realize that they used to like each other and don’t understand the reason for their hate. The only problem is that Superman performs 2 super-feats off panel that should be pretty impossible given the setup. Guess that’s how you write yourself out of a corner. The Detective issue was just bleh all around. The Batman story was boring and the Batgirl story didn’t really hold my interest. Also, Don Heck is inking his own pencils on the Batgirl story, so the are there has taken a dip as well.
Another short but interesting month. Nothing really spectacular, but almost no real complaints either. On to August…
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Legion of Superheroes, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, Wonder Woman | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: June 1971
This month, Superboy’s soul is separated from his body, leaving his body useless and his soul stuck being a child’s genie. In JLA, we learn about the dangers of dumping our trash in the oceans in a story that is in no way subtle about it’s preaching. Meanwhile Flash is missing, and when Batman finds him, it looks like he’s been through the ringer, which apparently sets up next month’s JLA/JSA team up. In an unrelated story in The Flash, Sargon the Sorcerer (Golden Age hero turned Silver/Bronze Age villain) uses his limited magical abilities to force Flash to retrieve his magic ruby, which will fully restore is powers. He succeeds, but ends up sacrificing his relationship with his niece in the process. Also, Kid Flash helps out a speedster who is actually of a species that lives beneath the earth’s surface. In Superman, our hero deal with a terrorist threatening to destroy the earth with a hydrogen bomb, while also dealing with vastly reduced powers. Also, we learn home Krypton got it’s name. In Batman, The Dark Knight meets Ra’s Al Ghul, and they travel around the globe to save Robin and Talia, who have been kidnapped. In GL/GA, our heroes have to contend with an entire town that is being mind controlled by one of Green Lantern’s super villains. In Action, Superman secretly helps a Native American tribe get rid of a government missile testing facility built on their sacred land, but when it doesn’t work out quite right, Superman is seen as a villain, and taken hostage after they use magic to remove his powers. In the backup, the town of Masonville is evacuated when Superman accidentally triggers an unstable meteor that has crash landed and could blow up the entire town if he moves. Everyone escapes except for a crippled orphan who is willing to sacrifice himself (see, the longer Superman waits to detonate the explosive, the bigger the boom will be). Can Superman save the kid without breaking his code against killing? In Detective, Bruce Wayne’s uncle is near death, and has requested the presence of all remaining Waynes for the reading of the will once he passes. But the castle he lives in is haunted, and Batman must save his relatives from an untimely demise. Also, Batgirl has to figure out the mystery of wigs that will crush your skull in.
A lot of mystical stories this month. It is kind of fitting for when I’m reading these books (October 2017), but not really for when the issues came out (release dates: April/May 1971). Superboy kind of tries to get around it thanks to using science to enhance the mysticism. The JLA issue could not have been more preachy if it was a special one-shot created in collaboration with some anti-pollution group to help spread their message (like DC did with the government for Kennedy’s exercise programs, Nancy Reagan’s War on Drugs, etc). Also, since when does Bruce still have living relatives? How did he not get shipped off to one of them when his parents died?
It was interesting to see Neal Adams’ work inked by Bernie Wrightson in GL/GA. Unfortunately, the quality varied from looking great to looking sketchy. I wonder if this had anything to do with Adams’ being notoriously slow and Wrightson having to deal with deadline pressures. It never really looks bad, just inconsistant.
My favorite stories were the Superman and Batman stories by O’Neil. The only gripe is the way he has the heroes treat their (for lack of a better word) sidekicks. Batman refers to Robin as “kid” and his dialog with Robin reads as less than someone concerned about his ward. Superman seems kind of nasty to Lois, but without any scenes of them being nice to each other to balance it out. As much as John Byrne is criticized for writing a Lois that Superman shouldn’t be in love with, O’Neil writes a Superman that Lois shouldn’t be in love with.
And poor Batgirl. The last 2 issues have had her in the dark world of fashion, and now she’s in the world of those who wear wigs, which apparently was a big thing in 1971. I don’t know, because that was 9 years before I was born. Is there nothing else for female characters to deal with besides these crimes? She lives in Gotham City for crying out loud.
Next month, a combination of reprint only issues and this being an odd month mean that there won’t be as many issues to read. But I can already see, just be looking at the covers, that we’re getting more mystical horror again. Sigh!
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Kid Flash, Robin, Superboy, Superman, The Flash | Leave a reply
DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: May 1971
This month, Wonder Woman basically adapts “The Prince and the Pauper” except with a princess so that Diana can be the shlub. The irony is that she is actually a princess herself, so this is actually “The Princess and the other Princess,” but this fact is never actually brought up. Over in The Flash, 2 different people live through accidents that end up killing their loved ones, so some aliens offer to bring them back, but only if they trade their lives for their loved ones’. They agree, and are given 24 hours to put things in order, which also gives them 24 hours of immortality. They use their time to help people, so The Flash steps in to prevent the aliens from claiming any of the lives by showing the full potental of the human race. Along the way, he tackles the social issue of forest fires. Meanwhile, Elongated Man returns to take on Mirror Master. Justice League of America introduces a character named Harlequin Ellis (can you guess who he’s based on?) who can create entire dream worlds with his writing. He uses this ability to try to win the love of Black Canary, but it doesn’t work out for him. In Batman, the Caped Crusader once again clashes with the Man With Ten Eyes, while Robin solves the mystery from last issue and Dick goes on a date. Over in Superman, the Man of Steel winds up as the carrier of a space virus, and the only cure he can find is contact with the Sand Creature. However, this severly reduces his powers, and he still has to save Lois and a pilot from a swarm of army ants. In Action, Superman is given custody of the son of a Nobel Prize winner when the prize winner dies, but the kid hates Superman. See, when Superman saved the kid from one of his father’s experiments that had gone out of control, he was exposed to some strange gases that left him with the ability to temporarly transform into other living creatures. Superman offers to help him learn his powers, and calls him in to help on several emergencies, giving him the codename Changeling (sounds familiar…). Eventually, this leads to Superman taking the kid to see the Fortress, where the kid accidentally activates the disassemble feature on a satellite in space. While Superman’s dealing with that, a report comes in of a trapped sub that needs super-help. The kids uses his powers to become Superman, but his transformation time runs out before he completely finishes the rescue, allowing the water pressure to crush him, and Superman returns in time to finish the rescue and watch the kid turn to dust as he dies. This is followed by a story that takes place in the Bottle City of Kandor, but was so boring I couldn’t finish it. Over in Detective, Batman enters the Den of Death Dealers, meets Talia Al Ghul (who removes his cowl, but only vaguely reconizes his face), and finally comes face to face with Doctor Daark, who is killed when a shot from Talia causes him to fall onto train tracks right in front of an oncoming train. Finally, Batgirl manages to survive her death trap from last issue, and then is released by one of the fashion guys who believes that murder is going too far. She then follows the his “friends” to the cruise ship of the injured fashion guru, arriving just in time to prevent her death. The story ends with the guru not making a decision about skirt length, but instead designing an incredibly ugly outfit based on Batgirl’s costume.
Okay, first off, I just want to say that the back-up stories this month were entirely forgetable. The Robin and Batgirl stories are hampered by the fact that all of them have been 2-parters so you are literally only getting half of a story, and aren’t memorable enough to recall what had happened the previous issue. I liked the Elongated Man story when I read it, but I almost forgot to include it with the Flash summary. And don’t even get me started on the Kandor story. Ugh!
As for the main stories: After taking 1 step forward last issue, I feel like Wonder Woman took a half step back by adapting a rather famous story. The art wasn’t terrible though. Thank goodness for Dick Giordano’s inking! The Flash was a good sci-fi type story with some great art. Irv Novick’s art looks drastically different with Murphy Anderson inks. The JLA story was pretty ho-hum. Apparently, Harlan Ellison was given a copy of the script, and actually gave permission to use his actual name, but the decision was made to keep the fake name. I don’t know how true that is, but as much as I wasn’t impressed by this story, I hope it is followed up on at some point. The guy can create entire dreamscapes and bring other people into it, and Green Arrow and Black Canary just let him walk off at the end. Also, this was also an excuse for Mike Fredrich to use some write some very wordy captions. Hope he was paid by the word for this one. The Batman story was a pretty good follow-up to a strange story (Alfred took Batman to an eye doctor, at night, with Bruce in full costume, and the doctor checking his eyes through the cowl), but is kind of lost amidst all this League of Assassin/Ra’s Al Ghul that Denny O’Neil has been doing. Speaking of which, this was my first time reading “Into the Den of Death Dealers” and it really feels like a prequel. Talia’s introduction is really low-key and she does name drop her father, but this issue’s assassins seem to be from one of the low level classes considering how easily Batman dispatches them (although they did kill their intended target). And Doctor Daark did not live up to the hype. The Superman issue was not my favorite from this run, but it does move the Sand Creature plot forward, and we get the first significant weakening of Superman. I’m not sure why the virus is so selective. Superman spends time in a hospital, and Clark spends time with people in the TV studio, and no one is affected. I’m also not sure bathing in radiation was a good idea either before going back to work. Maybe a trip through the sun would have been safer, all things considered. But the main story over in Action does not live up to the “anniversary issue” hype. It was literally just another silver-age story, which is even more noticable compared to the stuff happening over in Superman.
Next month: I have no idea. I’m not looking ahead to make the experience more authentic.
Posted in DC Bronze Age Read-through Project | Tagged Action Comics, Batgirl, Batman, Detective Comics, Elongated Man, Justice League of America, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman | 1 Reply
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4503
|
__label__wiki
| 0.830571
| 0.830571
|
Balls in the Air
Best Crappy Shots
China Golf Association
European PGA Tour
Fall Series
FedEx Cup
Freak Incidents
Hazeltine
Know Your Asians
Know Your Europeans
Life on Tour
Nice Effing Pants
Official World Golf Ranking
PGA of America
PGA Tour Confidential
Q-School
US Amateur
US Senior Open
US Women's Open
Web.com Tour
Wei Goes Golfing
WGC
World Cup of Golf
World Golf Hall of Fame
WUPHangout
U.S. Ryder Cup potentials stage team-bonding dinner hosted by Jack Nicklaus
By Stephanie Wei under Ryder Cup
Well, that’s certainly a bit of a motley crew. Jack Nicklaus and his wife Barbara hosted a dinner for potential U.S. Ryder Cup team members on Thursday night at their home in North Palm Beach — not far from this week’s Honda Classic.
The attendees included Captain Davis Love III, PGA Chief Pete Bevacqua and Vice Captains Tiger Woods, who drove down the road from his home, Jim Furyk, who made the trip from Ponte Vedra Beach, and Tom Lehman, who flew from Arizona for the evening before heading back west early today for a charity outing.
22 potential players from roughly the top 40 in the U.S. Ryder Cup team points standings were present, including Zac Blair, Keegan Bradley (who is 42nd), Jason Dufner, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler, Brian Harman, Russell Henley, Billy Horschel, John Huh, Dustin Johnson, Chris Kirk, Kevin Kisner, Brooks Koepka, Jason Kokrak, Jamie Lovemark, Andrew Loupe, Ben Martin, Phil Mickelson, Brendan Steele, Robert Streb, Jimmy Walker and Gary Woodland.
Blair. Harman. Huh. Kokrak. Lovemark. Loupe. Martin. Steele. Streb. The Europeans must be shaking in their spikes! Absolutely terrifying.
The American leadership is trying to get some of the older players acquainted with the younger guys earlier than usual this year since the U.S. team has performed so dreadfully against Europe in this century. The last time the Americans prevailed was in 2008 and team USA has only won the biennial matches twice in the last 10 Ryder Cups.
“I’m happy that I got to go to Jack and Barbara’s house, first of all,” said Love after posting a one-under 69 on Friday morning. “That was the neat thing. I think most of the guys, that was the main focus.
“But once they heard Jack talk about The Ryder Cup, his great memories of it, and we talked a little bit about preparing for major championships or for Ryder Cups, and so we all learned something for sure.
“We got to see Tiger, Phil and Jack, all in the same room, and talking to each other and asking each other questions. We had an awful lot of wins sitting there for some young guys to listen to.
“And it was just great to get everybody together, because you know, that’s not even all the guys that might make The Ryder Cup Team but it was a big group of guys that are now excited about it, thinking about it and are part of the process.”
Added Fowler: “Just having a chance to be with the Americans that are playing the best right now, obviously in points, for Ryder Cup, and being there with Davis, obviously I got to spend a lot of time with him the last two days, which has been a good time. That’s always fun. And to be around both Jack and Barbara, who I feel like I’ve continued to grow closer and closer to over the few years down here, Barbara is like a mom to me down here.
“So it’s pretty special to have that kind of relationship with two people that have had a pretty big impact on the golf community on and off the course.”
Multiple players attest that Woods, who hadn’t been spotted by most his peers since hosting the Hero World Challenge, looked happy and healthy.
“I talked to him for just a second. I said, ‘Wow, you’re standing up, you’re not dead,’” said Jimmy Walker. “He said, ‘I know, everyone thinks I’m dead now.’
“‘I said, ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ and he said, ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’”
It was really cool to see Tiger there,” said Brendan Steele. “Obviously he’s not fully healthy and we haven’t seen much of him lately, so for him to show up there really shows what it means to him, these Ryder Cup and team events, how important they are because it would be really easy to not go when you’re not even playing.”
Love said Woods seemed to be in good spirits and to enjoy the comraderie of hanging with the guys.
“He looked great,” said Love. He always looks good. He looked fit. Looked happy. I think Jim said it best, he goes, “I miss being with the guys. I think Tom and Jim and Tiger enjoyed it just because they are back with the PGA Tour guys and back in the mix a little bit. So it was good for all of us.
“You know, the Ryder Cup Team only gets together as a team for one week every two years, so we’re trying to change that. So it was nice to get everybody in the same room and talk about it.”
Love knows that Tiger, who has already been named an assistant captain, wants to be a playing — not just driving around a golf cart.
“(Tiger) wants to play,” said Love. “Phil wants to play. Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker, they all want to play. So right now, I’m getting great support from Jim and Tiger, but we want them off the bench and in the game, so hopefully they will get back at it soon.
Jack held court and told stories and the current players were able to pick the brain of the 18-time major champion.
“We knew the questions to ask,” said Love. “Asking about preparing for major championships or asking about being nervous, how he handled pressure, things like that, and just him telling stories.
“His memory, as you all know, is just phenomenal. He remembers every shot, every hole, and every situation that he was in, and he’s always honest, whether it’s about how well he played or how poorly he played. It was very educational I think for jet ran players like me and for some of the young guys.”
Fowler, the 36-hole leader at the Honda Classic, was paying attention to the wisdom Nicklaus shared.
“I think some of it was just learning a little bit more of his prep work, kind of how he went about things, and then the confidence and belief that he had going into a tournament once he had that preparation done. He knew he was ready to play on Thursday.
“And I feel like I’ve begun to learn a little bit more what he’s talking about the past couple years, where Thursday I’m ready to go and know what I’m bringing to the golf course and know what I’m capable of. It was cool to kind of hear a little bit more of his background and he’s in a position now where he can kind of share that and he’s not giving away any secrets.”
Oh, and the food was great, in case you were wondering. The players ate steak, lobster, and of course, Jack Nicklaus Ice Cream.
With the Americans getting together in February for an event that doesn’t take place for seven months is interesting — and it obviously shows they’re trying to shake things up and show they’re really serious about producing a winning team (for a change). The U.S. players want to get their hands back on the Ryder Cup badly.
Members of the European Team responded and weren’t quite sure what to make of the early pow-wow. (The difference is, a group of Euros would get together like that without it being a huge thing and organized.)
“I don’t know, we’ll see,” said Sergio Garcia. “If it works, it’s great. If it doesn’t, then, you know, they will try something else. There’s really not much I can comment on that. We’ll see if it pays off or not in September.”
#2016 Honda Classic, #2016 Ryder Cup, #Brendan Steele, #hazeltine, #Jack Nicklaus, #Jim Furyk, #Jimmy Walker, #PGA National, #Rickie Fowler, #Sergio Garcia, #Steve Stricker, #Tiger Woods
← Report: Tiger Woods taking DRIVER swings! Watch: The Bear Trap’s latest victims, Smylie Kaufman and Shane Lowry →
Who will win the Masters?
Rickie Fowler
Join the Live Chat
Wei Under Par. Copyrighted © 2009-2014 All Rights Reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4506
|
__label__cc
| 0.525341
| 0.474659
|
Born: June 9, 1980
Residence: Krum, Texas
Horses: Streakin Perks Fool “Tiny” (9-year old mare) – Sire: A Streak of Fling/Dam: Pollyanna Perks; Streakin Easy April “Lolo” (9-year old mare) – Sire: A Streak of Fling/Dam: Easy April Lena
Wrangler NFR qualifications: 3 (2011-12, 2014)
• 2015 - Finished with $19,473. Won the Los Fresnos (Texas) PRCA Rodeo, the Goliad (Texas) County Fair PRCA Rodeo, and the Crowley's Ridge Saddle Club Charity Rodeo (Forrest City, Ark.); finished second at the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show and Rodeo (Mercedes, Texas); finished tied for second at Spokane (Wash.) Interstate Rodeo.
• 2014 - Finished the year 6th in the world with $154,181. Placed in six out of 10 rounds at the Wrangler NFR, was sixth in the average and won $63,750; won the Lewistown (Idaho) Round-Up, the Champions Challenge (Kennewick, Wash.), the Farm City Pro Rodeo (Hermiston, Ore.), Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the Drummond (Mont.) PRCA Rodeo and the Red Bluff (Calif.) Round-Up; was co-champion at the Champions Challenge (Redding, Calif.) and finished second at the San Antonio (Texas) Stock Show and Rodeo
• 2013 – Finished the year ranked 23rd with $51,553. Sold Rare Dillion that carried her to two Wrangler NFRs after she decided to stay home with her family. She sold the horse to Trip and Callie duPerier; won RodeoAustin, the Marshall (Texas) ProRodeo, the average at the RNCFR but finished second in the final round that determines the champion and the Los Fresnos (Texas) PRCA Rodeo
• 2012 – Finished as the reserve world champion after winning $79,802 at the NFR and placing in five out of 10 rounds, winning rd. 6 and rd. 10 in times of 13.51 and 13.57 seconds, respectively. Finished the year with $204,322; won the year-end and average title in the Texas Circuit to advance to the RNCFR; won the Ponoka (Alberta) Stampede, the 52nd Annual Daines Ranch Rodeo (Innisfail, Alberta), the Brooks (Alberta) Rodeo, the Old Fort Days Rodeo (Ft. Smith, Ark.), the Will Rogers Stampede (Claremore, Okla.), the Santa Rosa Round-Up (Vernon, Texas) and the Spirit of Texan Pro Rodeo (Edna, Texas).
• 2011 – Set a Wrangler NFR arena record in Rd. 5 with a time of 13.46 seconds. Placed in four rounds with round wins in Rd. 4 and 5. Finished the year ranked fifth with $136,274 after having won $50,769 at the NFR; was handpicked by Annesa Self to become the new owner of Dillion in April and they went on to qualify for their first Wrangler NFR; won the Tri-State Rodeo (Amarillo, Texas), the Dodge City (Kan.) Roundup, the Dinosaur Days Rodeo (Vernal, Utah), Greeley (Colo.) Independence Day Stampede, the Coleman (Texas) PRCA Rodeo, the Gladewater (Texas) Round-up Rodeo, the Will Rogers Stampede (Claremore, Okla.), the Butterfield Stage Days Rodeo (Bridgeport, Texas) and the Jasper (Texas) Lions Benefit Rodeo’s; co-champion at Old Fort Days (Fort Smith, Ark.).
Husband, Steve; son Kale (17); daughters Makala (16) and Jacy (9)…Enjoys going to the lake with her family and shopping with her girls…Got involved in rodeo through her mom, Danita Walker, who excelled in Nevada from the youth ranks through high school but after Carlee was born treated barrel racing as more of a hobby and now supports Carlee’s dreams…Favorite restaurant is Olive Garden, favorite TV show is House Hunters, favorite movie is My Sister’s Keeper.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4507
|
__label__wiki
| 0.63308
| 0.63308
|
Thursday 30 January 2020 (other days)
Thursday of week 3 in Ordinary Time
Come, let us adore the Lord, for he is our God.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Saint Aedan of Ferns (c.550 - 632)
He was the son of an Irish tribal chieftain and studied under St Finian and St David. He was the first bishop of Ferns, in Ireland, and founded many churches and monasteries. See the article in Wikipedia.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: John the Serene ( - 553?)
He was a bishop of Naples in the sixth century, but nothing else is known about him.
Liturgical colour: green
The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).
Mid-morning reading (Terce)
Wisdom 19:22 ©
Lord, in every way you have made your people great and glorious. You have never disdained them, but stood by them always and everywhere.
Noon reading (Sext)
Deuteronomy 4:7 ©
What great nation is there that has its gods so near as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to him?
Afternoon reading (None)
Esther 10:3 ©
The single nation, mine, is Israel, those who cried out to God and were saved. Yes, the Lord has saved his people, the Lord has delivered us from all these evils, God has worked such signs and great wonders as have never happened among the nations.
Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4511
|
__label__cc
| 0.535329
| 0.464671
|
GRAMMY Awards: Vote for Best New Artist
The nominees are Best New Artist at the GRAMMYs aren't always "new," but their success is new. The Recording Academy's criteria for this category is an artist whose eligibility year release "achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and notable impacted the musical landscape." This year...
GRAMMY Awards: Best New Artist Nominees
These artists achieved a "breakthrough into the public consciousness"
Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Recognizes Lauren Jauregui, Billie Eilish, Greta Van Fleet, Camila Cabello + More
Forbes just shared their latest series of 30 Under 30 lists, highlighting successful young people in categories that span from Music and Arts to Immigrants.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4512
|
__label__wiki
| 0.602247
| 0.602247
|
A Brief History of the Last Few Months
RUSH: I have here this piece by Joan Swirsky at Canada Free Press. It's a really great recap of the last couple of months, the few months that we've had here. And I've done it all. But, you know, folks, as conservative news is increasingly suppressed and eliminated...
Tell me, are you having trouble finding news today? I know you are. There isn't any news anymore. There is the Democrat Party's agenda, and that's it. There isn't any news, and even that is not... Well, they do try to present it as news to try to fool you into thinking it is the news of the day. But, see, I don't think that the history of the recent past can go said enough, 'cause I don't think that it's reached enough ears.
I don't think it's reached enough eyeballs. I have here... She's got a great list of Trump's achievements, and it's maybe only 25% of 'em. But it's really a good list. Here's some pull quotes: "In all those eight months -- 220 days, over 5,000 hours -- what was the reaction of Democrats, both elected and civilian? A thunderous silence. Not a word of opprobrium or disapproval or condemnation" of the Democrat riots in Democrat blue states and cities.
"A thunderous silence. Not a word of ... disapproval or condemnation. Not. One. Word. ... Because ... Democrats heartily approve of violent acting-out riots -- as long as they support Democrat ideology! In 2018... there were 'glowing stories' about the hundreds of Women's March members who were engaging in 'direct action' to disrupt the Senate's Kavanaugh hearings."
How about shortly after the election in 2016? How about all of those vagina hat-wearing women all over the streets of this country protesting. The Democrats were ecstatic, and they were promoting it all! The "Women's March members in 'direct action' to disrupt the Senate's Kavanaugh hearings. They blocked hallways. They shouted down Senate members. They draped protest banners from balconies.
"Democrats cheered them on." As I was reading that paragraph, I reminded myself of the image of then-senator Jeff Flake and his petrified face as he was surrounded in a Capitol elevator by screaming, hysterical banshee women. No one in Congress even blanched over that attack.
But you remember that? Jeff Flake was assaulted by a bunch of Amazonian women. He was scared to death, and he sought out Chris Coons of Delaware, and they got together, and Jeff Flake abandoned Kavanaugh for another FBI investigation.
"Black Lives Matter rioters vandalized the Lincoln Memorial and the WW2 Memorial, along with statues of Gandhi, General Kosciuszko, and Andrew Jackson. And Democrat House members proposed bills to protect the racist mobs from law enforcement. Meanwhile the BLM mob besieged the White House and battled Secret Service personnel, allegedly forcing the evacuation of President Trump and his family to a bunker. And a bail fund backed by Senator Kamala Harris and the Biden campaign staffers focused on helping the rioters and looters get out of prison. 'Now, as the Democrats expect to take power,' Greenfield writes, they suddenly decided that rioting is bad,'" when they've done nothing but support it this entire past year.
The title of Ms. Swirsky's piece is "Pearl-Clutchers on Parade." And let's just recount some of the last eight months of rampaging criminality and violence in many Democrat controlled cities in our country, all conducted by thugs belonging to groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Here's a short list of what they've done.
--Committed widespread arson, including burning down hundreds of minority-owned businesses in the Latino, Asian and black communities.
--Incinerated cars and burned down buildings, court houses, police stations.
--Shot laser beams in the eyes of policemen.
--Assaulted civilians, resulting in 30 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations.
This is all things the Democrat Party supported all of last year. They encouraged, they applauded these actions by Antifa and BLM.
--Smashed plate-glass windows of numerous businesses, both large and small and then engaged in looting, stealing and grand theft.
--Terrorized and then dragged people out of restaurants.
--Tore down historic statues, including those of black icons.
--Defaced streets and avenues with BLM's block-long, block-lettered, yellow-painted name.
--Terrorized the citizenry of entire neighborhoods and towns for months on end.
--Attacked people in locked cars;
"In all those eight months--220 days, over 5,000 hours--what was the reaction of Democrats, both elected and civilian? A thunderous silence." The Democrats didn't oppose any of this. They weren't worried about any of this. They weren't sounding any warning bells about the dangers of violence over any of this. They applauded this all of last summer. Because it was in their honor. All of this violence, all of these riots, all this acting out was to promote the Democrat agenda, so of course they were going to stand by and support it.
Meanwhile, let's look at some of the president's activities at the same time as all of this violence sponsored by and applauded by Democrats was taking place. The president lowered taxes. Democrats hate that. They've never voted for it. The president's policies boosted the economy to all-time highs. The president's policies elevated black employment to an all-time high, which the Democrats really hate. The last thing you're supposed to do is actually make people's lives better. The Democrats claim only they can do it, but they never do. Trump did it for not just African-Americans, but Latinos and women.
The president strengthened the military. He signed the first law ever to make cruelty to animals a federal felony. That's right out of the left wing button hook. The president signed right-to-try legislation allowing terminally ill patients to try experimental treatment that wasn't allowed before. The president signed the First Step Act prison reform bill that frees mostly black prisoners from unfair sentences. He supported and strengthened Israel by moving her capital to Jerusalem, giving Israel control over the Golan Heights. He supported the pro-life movement, which the Democrats hate more than anything. And that's just a smattering of some of the president's achievements for the American people. While all of these other people are engaging in violence and arson and destruction, not one word of criticism by the Democrats.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4513
|
__label__wiki
| 0.954202
| 0.954202
|
Falcons OC Kyle Shanahan 'definitely' ready to be NFL head coach
By Vaughn McClure
Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan said he is ready to become a head coach, but he won't let those aspirations deter his goal of reaching this year's Super Bowl.
A source confirmed to ESPN that Shanahan will interview for head-coaching vacancies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Jacksonville and Denver over the next two days. Those interviews, to be conducted in Atlanta, were made possible after the No. 2 seed Falcons secured this week's first-round playoff bye.
"I think it would have been an impossible situation if we didn't win last week,'' Shanahan said Thursday. "But getting the bye week, it's actually been pretty convenient. ... The whole staff and the players are going to get Friday off. So that's when I'm taking care of that business. I'm meeting with a few teams those two days.
"You know, my kids are upset about it. They thought I had a couple of off days. But that's about it. It doesn't affect anything here because getting this bye week has allowed me to do this.''
Shanahan's lone interview for an NFL head-coaching vacancy was last year with the Buffalo Bills. The 37-year-old certainly has to be intrigued with the possibility of following in the footsteps of his father, Mike, by coaching the Broncos. Gary Kubiak recently stepped down as coach of Super Bowl champions due to health concerns.
Shanahan, a former Broncos boy ball, was asked about his interest level in Denver. His father won back-to-back Super Bowls with quarterback John Elway, the team's current executive vice president of football operations.
"I know some of the people in that organization, just growing up there, but I know more from when I was younger,'' Shanahan said. "I never worked in Denver. I left there when I was in high school. I haven't been back since. I've known the guys over the years most of my life.
"I've got a lot of respect for them [as] football people, so that's really what's the most flattering. When you've got respect for people, you really think they do things the right way and they're really about one thing and that's trying win a Super Bowl. When you have organizations like that who do want to talk to you, that's what I respect the most.''
Shanahan was asked if he thinks he's ready to become a head coach.
"Yeah, I definitely do,'' he said. "I think I have been. I think a lot of guys are. It's about [being] given that opportunity and hoping it's the right fit.
"It's definitely not something that I have to do. I love it here and love the situation here. I love the team here. There's no one better I could work for. My family loves living here. So, by no means is it something that has to get done. But that's a goal of most people in our profession, and I'd be surprised if most people didn't tell you they were ready.''
Shanahan then was asked if he would take just any NFL head coach job.
"Absolutely not,'' he responded.
The Falcons and MVP candidate Matt Ryan adjusted to the second year in Shanahan's scheme and boasted the league top-scoring offense, averaging 33.8 points per game.
sportsespnmike shanahanatlanta falconsmatt ryanlos angeles ramshead coachgary kubiakinterviewscoaching carouselsan francisco 49ersjacksonville jaguarskyle shanahannfldenver broncos
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4515
|
__label__wiki
| 0.504405
| 0.504405
|
Head, Department of Surgery
Dalhousie University, Faculty of Medicine
Full time Medicine & Dentistry
The Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia Health and the IWK Health Centre are jointly recruiting for the position of Head of the Department of Surgery.
The Department of Surgery is the second largest in Nova Scotia Health. It is an academic department of almost 300 members from within the Maritime Provinces, striving to promote innovations in surgical education and research, while advancing excellence in clinical care. In its central hub of the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Department of Surgery has approximately 100 members from 9 surgical disciplines providing tertiary and quaternary care for the Atlantic Provinces. The Department of Surgery offers residency and fellowship programs in most of its adult and pediatric surgical specialties distributed over a multitude of teaching hospitals in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
The headship is a combined clinical and academic position, which is unique when compared to many similar departments in Canada. The Head of the Department serves as a board member of the Canadian Association of Surgical Chiefs, liaising with other Department Heads to identify hurdles, which impact care, prioritize global solutions, and facilitate innovations, such as mentorship programmes for women in surgery. This position requires a significant role interfacing with Government to focus on a breadth of provincial issues from strategic perioperative planning to negotiation of an Academic Funding Plan.
The Head is responsible for overseeing all the academic surgical programs, all academic promotions and clinical appointments of faculty, as well as annual oversight visits to community Maritime hospitals. This position comes with the additional significant role of interfacing with all 9 Surgical Subspecialty Division Heads and senior hospital leadership, and when called upon, representing the Department in the media. The position is a five-year, limited term appointment with an underlying continuing academic appointment. The Department Head position is subject to renewal for a second five-year term conditional on satisfactory annual performance evaluations and a positive review of the first term as Head.
Home to three Dalhousie campuses, Halifax is a vibrant, coastal urban centre of 425,000 people that has everything you’d expect from a big city within a close-knit community. One of Canada’s fastest-growing cities, Halifax is home to innovative tech and entrepreneurial communities, as well as thriving financial and ocean technology sectors. Halifax plays an essential role in the economic development of the North Atlantic seaboard and fosters a flourishing offshore industry, ground-breaking life sciences research and development, and a wealth of business opportunities. Ranked as first among mid-sized cities in North America in overall cost competitiveness, Halifax is the economic leader in the region with the resource, labour force, and cost advantages to attract high-profile businesses. The spectacular location and creative sides of Halifax are what make the city truly one-of-a-kind. The city boasts a vibrant atmosphere including live Theatre, world-class Symphonic performances, and many museums and art galleries. Halifax is also home to sports franchises, rowing clubs, as well as an active inter-university sports scene, a thriving amateur sports culture, and many opportunities for personal fitness. There are also endless outdoor adventures to be had while kayaking, sailing, surfing, hiking, rock-climbing, skiing, whale watching, and more.
Dalhousie is the leading graduate and research university of Atlantic Canada, with more than 18,500 students, including 3,500 in graduate programs, from 115 countries. Its medical school (www.medicine.dal.ca), founded in 1868, teaches scientific excellence and humanity in medicine, facilitates leading health research, influences social and health policy, and helps drive the regional economy. Through Dalhousie, the Department of Surgery is affiliated with New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network and has additional affiliated staff throughout the Maritime provinces.
Nova Scotia Health (http://www.nshealth.ca) is the largest employer in the province. More than 23,000 employees, 2,500 physicians and 7,000 volunteers combine to provide care at more than 45 facilities throughout the province. The Central Zone provides core health services to 400,000 Halifax region residents (40% of the population of Nova Scotia) and tertiary and quaternary acute care services to residents of Atlantic Canada. The QEII Health Sciences Centre is the principal teaching hospital affiliated with Dalhousie University, and a centre for health care research.
IWK Health Centre (https://www.iwk.nshealth.ca) provides quality care to women, children, youth, and families in the Maritimes and beyond. It is engaged in leading-edge research, works to promote healthy lifestyles for families, and supports education opportunities for health professionals and other learners. Services provided by the Health Centre are delivered through three programs: Children’s Health, Mental Health and Addictions, and Women’s and Newborn Health.
Preferred and Required Qualifications
The successful applicant should have exceptional leadership skills as evidenced by experience in other leadership roles, and preferably certified leadership training. The individual’s leadership style should be able to foster trust, create open communication, and facilitate challenging decision-making, while promoting the personal growth of its members and enhancing innovation within the Divisions. The applicant should have a vision with short- and long-term goals and a plan of action for the advancement of the Department as a whole, while seeking to engage all its membership toward collective growth in all facets of clinical care, academic teaching and research. The successful candidate must have a medical degree or equivalent; must have or be eligible to obtain an active medical license in Nova Scotia; and must have specialty certification in a Surgical Discipline by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada or equivalent.
Applications must include a curriculum vitae and a summary statement of clinical, teaching, research and administrative interests. Review of applications will begin December 12, 2020 and will continue until the position is filled.
Dalhousie University is committed to fostering a collegial culture grounded in diversity and inclusiveness. The University encourages applications from Indigenous persons, persons with a disability, racially visible persons, women, persons of a minority sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and all candidates who would contribute to the diversity of our community.
If you are interested in the position and meet all of the above noted criteria, please apply through the following link: http://dal.peopleadmin.ca/postings/4614
When inquiring or applying for this position, please also reference AcademicCareers.com.
Applicants with dual-career considerations can find university jobs such as professor jobs, dean jobs, chair / department head jobs, and other faculty jobs and employment opportunities at Dalhousie University and at other institutions of higher education in the region on www.AcademicCareers-Canada.com or www.AcademicCareers.com or www.UniversityJobsCanada.com
Review of applications will begin mid December and will continue until the position is filled.
About Dalhousie University, Faculty of Medicine
Dalhousie is the leading graduate and research university of Atlantic Canada, with more than 18,500 students, including 3,500 in graduate programs, from 115 countries. Its medical school, founded in 1868, teaches scientific excellence and humanity in medicine, facilitates leading health research, influences social and health policy, and helps drive the regional economy. Through Dalhousie, the Department of Psychiatry is affiliated with New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network and has additional affiliated staff throughout the Maritime provinces.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4517
|
__label__wiki
| 0.964282
| 0.964282
|
ACOMSDave
Community Journalist
Media Page and Press Kit
Projects and Work
LGBTQ+ Support Groups and Documents
You are here: Home / Anti-Bullying & Homophobia / Northern Ireland assembly votes to legalise same-sex marriage
Northern Ireland assembly votes to legalise same-sex marriage
03/11/2015 By ACOMSDave 1 Comment
Historic vote will not trigger change in law, however, as Democratic Unionists use parliamentary veto to block motion
Northern Ireland’s assembly have voted in favour of marriage equality: Michael McCartan, left, and Malachai O’Hara, who had pledged to invite assembly members to their wedding. Photograph: Amnesty International/PA
Henry McDonald Ireland correspondent
Monday 2 November 2015 14.43 GMT Last modified on Monday 2 November 201522.01 GMT
Northern Ireland’s assembly voted narrowly in favour of gay marriage equality but the largest party in the devolved parliament, the Democratic Unionists, have since vetoed any change in the law.
Four independent unionist assembly members joined nationalists and others with 53 votes in favour of same sex marriage – just one vote ahead of the main unionist parties who oppose any reform.
But the motion in the regional parliament fell after the DUP used a “petition of concern” to argue that the law change that would allow same-sex couples to marry in Northern Ireland did not command sufficient cross-community support.
Northern Ireland to vote on same-sex marriage for fifth time
Under the complex rules of power sharing in the region, parties from either the unionist or nationalist community can use this mechanism if they feel there is not enough backing from Protestants or Catholics for particular legislation. It was designed to ensure no one community dominated the other following the 1998 Belfast agreement.
Amnesty International said on Monday it was ironic that a mechanism established to ensure the rights of minorities in Northern Ireland had been used to deny a fundamental right to the LGBT minority in the province.
The DUP veto means that Northern Ireland remains the only part of the UK where gay couples cannot get married legally. The party is heavily influenced by the socially conservative Evangelical Christian community, particularly the Free Presbyterian church, which was founded by the late DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley.
In an often fractious debate inside the Stormont assembly, there were a number of trenchant attacks on the notion of gay marriage equality from the unionist benches.
Jim Allister, leader of the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice, said same-sex couples getting married was a “perverse definition” of marriage. Allister said the gay marriage equality campaign was a “worked-up phoney demand for rights”.
The latest attempt to legislate for gay marriage was introduced in a joint SDLP-Sinn Féin motion to the house. Sinn Féin’s Daithí McKay noted that the three Ulster counties in the Republic of Ireland “all said yes to marriage equality” in the recent referendum there. He said recent opinion polls showed 68% of people in Northern Ireland were in favour of a change to the law.
Northern Ireland under pressure after Irish gay marriage referendum win
Among those assembly members who changed their mind to vote in favour of same-sex marriage this time around was the Alliance party’s Trevor Lunn.
He told the parliament that he had been “on a journey” and had listened to his LGBT constituents and their families, and was now persuaded voting yes was the right thing to do.
Before Monday’s vote, gay couples handed out invitations to the weddings they were planning to have if the legislation had passed through without any veto.
At least three LGBT couples are planning legal action to challenge the same-sex marriage ban, pledging to take the fight to the European court of human rights if necessary.
Dr Richard O’Leary, of the Faith in Marriage Equality group, said Northern Ireland’s image as a backward society had been reinforced by the continued ban on equal marriage. “As a vulnerable, peripheral region fighting for its economic life in the teeth of a global depression, the message we risk sending out about Northern Ireland is that it is a region stuck in the past, out of touch with the cutting edge of global society,” he said.
“We should be honest – our history and the religious roots of our communal divisions mean we already suffer from a serious image problem. It is entirely possible that within a few years, Northern Ireland could find itself the last significant jurisdiction in western Europe where same-sex marriage remains prohibited and on the ‘wrong side of history’.”.
In the four previous votes attempting to bring in gay marriage reform, there have been narrow majorities against change. In April, the margin was only two votes against.
This article was corrected on 2 November. We originally referred incorrectly to Alliance Party assembly member Trevor Lunn as Stephen Lunn. That has been changed
Filed Under: Anti-Bullying & Homophobia Tagged With: Northern Ireland, politics, same sex marriage
David McFarlane says
Two sides of the same island – How has Ireland’s gay rights referendum changed activism?
Archives Select Month January 2021 (8) November 2020 (5) October 2020 (1) September 2020 (5) August 2020 (2) July 2020 (7) March 2020 (7) February 2020 (3) October 2019 (5) June 2019 (10) February 2019 (3) January 2019 (8) October 2018 (3) September 2018 (1) June 2018 (1) February 2018 (3) October 2017 (1) August 2017 (4) July 2017 (5) June 2017 (1) May 2017 (1) April 2017 (1) March 2017 (3) February 2017 (1) January 2017 (6) December 2016 (10) November 2016 (10) October 2016 (18) September 2016 (6) August 2016 (15) July 2016 (3) June 2016 (3) May 2016 (4) February 2016 (7) January 2016 (42) December 2015 (63) November 2015 (64) October 2015 (50) September 2015 (76) August 2015 (106) July 2015 (64) June 2015 (130) May 2015 (112) April 2015 (97) March 2015 (67) February 2015 (33) January 2015 (25) December 2014 (28) November 2014 (46) February 2014 (5) January 2014 (19) December 2013 (3) November 2013 (6) October 2013 (1) September 2013 (8) August 2013 (9) July 2013 (19) June 2013 (17) May 2012 (1) April 2012 (1) February 2012 (3) December 2011 (7) December 2008 (98) July 2008 (2) July 2007 (1) April 2007 (1)
Categories Select Category Anti-Bullying & Homophobia Book Reviews Campaigns Community Journalist Editor to ACOMSDave Education and Development Government & Politics History Movie Reviews Music Reviews Poetry and Prose Projects Reviews Theatre Reviews TV programme reviews
Copyright ACOMSDave.com © 2021
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4520
|
__label__wiki
| 0.91765
| 0.91765
|
Richard Glatzer
Follow Richard Glatzer
Richard Glatzer Quick Links News Video Film RSS
Richard Glatzer Quick Links
News Video Film RSS
Richard Glatzer, Director Of 'Still Alice', Dies In Los Angeles Aged 63
Richard Glatzer has died, just weeks after the Oscars ceremony.
Richard Glatzer, the writer and director of the Oscar-winning movie Still Alice, has died ahed 63. Glatzer, who worked on the film despite suffering the debilitating effects of ALS, passed away in Los Angeles on Tuesday (March 10).
Richard Glatzer [center] directed and wrote the Oscar winning movie Still Alice
His death comes less than three weeks after Julianne Moore won the Oscar for Best Actress for a stunning part written by Glatzer and his husband Wash Westmoreland. Moore played a successful professor whose life begins to unravel after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
Continue reading: Richard Glatzer, Director Of 'Still Alice', Dies In Los Angeles Aged 63
'Still Alice' Was A Labour Of Love For Directors
By Rich Cline in Movies / TV / Theatre on 06 March 2015
Julianne Moore Richard Glatzer
The directors of 'Still Alice' have come forward to explain the serious heart that went into the film, as one of them was suffering a similar affliction to the main character.
After Julianne Moore won the Oscar for her performance in 'Still Alice', the film climbed back into the US box office top 10, just as it opens across Europe this weekend. Co-director Wash Westmoreland is amazed at how the film has connected with people. "When you're an independent filmmaker you always have a dream version of how things will go," he said. "You have to live within the dream because often the reality is usually too brutal to deal with! But this time the reality has turned out to be better than the dream."
Julianne Moore in 'Still Alice'
Most amazing to Westmoreland and his partner, co-director Richard Glatzer, is how the film seems to be changing the perception of Alzheimer's. They credit much of this reaction to Moore's remarkably sensitive performance. "You know, we've always been huge fans of her work," Westmoreland said. "Every character she plays is completely different but yet realistic, whether it's Amber Waves, Sarah Palin or Cathy Whitaker. She has the ability to project intelligence, to be emotionally vulnerable and to act without words. I think in a lot of her movies, like 'Safe', she does a lot without speaking."
Continue reading: 'Still Alice' Was A Labour Of Love For Directors
Still Alice Review
For a film about early onset Alzheimer's, this is a remarkably wry, honest and even hopeful drama, anchored by another staggeringly sensitive performance by Julianne Moore. Writing-directing team Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland are known for their observant depictions of human interaction (see Quinceañera), and they fill the screen with sharp dialogue and earthy emotions that make this much more than another movie about a disease. Instead, it's about how people can transcend what life throws at them, even if it knocks them down.
Moore stars as Alice, a New York linguistics professor who has just turned 50 when she starts noticing that she's forgetting words and getting lost. Her doctor gives her the tough diagnosis, and she uses her dry wit and sharp intellect to face the future with her steady husband John (Alec Baldwin) and their three grown children: married and pregnant Anna (Kate Bosworth), aspiring actress Lydia (Kristen Stewart) and free-spirit Tom (Hunter Parrish). The hardest thing to learn is that the disease is familial, and that she has passed it to at least one of her children. So while she can, Alice makes a contingency plan for the future as she watches her family members each react in a different way.
No, this isn't a light and breezy movie. But the filmmakers balance the moments of gut-wrenching emotion with smart humour ("Sorry, I forgot - I have Alzheimer's!") and bracing honesty ("I wish I had cancer!"). Moore is uncannily raw in the role, subtly revealing Alice's transformation in ways we barely notice until we're reminded what she used to be like. Even more powerful is her own awareness of what's happening. Opposite her, Baldwin has terrific camaraderie and an unexpected warmth, while both Bosworth and Stewart get a chance to dig much deeper as actors than they usually do. And what makes the film special is the way Alice's interaction with each character is uniquely individualistic.
Continue reading: Still Alice Review
Still Alice - Clip
On the outside, Alice Howland appears to have an idyllic life. A beautiful family life with a husband and three older children, and a job that has provided her with such joy over the years. She's a linguistics professor, well respected for her knowledge of the world of language. However, soon she finds herself forgetting even the simplest of words and decides to get checked out by a doctor to see what might be wrong with her. On discovering that she has been diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease, she finds herself struggling to deal with the idea of losing out on the rest of her career, being so highly respected in her field. She starts to drift further and further from her own identity, forgetting who she has become with the knowledge that it's only going to get worse.
Continue: Still Alice - Clip
Pedro Review
Stirring writing and acting helps overcome bland TV-movie production values to bring this true story to life. Even as it turns the central figure into a saint, we recognise the extraordinary nature of what he did.
In 1994, Cuban-born Pedro Zamora (Loynaz) was cast in MTV's Real World because producers wanted to shake things up with a housemate who was HIV-positive. At 21, this bright young man is already an outspoken gay activist, and the reality show house is split when the homophobic Puck (Barr) turns on him. But the rest of the residents come over to Pedro's side, and by the time he dies of Aids-related causes while the programme is airing, they have taken up his campaign.
Continue reading: Pedro Review
Richard Glatzer dies aged 63
Still Alice Director Richard Glatzer Hospitalised
Richard Glatzer Movies
Still Alice Movie Review
For a film about early onset Alzheimer's, this is a remarkably wry, honest and even...
Still Alice - Clip Trailer
On the outside, Alice Howland appears to have an idyllic life. A beautiful family life...
Pedro Movie Review
Stirring writing and acting helps overcome bland TV-movie production values to bring this true story...
Filmmakers Index: 0 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4521
|
__label__wiki
| 0.929668
| 0.929668
|
ADRIANA SASSOON
INTERIOR DESIGN AND BEYOND
by ADRIANA SASSOON on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 Friday, November 30, 2012
Jesse McCartney (born April 9, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter, actor and voice actor. McCartney achieved fame in the late 1990s on the daytime drama All My Children as JR Chandler. He later joined boy band Dream Street, and eventually branched out into a solo musical career. Additionally, McCartney has appeared on shows such as Summerland and Greek. McCartney also is known for lending his voice as Theodore in Alvin and the Chipmunks and its sequels, as well as voicing the characters Roxas and Ventus in the video games series Kingdom Hearts developed by Square Enix. McCartney was born to Ginger and Scott McCartney in Westchester, New York. He began performing in local community musicals at the age of seven, before joining the national tour of The King and I at age ten along with Phil of the Future star Ricky Ullman. Here he played the character of Louis. In 1998, he sang with the group Sugar Beats and can be heard on their 1998, 1999, and 2000 CD releases.
McCartney appeared with The Who‘s Roger Daltrey in A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden. From 1998–2001, McCartney played Adam Chandler, Jr. in the ABC soap opera All My Children, a role for which he earned two Young Artist Awards and two Daytime Emmy Award nominations.[15] He also later starred in the short-lived series Summerland, which aired on The WB for two seasons, playing orphaned teenager Bradin Westerly. McCartney at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Beware the Gonzo.
In 2005, McCartney appeared as himself in the Disney Channel show, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. In 2007, he starred as himself in the Disney Channel show, Hannah Montana.In 2008, McCartney was also featured as the voice of Horton Hears A Who!‘s JoJo McDodd. McCartney also voiced Theodore in the 2007 film Alvin and the Chipmunks and the 2009 film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, in addition to voicing Terence in the 2008 film Tinker Bell. He also voices Robin in the Young Justice series.
In 2008, McCartney co-starred along with Elisabeth Harnois in an independent teenage drama feature film, Keith, directed by Todd Kessler. It is his movie debut, and features McCartney in the title role. Keith was released on September 19, 2008.
According to Entertainment Weekly in December 2008, McCartney was negotiating to play against type in the role of the Fire Nation’s Prince Zuko in M. Night Shyamalan‘s feature film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.[16] In February 2009, British actor Dev Patel replaced McCartney, whose tour dates conflicted with a boot camp scheduled for the cast to train in martial arts.[17] McCartney has expressed an interest in directing and producing films and even considered enrolling in a film school.[18]
McCartney appeared as a recurring character in the ABC Family series Greek for several episodes playing a star football talent who joins Kappa Tau. His character eventually decides to depledge the fraternity after citing pressures between football and Greek life combined with Rusty stealing his girlfriend Jordan.
McCartney also worked in several installments of the Square Enix video game series Kingdom Hearts. He was featured as Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 2 in 2006, and reprised the role in 2009 in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. He also provided the voice work for Ventus, a character in the video game of the same series Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
McCartney confirmed in early February 2011 via twitter and on the website Perezhilton.com that he will have a major role on the new Fox pilot “Locke and Key”. McCartney is currently in Pittsburgh filming the show.
In June 2011, McCartney introduced a new women’s fragrance called Wanted By Jesse.
On the left Jesse and My sister in law Eden Sassoon.Right Eden Sassoon, Adriana Sassoon & Jesse McCartney, L.A.
http://www.glamoholic.com/articles/jesse-mccartney-shoot.html
* I have no idea why some of my Blog readers assume that I have anything to do with Jesse McCartney. All we have is friendship. He is my Sister in Law’s Eden Sassoon boyfriend! *
Share this:https://adrianasassoon.wordpress.com
Jesse McCartney wanted
Prev Post: IRIS APFEL
Next Post: DALI MIAMI
Homemade Hot Chocolate says:
Pretty component of content. I just stumbled upon your site and in accession capital to assert that I acquire in fact enjoyed account your blog posts. Anyway I will be subscribing for your augment or even I fulfillment you get admission to persistently rapidly.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:01
how subtle…
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 22:45
Where can you get the perfume at?
ADRIANA SASSOON ADRIANA SASSOON ART adriana sassoon construction ADRIANA SASSOON DESIGN ADRIANA SASSOON INTERIOR DESIGN adriana sassoon real estate adriana sassoon real estate luxury specialist adriana sassoon realtor ARCHITECTURE ART BAUHAUS BEAUTY best hair care products BODY BOSTON BRASIL BRAZIL CANCER CHANEL Coco Chanel CONSTRUCTION CULTURE DELETE DESIGN DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE DETOX DIVINE DESIGN dreams elan sassoon FASHION FASHION & STYLE FIDM FREEDOM HAIR HAIR & BEAUTY hair products HEALTH HEALTH & WELLNESS horses INTERIOR DESIGN isabella sassoon LIFE LIFESTYLE London love LUXURY HOMES MIAMI MIXED MEDIA MIZU MUSIC new construction PEOPLE REAL ESTATE rock SALON SASSOON sassoon academy SASSOON ADRIANA SASSOON ART SASSOON DESIGN SASSOON DESIGNS sassoon hair SASSOONS SASSOON SALON SASSOON STYLE SOJOURN sojourn beauty SOJOURN by Elan S. SOJOURN by ELAN SASSOON sojourn hair sojourn hair care sojourn hair products STYLE VIDAL SASSOON WELLNESS
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4522
|
__label__cc
| 0.632714
| 0.367286
|
Fight Against Patriarchy, Not Only Against Rape!
[The following was taken from Towards a New Dawn, an left-wing Indian publication in support of the CPI(Maoist), on December 24, 2012 and has been edited for readability. This article is important because it highlights a few of the major failures of the contemporary petty bourgeois struggle against sexual violence. First by analyzing the misogynist inconsistencies of the spontaneous protests that erupted over the rape of a woman in Delhi, and more importantly by cutting to the heart of the problem wherein the petty bourgeoisie had demanded the strengthening of the state forces which, in many other parts of the country, were themselves responsible for such acts. Further, that the strengthening of the bourgeois Indian state represented a strengthening of the societal foundations of patriarchy, and therefore rape and sexual violence. This is often missed by the liberal-left sloganeering which goes on, demanding that the state play an increasingly active role in the expansion of the legal system to protect women, rather than providing for a positive alternative to the bourgeois state. As always, this article is being made available here for the purposes of education and discussion.]
When a woman has changed her clothes at the end of her menstrual period, one should approach that splendid woman and invite her to have sex. Should she refuse to consent, he should bribe her, if she still refuses, he should beat her with a stick or with his fists and overpower her, saying—‘I take away the splendor from you with my virility and splendor.’ (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter 6.4.6)
Recently the whole country is outraged by the brutal rape incident that took place in Delhi, the middle class is coming out to the streets—even facing water cannons—and there is always the candle light protest.
We are also outraged and condemn this in strongest terms. At this crucial hour we cannot but make some observations which exposes the several flaws and the hypocrisy of the middle class. The media is abuzz with the news of protesters thronging the streets holding placards demanding capital punishment for the rapists. They are actually angry because a girl was beaten and raped in a bus and her male friend was thrashed.
But wait… If the middle class was truly outraged by rape then the whole of India would have been shut down, because in India a woman is raped every 22 minutes. But this did not happen. So are some of the rapes justified? Which ones are those? Why are middle class Indians protesting against this case while they are silent about the rest? How do they want to prevent these kinds of incidents? We will not search for a definite answer in this article but point out several features of the reaction of the media and the seemingly great Indian middle class.
Rape is rape whether it happens in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, North East or Delhi. But this is not the case in India. In this recent incident a middle class woman was raped by a driver, a fruit seller and their accomplices. Here the victim is the middle class, hence you can expect the middle class to react and the corporate media to add fuel to their anger by showing how insecure our women are. What you cannot expect is the middle class coming out in large numbers protesting against the custodial torture and rape of Soni Suri, where stones were inserted in her vagina and rectum by the police in distant Bastar (the SP also got a gallantry award for his efficient dealing against the Maoists). The media of course does not want to show all this, as they are owned by the corporations, and more so because Soni Suri was protesting against the government policies of selling the land to corporates and violating the rights of the tribals.
These are the kind of rapes that can be digested by the Indian middle class, even if they are posted about on facebook and petitions are signed by very few. This is not exclusive to Chattisgarh, this the same story that one will hear if one travels to North East and Kashmir. The middle class is brave enough to face water cannons if the state is not the violator, but their courage seems to wane when the violence is committed by the state and not supported by corporate media. As a result these rapes are quickly forgotten and brushed under the rug.
Two days back there was a discussion on a TV channel where they were discussing about this particular incident. Not only in this incident but whenever people talk of rape they conveniently forget that rape also occurs in our bedrooms. Never are topics of marital rape, sexual violence against women that takes place within the family is discussed. Our very social structure encourages rape to maintain caste and gotras (and also to prevent themselves from getting raped) young girls are married off against their wishes to virtual strangers. These are rarely contested. Very few people demand capital punishments for those who make such rules. And it is not at all surprising to see a section of middle class encouraging these mindless social diktats. To see women only as an object for entertainment is inherent in our culture and that’s why there is an attitude of protecting women.
Rape is a result of the patriarchal values so entrenched in our society. It is used as means of subjugation and is a form male chauvinism that is incredibly prevalent in our society. Even when expressing concern for the victim the leader of the protests states that now there is no difference to her whether she lives or dies. This reflects the classic mentality towards women that assumes that a woman’s dignity exists solely between her legs and keeps on reminding the victim that she has lost everything. Political parties are also joining the protest attempting to garner support for its own electoral purposes. But one should remember that there are 260 candidates facing charges, such as rape, assault and outraging the modesty of a woman, which contested Assembly elections on tickets of various parties in the last five years. Influential politicians are also known to be supporting khap panchyats in order to win elections. Not only feudal patriarchal values but the so-called modern culture, which is becoming increasingly popular amongst the young middle class Indians, is nothing but a rape culture.
The same city where such a heinous incident took place dances to the tune of none other than Honey Singh whose abusive anti-woman songs glorify rape and violence.
The lyrics of one such song goes:
Aja teri choot maroon
Tere sir se chudney ka bhoot utaroon
Choodney key baad tujhe jutey maroon
Tere mooh main apna lora dey key moot maroon
(Come, lets fuck you so hard
that you will forget about fucking
and then I’ll beat you up with my shoe
and will piss into your mouth)
These lyrics are actually popular amongst the young middle class and he is one of the most sought after hip hop stars in India at the moment. Even Bollywood producers are offering to make movies on him. Can anyone find any difference between the message from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we quoted previously and Honey Singh’s “Choot”? And this the same culture on that our society and our mindset have been built on!
Surprisingly we see nobody condemning this rape culture, but instead see politicians and police officials advising women to return home early and wear appropriate clothing in public places. On the other hand we see Hindu fundamentalists beating women for drinking in bars and threatening them for wearing provocative clothes. When the debate on TV rages on these are the topics that are hardly discussed. In fact, I do not recollect any discussion in media that actually targets the male chauvinistic nature that is in built in our social structure. This would actually require a radical change in the whole thought process and is too laborious a job for the “enlightened” class. It is more tasking than facing water cannons and holding candles.
Last but not the least, let us see the tendency of the governments around the world when they try to handle heinous crimes like rape or shooting of children in a school. As Indians are busy watching the protests of rape at home just on the other side of the globe a man enters a school and start shooting at children and teachers.
On both sides of the globe people are asking for the harshest punishment for the guilty. They want them dead. Fair enough. Actually the state also wants the public to demand the blood of the guilty.
It will help them create a police state. National Rifle Association (USA) has, as well, condemned the incident and recommended that all schools should have armed security guards. It is well known that NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States and uses political pressure to loosen restrictions for gun sales in order to make business. Hence, to an average American kid the gun culture becomes accepted right from the day they set foot in school. In the wake of recession and social unrests, the government making its intentions clear. Though there is a characteristic difference in case of India, but the story is not much different. The solution that are discussed in TV shows where the elite class participate and the media persons, who think themselves as gods, pass judgements that call for nothing less than preparing the grounds for a police state. Harsher laws, stricter punishments, efficient police action are the order of the day.
The conviction rates for rape in India are an abysmal 26%. Well, to be perfectly honest in India Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) have protected the rapists in North East and Kashmir. The cry for security and swift police action is what is discussed in most shows and whatever be the issue (it might not have to be rape) this is most obvious judegement that is passed. Nobody realizes that this hardly is a solution to the crime. Calling for capital punishment rules out the fact that we live in culture where rape is something outside the system but the truth is just the opposite. Strict laws reflect the inability of the society to deal with its problems. Treating the problem symptomatically does not lead to a permanent cure, one has to dig deep and look at the root cause. As long as the issues of gender inequality are not addressed in relation to such incidents crime rates against women will not be eliminated by just imposing strict laws.
All we need is the sustenance of these movements to build consciousness against patriarchal values and institutions, a bottom-up scheme of consciousness instead of a top-down imposed by the structures of society. It is of utmost importance to realize that rape is the explicit form of patriarchal violence and it is not evil but degrading, and the real fight against patriarchy starts by finding out ways to discover the implicit and subtle forms of patriarchal violence and degradation.
The anger behind the movement is just but let’s not curb it only into a higher middle class periphery, let’s question the very structure about the rapes of the women of Kusnanpushpora in Kashmir, in Manipur, in Orissa , in Chattisgarh , in the Jangalmahal of West Bengal where women are gang raped and beaten to death by the same security personnel who enjoy a complete impunity. So, here comes the paradox: most of the people who are coming together in this present movement against the Delhi rape incident, are demanding a superior state formation, a higher law enforcement! Who will enforce this? Who are we relying on?
On the same structure that Arundhati Roy has said is using rape as a weapon to restrain the democratic voice of the people who are craftily kept outside of the focus of our “beloved” media!
Let’s ask ourselves what picture of India we are drawing in our minds? Is this the India where only some privileged people like us are allowed stay and roam, where people outside of this spectra are expendable? Then is my argument to stop rape and violence against women not flawed as we are only keeping the people from our own class in mind? Are we not excluding the majority of the women in our country who are living in the agony under this monstrous patriarchy, only because there is no media to tell their tales or only because they come from a poor economic condition? Why were there none to speak out against the rape of the women in Jangalmahal both in “leftist” and “rightist” regimes by the joint security force personnel, even when some of the survivors got pregnant?
However, we are not cynics and we believe that speaking out against any form of patriarchy is the call of the day, and those who are taking on the water cannon and tear gas for this reason are our comrades. So we hope with great expectation that the protesters will rise up, breaking the sphere of higher middle class elitism, and will be vocal against the ongoing systematic patriarchy that is embedded with the present socio-economic structure. Because it is not only about the freedom of women but also about the emancipation of mankind from the repressive social structure. And it is quite evident that the present structure has failed to give any answer to this problem, and on the contrary is upholding this rape culture. The BJP’s youth-wing has joined the movement, but this same group has beaten up girls for wearing jeans or being in relationship with a boy of other caste or religion. One of the most revealing comments—although a commonly used cliche—came from Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee President, Botsa Satyanarayan, that these kind of incidents happen because girls roam late night on the streets. (!!!) How are we expecting this present structure to work against the patriarchy when it is working to legitimize patriarchy! We need to reject this whole structure.
We must also reject the “be a man, join me in protecting women” notion. What about the brother who cuts his sister’s head off when she dares to marry into a different community? Is he not playing the role of a male protector too? This machismo is not a solution to the problem of violence against women—it is the root of the problem itself. This is also what we need to reflect.
We have always found it to be our duty to actively support and participate movements where any form of patriarchy is struggled against, and we vow to be a part of this present movement as well in order to shape it into a widespread mass movement where it will go beyond the higher middle class consent by incorporating all section of people; where will be no hypocrisy in the stand against anti-woman violence from state sponsored torture to marital rape, from moral policing to the commodification of women; where it will oppose the double standard of the ongoing protests, based on the Delhi incident and completely forgetting about the dalit girl raped in Hariyana on 22nd of this month, on the same day the protest broke loose; where it will not only protest a certain form of repression but will fight against all forms of patriarchy.
It is very necessary to work on the basis of unity-struggle-unity in this regard to come up with an alternative of the present system as it is not only about freedom of women but the emancipation of mankind from the repressive structure.
For these objectives to be served, we have come up with certain issues that should be emphasized with utmost importance:
1) Death penalty is not a solution of this problem as death penalty implies that rapists are alien to our system; they are most unfortunately not. It is similar in case of chemical castration as it implies rape is motivated by sexual desire—it is not, it is patriarchy’s way of punishing women’s very being, women’s demand for equality and freedom; the solution has to be found into the very structure of the society,its culture and economy and by developing an alternative of it. It has to be based on the agenda not to punish or eliminate the rapists but to eliminate the daily insidious patriarchy that produces rapists;
2) We have to come together to voice against heinous state sponsored violence on the women; we have to protest against the rapes and atrocities committed by Indian army and paramilitary forces in Dandakaranya, Kashmir, West Bengal, North Eastern states and equally condemn the rapes committed by the hired beasts of the communal forces during riots in Gujarat and many places in India;
3) Feudal structures such as Khap Panchayat has to be boycotted and moral policing has to be condemned;
4) Demand for superior law enforcement will be counterproductive as it will only strengthen the present patriarchy because we have experienced laws like AFSPA (Armed forces special power act) that has provided the state structure with an weapon of rape and unprecedented impunity in Kashmir and north-eastern states. On the contrary, we have to demand to repeal laws like AFSPA that have turned out to be pernicious for the very existence of women;
5) It has to fight against the Brahminical casteist ideology existing as the basis of patriarchy in India that is working as a tool to legitimize the subordination of women.
Previous Post In the Wake of Developments in the Anti-Fascist Struggle
Next Post Imperialism is Suffocating India
India, News and Analysis, Police Terror, Theory
2012, Chattisgarh, chauvinism, communism, CPI(Maoist), India, Leftism, Male Chauvinism, Men, News, patriarchy, Rape, Sexual Assault, Sexual Violence, socialism, Violence against Women
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4524
|
__label__cc
| 0.641178
| 0.358822
|
Tag: Osteoporosis
April 16, 2012 by Vaani, posted in News
April is Oral Health Awareness Month.
Canadian government looks to slash $377 million in foreign aid (for food and other services) to twelve of the world’s poorest countries over the next three years.
Alaska’s state Rep. Wes Keller will let autism insurance bill pass.
Alaska’s senate passes retirement system bill- offering state workers choice of retirement systems.
Texas board approves rules on use of stem cells.
States seek curb on patient bills for costly drugs.
A United Nations (UN) backed campaign aims to vaccinate more than 111 million children against polio in 20 African countries in just four days.
The Sadc HIV and Aids Fund has donated US $5000,000 to coordinate a pilot project that focuses on capacity building for communities to handle issues related to the HIV pandemic in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.
An FDA (Food and Drug Administration) panel has unanimously recommended approval of what would become the first ultrasound devise in the U.S. approved for breast cancer screening. It is called U-Systems’ somo•v® Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) system.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will devote 60 million US dollars to renovate/ build 65 health centers around Ethiopia. This project supports Ethiopia’s Accelerated Expansion of Primary Health Service Coverage program which aims to increase the number of health centers around the country in order to have one health center for 25,000 people.
Horn of Africa Emergency Health and Nutrition Project is delivering emergency health and nutrition services to refugees in the Horn of Africa and is supporting refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. The international development Association (IDA) grant supports this program of health, nutrition, and water and sanitation service delivery.
The 12th International Conference about African and Afro-American culture was held on April 16 in Cuba. Its main attraction was the symposium about medicine and culture
The government of the Gambia in collaboration with African Development Bank and Africa Water Facility (AWF) has launched two sister projects of the National Water Sector Reform (NWSR) and Rural Water Supply Sanitation (RWSS) projects respectively, valued at US $10million, at the Coca Ocean Resort and Spar in Bijilo.
The Ghana Health Service has introduced two new vaccines for the cure and treatment of pneumonia and diarrhea in children.
Nairobi has been selected as the Kenya’s headquarter of the Global Plan for Elimination of HIV among Children and Keeping their Mother Alive.
The World Bank Board has approved financing of US$150 million for the Nigeria State Health Investment Project. Nigeria will also receive a US $21.5 million grant from the Health Results Innovation Trust Fund, supported by the UK’s Department for International Development and the Government of Norway.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure San Diego has announced that it will give $1.2 million to 19 local breast health organizations.
The World Bank has approved, on the behalf of a global trust fund, a grant of $3.6 million to increase access to affordable maternal health services for the low-income families living in the Eastern Visayas region (Philippines).
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a grant of $40million for the development of the Bangladesh health sector.
The Tripura Government (in India) has launched an ambitious program to make its capital Agartala a Hepatitis free city, considering northeastern India’s vulnerability to this highly contagious disease.
Haiti launches anti-cholera vaccination campaign.
Studies have revealed that aristolochic acid (AA) leads to kidney failure and upper urinary tract cancer (UUC) in individuals exposed to them. AA is found in some plant species that have been used in herbal medicine for centuries.
According to recent study dental amalgam is linked to environmental concerns and indirect health risks. About 50 percent of mercury entering local waste treatment plants comes from dental amalgam wastes. Once it gets deposited certain microorganisms can change elemental mercury to methyl mercury, a highly toxic form that builds up in fish, shellfish and animals that eat fish.
Austrian scientists at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research have found that overproduction of a growth hormone can cause liver cancer. The signaling molecule known as STAT 5 is involved in development of liver cancer due to the overproduction of growth hormone.
According to a study extracts from the spice turmeric, may help to prevent the people from heart attacks who had undergone a recent bypass surgery. This spice is known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
A study published in Journal of the American College of Nutrition reported that eating nuts result in higher levels of good cholesterol (HDL, high-density lipoprotein) and lower levels of C-reactive protein which can trigger chronic diseases including heart disease.
Researchers have uncovered thirty-two previously unidentified genetic regions associated with osteoporosis and fracture. Variations in the DNA sequences in these regions confer either risk or protection from the bone-weakening disease.
Studies reveal that high fat diets like the Atkins diet and the Western diet promote colon cancer growth and metastasis.
Study shows dental sealants effective in adults as well in preventing caries.
A study concludes that the diets with low carbohydrate prone people towards the risk of developing type-2 diabetes.
A research involving X-ray crystallography offers new clues on how cancer or Alzheimer’s disease might develop.
SMARTer Prostrate Cancer treatment (bloodless prostrate surgery with no incisions) successful in treating the disease and ensuring quality of life after prostate cancer.
A new compound has been reported to prevent the spread of brain cancer in animals.
Tornados in mid-west US.
Earthquake with tsunami warning in parts of India (Tamil Nadu).
Raw Yellowfin Tuna product associated with Salmonella Bareilly outbreak recalled.
Tagged Accelerated Expansion of Primary Health Service Coverage program, African Development Bank and Africa Water Facility (AWF), Alzheimer's disease, Anti-cholera vaccine, Aristolochic acid, Atkins diet, Autism insurance bill, Brain cancer, Breast cancer screening, Bypass surgery, C-reactive protein, Capacity building, Caries, Colon cancer, Dental amalgam, Dental sealants, DNA sequences, Earthquake, FDA (Food and Drug Administration), Fracture, Genetic regions, Global plan for Elimination of HIV among Children and Keeping their Mother Alive, Global trust fund, Good cholesterol, HDL, Hepatitis, High fat diets, Horn of Africa Emergency Health and Nutrition Project, Kidney failure, mercury, Metastasis, Methyl- mercury, National Water Sector Reform (NWSR) and Rural Water Supply Sanitation (RWSS) projects, Osteoporosis, pandemic, prostate cancer, Raw Yellowfin Tuna, Retirement system bill, Sadc HIV and Aids Fund, Salmonella Bareilly outbreak., SMARTer Prostrate Cancer treatment, stem cells, The international development Association (IDA) grant, The world bank, The World Bank Board, Tornados, tsunami, Turmeric, Type 2 Diabetes, U-Systems’ somo•v® Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) system, U.S. Agency for International Development, United Nations (UN), Upper urinary tract cancer, Western dietLeave a comment
January 24, 2012 by Vaani, posted in News
January is cervical health awareness month in Iowa. The Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) joins the National Cervical Cancer Coalition (NCCC) in recognizing January as Cervical Health Awareness Month (Source: http://www.idph.state.ia.us/IdphNews/Reader.aspx?id=56BC8126-F0B0-4A97-9096-D34F6CFF85B9 ).
The West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C has been launched with the goal of saving up to $100 billion in cumulative health care costs within ten years (Source: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/23/4207614/dc-based-west-health-policy-center.html ).
The 130th executive board meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted a resolution moved by India that focuses on the global burden of mental disorders. It also focuses on need for a comprehensive, coordinated response from health and social sectors at the country level. This resolution was supported by the United States of America and Switzerland (Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2825793.ece ).
India is planning to soon ban the blood tests to diagnose tuberculosis. The experts not only pointed on their accuracy but also on the effectiveness as compared to the standard culture test provided free by the Indian government. The WHO expert group observed a highly variable sensitivity of these tests ranging from as low as 0 to 100% (Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Soon-ban-on-blood-tests-to-detect-TB/articleshow/11607679.cms ).
To increase the healthcare access, Community Health Center Inc., has launched on Friday an internal telemedicine program. It will provide specialized access to the patients suffering from hepatitis C and HIV (Source: http://www.ctmirror.org/node/15138 ).
The health ministry in Zimbabwe has announced that it will soon begin HIV/AIDS door to door testing campaigns which will help people living in remote locations that cannot go to clinic for testing (Source: http://abcnewsradioonline.com/world-news/zimbabwe-to-begin-hivaids-door-to-door-testing-campaign.html ).
Immunization with rotavirus vaccine launched in Zambia. This year it will be administered to new born babies less than 24 weeks in Luska District of Zambia (Source: http://www.times.co.zm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4409:new-diarrhoea-vaccine-unveiled-for-babies&catid=36:local-news&Itemid=27 ).
A $12.2 million vaccination program being introduced by British charity Absolute Return for Kids to protect African children (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zambia/9029771/Charity-linked-to-Duke-of-Cambridge-saving-lives-of-African-children.html ).
The results published in Science by Carnegie Mellon biologists indicate the presence of Magnesium in neutralizing deadly Shiga toxin. This toxin is produced by Shigella and some strains of E.coli. It can cause symptoms from intestinal disease to kidney failure (Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carnegie-mellon-university-study-reveals-potential-of-manganese-in-neutralizing-deadly-shiga-toxin-137700868.html ).
According to a study published in The Lancet medical Journal, the oral HIV tests were 2% less accurate than blood based specimens. This study has raised questions on whether self-testing should be allowed in South Africa using noninvasive and pain free tests for HIV (Source: http://www.timeslive.co.za/specialreports/hivaids/2012/01/24/oral-hiv-test-results-found-to-be-less-reliable ).
A study shows that older women could now skip osteoporosis screening tests if intial bone scan shows no big problem. (Source: http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/jan/23/many-women-can-skip-frequent-bone-scans/ ).
Journal of the American Medical Association says putting children in foster care is in some cases more ethical than obesity surgery (Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46076745/ns/technology_and_science-science/ ).
Gilenya (Multiple –Sclerosis Drug) is under review after the death of a patient receiving its first dose. Some other reports have indicated heart problems cause by receiving this medicine (Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/240640.php ).
Hepatitis vaccination programs in US and Spain not reaching the target populations according to a research published in online edition of Infection (Source: http://www.aidsmap.com/Studies-from-US-and-Spain-show-that-hepatitis-vaccination-programmes-not-reaching-target-populations/page/2224722/ ).
Research shows that a man having unprotected oral sex with female having Human Papilloma virus (HPV causes cervical cancer in women) has greater chances of developing head and neck cancer (Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-22/science/30652195_1_head-and-neck-neck-cancer-hpv-infection ).
A group of scientists from India, Tanzania and Thailand are doing research to find the ideal variety of bitter gourd that could beat diabetes (Source: http://thecitizen.co.tz/business/-/19062-india-tanzania-scientists-undertake-anti-diabetes-properties-study ).
According to a research study, aspirin can help to prevent development of cervical cancer in HIV infected women (Source: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120119/Aspirin-may-benefit-HIV-infected-women-at-risk-of-cervical-cancer.aspx ).
The Na-GST-1 antigen, a candidate for the first human hookworm vaccine developed by the Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) has entered phase 1 human trail in Brail (Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/240586.php ).
Cells found that can help to prevent cancer (Source: http://topnews.net.nz/content/220958-scientists-found-cells-can-help-prevent-spread-cancer ).
A warning has been issued by the Australian medical authorities against the spread of Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV). This virus is known to cause Australian encephalitis or swelling of brain (Source: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/286415/20120124/health-alert-dangerous-mosquito-borne-virus-causing.htm ).
Death of 36 people over the last month due to malaria and whooping cough in Sudan’s Jonlei State’s Duk County has been reported by Sudan Tribune newspaper (Source: http://www.sudantribune.com/Malaria-and-whooping-coughs-kill,41362 ).
Diabetes epidemic in India. A cross-sectional study, Sanofi-Aventis India SITE study (Screening India’s Twin Epidemic) done during 2009-10 conducted in 800 medical centers in India revealed that 60% of the patients suffered from diabetes, hypertension or both and 70% of them had uncontrolled diabetes (Source: http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2012/01/21/7423/the-diabetes-epidemic-in-india–/ ).
About 25 people in Lahore (Pakistan) died of taking bad heart drugs (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/pakistan-heart-drugs-death_n_1223061.html ).
Respiratory tuberculosis cases increase in Azerbaijan (Source: http://www.news.az/articles/society/53248 ).
Tagged Bitter gourd, cervical cancer, Community Health Center Inc., Diabetes, diagnosis, E. coli, Gilenya, Hepatitis, HIV/ AIDS, Human hook worm vaccine, Hypertension, Magnesium, malaria, multiple sclerosis, Murray Valley Encephalitis virus, Na-GST-1 antigen, obesity, Oral HIV tests, Oral sex, Osteoporosis, Respiratory tuberculosis., Rotavirus, Sanofi-Aventis India, Shiga toxin, Shigella, telemedicine, Tuberculosis, Uncontrolled diabetes, vaccine, West Health Policy Center, whooping cough, World Health Organization (WHO)Leave a comment
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4525
|
__label__wiki
| 0.708419
| 0.708419
|
NicaNotes: More Money for Coup Groups from US Agency for International Development
By Nan McCurdy | November 12, 2020
Organizations that led the coup attempt in 2018 against the constitutional government of President Daniel Ortega, continue to receive foreign funding from the United States and some European countries. The latest information on USAID funding of the US-directed opposition was made available by journalist William Grigsby on Radio La Primerísima’s Sin Fronteras Magazine.
USAID fiscal year 2021 (Oct. 1, 2020-Sept. 30, 2021) foreign assistance includes “funds to support the restoration of democracy and human rights in the region.” This document shows funding of US$13.4 million dollars bringing USAID funding of the Nicaraguan opposition since 2017 to US$102.27 million.
Just the wealthy Chamorro family – Juan Sebastian, Cristiana and Carlos Fernando – received US$3.87 million. The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation managed by Christiana Chamorro received the largest amount, US$1.6 million for the rest of 2020 and 2021. Through this foundation, the US finances some twenty-five media and TV and radio shows including La Prensa and Channel 10 known for their vociferous anti-Sandinismo. Juan Sebastian Chamorro, whose NGO is FUNIDES, receives US$1.37 million. Carlos Fernando Chamorro with his media empire Grupo Cinco, which includes Confidencial, receives US$901,471.
William Grigsby in his Nov. 10 article said that “the abuse, hypocrisy and lack of democracy of the Chamorro family was once again exposed with the release of a series of documents proving that they receive funding from the United States and other European governments to illegally enrich themselves and cause disorder in Nicaragua.”
The latest documents and screenshots here show the amount of money given to the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation from 2014 to 2020 – US$4.39 million. If you add in the latest donation of US$1.6, the total is US$5.99– or almost six million dollars just for the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation.
The Chamorro gang is the darling of the Yankees
The amount of money to finance coup activities through media has increased considerably in the last two years to the Chamorro Foundation which focuses on disinformation through online, print, radio and television. In 2020 and 2021 the amount given to them was US$2.59 million.
This funding is part of the US orchestrated plan called RAIN to destabilize and if possible overthrow the Nicaraguan government leaked from the US embassy in Managua in July and includes a USAID contract to hire a company to head up the destabilization plan. While the document, Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua, tries to portray its intentions as democratic, it is a disturbing example of US intervention in another nation’s internal affairs.
There is also a substantial amount of funding for organizations that work on the Caribbean Coast. US$1.7 million was given recently to three organizations: the Foundation for the Autonomy and Development of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (FADCANIC) received US$457,759; the Nidia White Women’s Movement Association has a budget of half a million dollars from the US for the period 2020-2021 and the Association for the Development of the Atlantic Coast has a similar budget of US$785,341 for its political activities in 2020-2021. This is particularly interesting as The Oakland Institute received nearly a million dollars in 2018 for their work including the disinformation campaign to attempt to damage Nicaragua’s environmental reputation on the Caribbean Coast.
Organizations that continue to receive USAID financing for their electoral destabilization activities are: Grupo Ética y Transparencia, which has a grant of US$1 million for the election year of 2021 and Hagamos Democracia, which has a grant of US$1.1 million. Both organizations have worked in opposition to the Sandinista party, at least in the last four elections. Movimiento Por Nicaragua, the NGO of Violeta Granera, is receiving US$601,124.
The so-called Permanent Commission of Human Rights headed by the Marcos Carmona (accused of criminal activities) received US$825,671; the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANDPH) headed by Alvaro Leiva received US$701,032. The board of directors of ANDPH denounced Leiva for stealing nearly half a million dollars and accused him of inflating the number of deaths during the 2018 coup attempt as a tactic to get more US funding.
The United States government portrays this aid as supporting democracy but it is targeted against one side in the political arena of a foreign country and would never be allowed in the US. Why should it be allowed in any other country?
November 14, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption | Nicaragua, The Oakland Institute, United States, USAID | 1 Comment
USA’s Militarization of Latin America
By Yanis Iqbal | Dissident Voice | August 24, 2020
Maj. Gen. Andrew Croft, the commander of 12th Air Force, wrote on 22 August: “I have seen an increasingly contested strategic space where Beijing and Moscow are aggressively investing time and resources in Latin America to support their authoritarian models of governance. The Air Force must reinforce the strength of our longstanding commitment to the Western Hemisphere. We lose ground when we are unable to commit to spending the time and resources to fly our aircraft south and train alongside our partners.”
Croft’s statement reflects the growing American hysteria against the presence of any extra-regional actors in the Latin American continent. For US policy-makers, Latin America is not an aggregation of sovereign nations but a large lump of subordinated states constituting “America’s backyard”. Consequently, this conceptualization of Latin America as a natural extension of the American empire has led to viewing the engagement of any South American country with China, Russia and Iran as a “threat” to peace and security.
On February 7, 2019, Admiral Craig S. Faller – the commander of the United States Southern Command – told the Congress that the Western Hemisphere is facing “a troubling array of challenges and threats”. These threats included alarmist assertions about the growing dominance of China, Russia and Iran and a general demonization of the socialist governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua:
“China has accelerated expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative at a pace that may one day overshadow its expansion in Southeast Asia and Africa. Russia supports multiple information outlets spreading its false narrative of world events and U.S. intentions. Iran has deepened its anti-U.S. Spanish language media coverage and has exported its state support for terrorism into our hemisphere. Russia and China also support the autocratic regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which are counter to democracy and U.S. interests. We are monitoring the latest events in Venezuela and look forward to welcoming that country back into the hemisphere’s community of democracies.”
In response to the perceived threats posed by the China-Russia-Iran nexus, the Secretary of Defense has decided to conduct an assessment of the sufficiency of resources available to the U.S. Southern Command, the U.S. Northern Command, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to carry out their respective missions in the Western Hemisphere. This assessment is required to include “a list of investments, programs, or partnerships in the Western Hemisphere by China, Iran, Russia, or other adversarial groups or countries that threaten the national security of the United States.”
In addition to warlike preparations, USA has also pursued a policy of increased militarization wherein it has tried to ensure “technological superiority” with regard to “anti-US actors”. In March, 2020, USA decided to send additional ships, aircraft and forces to South America and Central America in order to combat the influence of Russia and China. According to Navy Adm. Craig Faller, commander of Southern Command, “This really was born out of a recognition of the threats in the region,”. Along with the mobilization of the Southern Command, USA has substantially enlarged its security aid to Latin America: From $527,706,000 in 2019, US security aid to Latin America has increased by 10% to $581,270,000.
Chinese Footprint
The present-day US militarization of Latin America is rhetorically driven by an imperialist discourse framing the continent as a possession of the American empire which China, Russia and Iran are trying to appropriate. To take an example, R. Evan Ellis, a Latin America Research Professor at the US Army War College, stated before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that China’s engagement with Latin America “threatens the position of the United States, our security and prosperity, and the democratic values, rights, institutions and laws on which we depend.” To substantiate his statements, Ellis enunciated various strategies through which China is undermining USA’s dominance:
“Trade with, loans to, investment in, and other forms of economic and other support to anti-US regimes, indirectly enabling their criminal activities and contributions to regional instability”.
“Through providing an alternative to commerce, loans and investment from the West, making governments of the region less inclined to support the US on political, commercial, or security issues, or to stand up for rule of law, democracy or human rights, particularly where it might offend the PRC;”
In both these points, one can observe the imperialistic high-handedness with which Ellis is declaiming his pro-US rhetoric. While Beijing’s efforts to engage with sovereign nations and construct an alternative to the global American empire are regarded as enabling “regional instability”, no questions are asked about USA’s expansionist quest to imperialize the entire world through militaristic tactics.
In order to vilify China and smear its non-aggressive foreign policy, hawkish security experts have framed the country’s diplomatic involvement with various Latin American nations as a type of authoritarian tactic. Using this line of reasoning, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) writes: “Beijing has now officially established its own version of soft power… which emanates from its undemocratic system and rests on its ability to shape the viewpoints of others through co-optation and persuasion.” Not having any empirical evidence to prove its unconvincing statements, NED talks vaguely about the “hypnotic effects” exercised by “Chinese-style warm welcome”: “The Chinese-style warm welcome, the carefully selected tours that include visits to sites with symbolic historical and cultural significance, and ad hoc friendly discourse delivered by the Chinese hosts can have hypnotic effects on their foreign guests.” This is an indication of the extent to which America hysteria against China can reach.
In the same way as NED, the Brookings Institution has also tried to slander China’s diplomatic initiatives in Latin America to preserve the coercive dominance of USA in the continent. As per the think tank, “it would be fair to assume that China’s growing economic power and ambitions of global leadership, coupled with its inherently closed and repressive model of political control, will hurt the region’s prospects for strengthening its liberal democratic systems and respect for human rights.” While saying this, the Brooking Institution conveniently forgets that it the US, with its Western-styled liberal democracy, that has hurt the region most in the form of coups, violence and overt brutality against social movements. Most recently, a US-backed coup in Bolivia has resulted in two massacres and massive repression of social movements.
The Iranian Connection
Like China, Iran, too, experiences American hostility towards its engagement with Latin American countries. Lieutenant Andrew Kramer of the U.S. Navy terms Iranian support for the “economically backward governments” of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as efforts “to maintain pockets of instability and hostility close to U.S. borders.” Echoing this perspective, William Preston McLaughlin, a Colonel (Ret.) of U.S. Marine Corps and Magdalena Defort, an Intern Analyst at the Foundation of Defense of Democracies, argue that “Iran’s presence in Latin America is an imminent threat to peace and political stability in the Western Hemisphere because its forces interact with Latin America’s deeply rooted revolutionary ideology and various well-intentioned but flawed “liberation theology” social movements.” Here, both of the analysts are merely parroting the imperialist “Monroe Doctrine” that subverted the sovereignty of Latin American nations and tethered the people of the continent to the whims of the American empire. Through the Monroe Doctrine, USA relegated the entire Latin American continent to the status of the empire’s handmaiden and constantly used its military muscles to overpower any regional initiatives challenging the dynamics of subjugation. Now, when Iran is lending support to the anti-imperialist administrations of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, it has come under the radar of USA for ostensibly destroying peace and political stability in the Western Hemisphere. In August 2020, for instance, USA confiscated four Iranian fuel shipments that had been bound for Venezuela, making it clear that it would not tolerate anti-imperialist opposition in Latin America.
In addition to portraying Iran as a threat to global peace, both the analysts also used a shrill, scaremongering rhetoric to over-exaggerate the strength of the country. According to the analysts, “Iran has used every agency within its borders to help extend Iranian tentacles into the political, cultural, economic, and military life of Latin America.” This bears striking resemblance to the traditional war-mongering US narrative that frames Hezbollah as a menace to justify the militarizary raising funds, seeking recruits, probing for our weaknesses and challenging our defenses,”. Through these discourses, USA seeks to unleash a new war against the anti-imperialist axis of Latin America which is standing up to militaristic predatoriness of the global hegemon.
Russian Presence
Besides Iran and China, Russia is another nation perceived as a “threat” to US security. General John Kelly, commander of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) noted in his Congressional testimony, “it has been over three decades since we last saw this type of high-profile Russian presence” in Latin America. In his command’s 2015 Posture Statement, Kelly added:
“Periodically since 2008, Russia has pursued an increased presence in Latin America through propaganda, military arms and equipment sales, counterdrug agreements, and trade. Under President Putin, however, we have seen a clear return to Cold War tactics. As part of its global strategy, Russia is using power projection in an attempt to erode U.S. leadership and challenge U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere.”
John Kelly’s representation of Russia as a military threat has been repeated by the Commander of US Southern Command, Admiral Kurt W. Tidd who said in his February 2018 Posture Statement to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that:
“Russia’s increased role in our hemisphere is particularly concerning, given its intelligence and cyber capabilities, intent to upend international stability and order, and discredit democratic institutions… Left unchecked, Russian access and placement could eventually transition from a regional spoiler to a critical threat to the U.S. homeland.”
With the help this narrative, USA has aggressively pushed forward the agenda of greater militarism in Latin America as it strives to maintain “technological superiority” in relation to Russia and expand its already large military expenditure.
On top of depicting Russia as a military threat, US analysts have additionally portrayed the country’s support of socialist governments in Latin America as a danger to the economically empty liberal democracies of the West. According to IBI Consultants, a National Security consulting company specializing in Latin America, Russia’s growing presence in Latin America “is now an integral part of an alliance of state and nonstate actors that have shown their hostility toward the United States in their ideology, criminalized behavior, and anti-democratic nature.” Reiterating this point, on July 9, 2019, Admiral Faller declared before the Congress that “Russia seeks to sow disunity and distrust, propping up autocratic regimes in Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which are counter to democracy and U.S. interests.” For Faller, those nations which don’t doggedly toe America’s imperialist line automatically become “threats” to democracy and if Russia shows solidarity with these anti-imperialist nations, it, too, classifies as a threat to US interests.
As the USA continues to militarize Latin America, it is increasingly becoming clear that it wants to protect its old, imperial structures from being challenged by anyone. It has been explicitly acknowledged even by pro-US analysts such as Ellis that US military assistance in Latin America “potentially serves U.S. strategic interests by helping to inoculate receiving states against radical or anti-democratic [read “socialist”] solutions which find receptivity when populations lose faith in the ability of a democratic political system and a free market economy to effectively address the corruption, inequality, injustice, and other dysfunctionalities plaguing their country [Emphasis mine].” US military assistance, therefore, is not apolitical and is ideologically tarnished with the objectives of stabilizing free market economies-bourgeoisie democracies and subverting socialist countries.
The United States Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to US national security had stated in 2019 that “anti-US autocrats [in the Western Hemisphere]will present continuing challenges to US interests, as US adversaries and strategic competitors seek greater influence in the region.” Here, “anti-US autocrats” refers to the socialist administrations of three Latin American countries: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. These three countries have been facing strong US belligerence for their anti-imperialist stance. US sanctions against Cuba have tightened during the pandemic; USA’s hybrid war against Venezuela has intensified as Trump has decided to use frozen funds to topple Nicolas Maduro and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has strengthened its regime change operations against the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Due to the support lent by China, Russia and Iran to the socialist governments of Latin America, USA has decided to eradicate these extra-regional actors from its “own” backyard and re-proclaim a complete American dominance in the region. In times like these, the international community needs to oppose the militarism of USA against new regional alliances in Latin America.
Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India.
August 24, 2020 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Cuba, Latin America, Nicaragua, United States, Venezuela | Leave a comment
The US contracts out its regime change operation in Nicaragua
By John Perry | COHA | August 4, 2020
Masaya, Nicaragua – An extraordinary leaked document gives a glimpse of the breadth and complexity of the US government’s plan to interfere in Nicaragua’s internal affairs up to and after its presidential election in 2021.
The plan,[1] a 14-page extract from a much longer document, dates from March-April this year and sets the terms for a contract to be awarded by USAID (a “Request for Task Order Proposal”). It was revealed by reporter William Grigsby from Nicaragua’s independent Radio La Primerisima[2] and describes the task of creating what the document calls “the environment for Nicaragua’s transition to democracy.” The aim is to achieve “an orderly transition” from the current government of Daniel Ortega to “a government committed to the rule of law, civil liberties, and a free civil society.” The contractor will work with the “democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) sub-sectors” which in reality is an agglomeration of NGOs, think tanks, media organizations and so-called human rights bodies that depend on US funding and which – while claiming to be independent – are in practice an integral part of the opposition to the Ortega government.
To justify such blatant interference, a considerable rewriting of history is needed. For example, the document claims that the ruling Sandinista party manipulated “successive” past elections so as to win “without a majority of the votes.” Then after “manipulating the 2016 presidential elections” to similar effect, it was warned by the Organization of American States (OAS) that there had been various “impediments to free and fair elections” as a result of which the OAS requested “technical electoral reforms.” What the document omits, however, are the overall conclusions of the OAS on the last elections. Although it identified “weaknesses typical of all electoral processes,” the OAS explicitly said that these had “not affected substantially the popular will expressed through the vote.” In other words, the nature of Daniel Ortega’s victory (he gained 72% of the popular vote) made any minor irregularities irrelevant to the result: he won by an enormous margin. The leaked document makes clear that the US is worried that the same might happen again and aims to stop it.
Not surprisingly, the document also rewrites recent history, saying that the “uprising” in 2018 (which had strong US backing) was answered by “the government’s brutal repression” of demonstrations, while it ignores the wave of violence and destruction that the opposition itself unleashed. The economic disruption it caused is still damaging the country, even though (pre-pandemic) there were strong signs of recovery. USAID, however, has to paint a picture of a country in crisis “… broadening into an economic debacle with the potential to become a humanitarian emergency, depending on the impact of the COVID-19 contagion on Nicaragua’s weak healthcare system.” Someone casually reading the document, unaware of the real situation, might get the impression that, in Nicaragua’s “crisis environment,” regime change is not only desirable but urgently required. The reality – that Nicaragua is at peace, has so far coped with the COVID-19 pandemic reasonably well, and hasn’t suffered the severe economic problems experienced by its neighbors El Salvador and Honduras – is of course incompatible with the picture the US administration needs to present, in order to give some semblance of justification for its intervention.
A long history of US intervention
Given the long history of US interference in Nicaragua, going back at least as far as William Walker’s assault on its capital and usurption of the presidency in 1856, the existence of a plan of this kind is hardly surprising. What’s unusual is that someone has made it publicly available and we can now see the plan in detail. Of course, the US has long developed a tool box of regime change methods short of direct military intervention, such as when it sent in the marines in the 1920s and 1930s or illegally funded and provided logistical support for the “Contra” forces in the 1980s. It now has more sophisticated methods, using local proxies, which are deniable in the unlikely event that they will be exposed by the international media (which normally displays little interest, being much more interested in electoral interference by Russia than it is in Washington’s disruption of the democratic processes).
The latest escalation in intervention began under the Obama presidency and continued under Trump, although the motivation probably has more to do with the US administration’s ongoing concerns about the success of the Ortega government’s development model since it returned to power in 2007 and began a decade of renewed social investment. Oxfam summarized the problem in the memorable title it gave to a 1980s report about Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example. Between 2005 and 2016, poverty was reduced by almost half, from 48 percent to 25 percent according to World Bank data. Nicaragua had a low crime rate, limited drug-related violence, and community-based policing. Over the 11 years to 2017, Nicaragua’s per-capita GDP increased by 38 percent—more than for any of its neighbors. Its success contrasted sharply with the experience of the three “Northern Triangle” countries closely allied to the US. While Nicaragua became one of the safest countries in Latin America, neighboring Guatemala, El Salvador and particularly Honduras saw soaring crime levels, rampant corruption and rapid growth in the drug trade that prevented social progress and produced the “migrant caravans” that began to head north towards the US in 2017.
The US administration’s efforts in 2016 and 2017, building on long experience of manipulating Nicaraguan politics, appeared to produce results in April 2018. The first catalyst for action by US-funded groups was an out-of-control forest fire in a remote reserve, inaccessible by road.[3] The tactics were clear: take an incident with potential to get young people onto the streets, blame the government for inaction (even though the fire was almost impossible to control), whip up people’s anger via social media, organize protests, generate critical stories in the local press, enlist support from neighboring allies (in this case, Costa Rica) and secure hostile coverage in the international media. All of these tactics worked, but before the next stage could be reached (protesters being repressed by the Ortega “regime”) the forest fire was extinguished by a rainstorm.
A week later, the opposition forces were unexpectedly given a second opportunity. The government announced a package of modest social security reforms, and quickly faced new protests on the streets. The same tactics were deployed, this time with much greater success. Violence by protesters on April 19 (a police officer, a Sandinista supporter and a bystander were shot) brought inevitable attempts by the police to control the protests, leading to rapid escalation. Media messages proliferated about students being killed, many of them false. Only a few days later the government cancelled the social security reforms, but by now the protests had (as planned) moved on to demanding the government’s resignation. The full story of events in April-July 2018, and how the government eventually prevailed, is told in Live from Nicaragua: Uprising or Coup?
A section of the report
Laying the groundwork for insurrection
How were the conditions for a coup created? The aims of US government funding in Nicaragua and the tactics they paid for in this period were made surprisingly clear in the online magazine Global Americans in 2018, which is partly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).[4] Arguing (in May 2018, at the height of the violence) that “Nicaragua is on the brink of a civic insurrection,” the author Ben Waddell, who was in Nicaragua at the time, pointed out that “US support has helped play a role in nurturing the current uprisings.”
His article’s title, Laying the groundwork for insurrection,[5] was starkly accurate in describing the ambitions behind the NED’s funding program, which had financed 54 projects in Nicaragua over the period 2014-17 and has continued to do so since then. What did the projects do? Like the recently leaked document, NED promotes ostensibly innocuous or even apparently beneficial activities like strengthening civil society, promoting democratic values, finding “a new generation of democratic youth leaders” and identifying “advocacy opportunities.” To get behind the jargon and clarify the NED’s role, Waddell quotes the New York Times (referring to the uprisings in Egypt, where NED had also been active):[6]
“… the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.”
In the case of Nicaragua, the NED’s funding of groups opposed to the Sandinista government began in 1984, giving the lie to their aim being to “promote democracy” since that was the year in which Nicaragua’s revolutionary government held the country’s first-ever democratic elections. Waddell makes it clear that the NED’s efforts continued, years later:
“… it is now quite evident that the U.S. government actively helped build the political space and capacity in Nicaraguan society for the social uprising that is currently unfolding.”
The NED is not the only non-covert source of US funding. Another is USAID, which describes its role in the 2018 uprising in similar terms to the NED. Not long before he exposed the new document, William Grigsby was able to publish lists of groups and projects in Nicaragua funded by USAID and by the National Democratic Institute (NDI).[7] He showed that upwards of $30 million was being distributed to a wide range of groups opposed to the government and involved in the violence of 2018, and that in the case of the NDI at least this funding continued into 2020.
Last year, Yorlis Gabriela Luna recounted for COHA her own experiences of how US-funded groups trained young people, in particular, and influenced their political beliefs in the build-up to 2018.[8] She explained how social networks and media outlets were “capable of fooling a significant portion of Nicaragua’s youth and general population.” She explained how the groups used scholarships to learn English, diploma programs, graduate studies, and courses with enticing names like “democratic values, social media activism, human rights and accountability” at private universities, “to attract and lure young people.” She went on to explain how exciting events were organised in expensive hotels or even involving trips abroad, so that young people who had never before been privileged in these ways developed a sense of “pride,” belonging, and “group identity,” and as a result “wound up aligning themselves with the foreign interests” of those who funded the courses and activities.
The new task during and after the pandemic
Two years after the failed coup attempt, what are the organizations that receive US funding now supposed to do? The new document is full of jargon, requiring the contractor (for example) to engage in “targeted short-term technical and analytical activities during Nicaragua’s transition that require rapid response programming support until other funds, mechanisms, and actors can be mobilized.” The work also requires “longer-term programs, which will be determined as the crisis evolves.” Preparation is required for the possibility that “transition [to a new government] does not happen in an orderly and timely manner.” The contractor will have to prepare “a roster of subject matter experts in Nicaragua” to provide short term technical assistance, “regardless of the result of the 2021 election, even in the event of the Sandinistas ‘winning fairly’.” The document is full of requirements like being able to offer “a rapid response” and “seize new opportunities,” emphasizing the urgency of the task. In other words, a fresh attempt is underway to destabilize Daniel Ortega’s government and, in the event that this doesn’t work, and even should the Sandinistas win the next election fairly, as the document admits is a possibility, US attempts at regime change are stepping up a gear.
Who will carry this out? The document places much emphasis on “maintaining” and “strengthening” civil society and improving its leadership, which appears to refer to the numerous NGOs, think tanks and “human rights” bodies which receive US funding. At one point the document asks “what should donor coordination, the opposition, civil society, and media focus on?” – clearly implying that the contractor has a role in influencing not just these civil society groups but also the media and political parties.
Not surprisingly, the document has been interpreted as a new plan to destabilize the country. Writing in La Primerísima, Wiston López argues that the plan’s purpose is “to create the conditions for a coup d’état in Nicaragua.”[9] Brian Wilson, the VietNam veteran severely injured in the 1980s when attempting to stop a freight train carrying supplies to the “Contra,” and who lives in Nicaragua, concludes that the US now realizes that Ortega will win the coming election.[10] In response, the “US has launched a brazen, criminal and arrogant plan to overthrow Nicaragua’s government.”
Supposing that there is a clear Sandinista victory in 2021, will the US nevertheless refuse to accept the result? Having implied that the OAS had serious criticisms of the last election when this was not the case, the document implies that it will be pressured to take a different attitude next time, saying that “whether the OAS decides to pick up the pressure on electoral reform again will be an important international pressure point.” No doubt the US will try to insist that the OAS must be election observers, and if this is refused it will allow the legitimacy of the election to be called into question, if the result is unfavorable to US interests. Many question whether the OAS is even qualified to have an observer role any longer, however, after the serious harm it did to Bolivian democracy in 2019 by casting doubts on what experts considered a fair election and, in effect, instigating a coup.[11] This document creates legitimate concern that the US government would like to use the OAS to prevent another government that is not to its liking from winning an election, as it did so recently in Bolivia.
Not only must conditions be created to replace the current government, but once this is achieved the changes must extend to “rebuilding” the institutions of government, including the judicial system, police and armed forces. After the widespread persecution of government officials, state and municipal workers and Sandinista supporters that occurred in 2018, it is not surprising that this is interpreted as requiring a purge of all the institutions and personnel with Sandinista sympathies. As Wilson says, “the new government must immediately submit to the policies and guidelines established by the United States, including persecution of Sandinistas, dissolving the National Police and the Army, among other institutions.”
USAID makes it clear that it is internal pressure in Nicaragua that might eventually provoke a coup d’état, so it calls on its agents to deepen the political, economic and also the health crisis, taking into account the context of COVID-19. The US State Department recently awarded an extra $750,000 to Nicaraguan non-government bodies as part of its global response to COVID-19, and this includes “support for targeted communication and community engagement activities.”[12] As López points out in Popular Resistance, “Since March the US-directed opposition has focused 95% of their actions on attempting to discredit Nicaragua’s prevention, contention, and Covid treatment. However, this only had some success in the international media and is now backfiring since Nicaragua is the country with one of the lowest mortality rates in the continent.”[13] The Johns Hopkins University’s world map of coronavirus cases currently shows Nicaragua with 3,672 cases compared with 17,448 in El Salvador, 42,685 in Honduras and 51,306 in Guatemala.[14] Even though higher figures produced by Nicaragua’s so-called Citizens’ Observatory[15] are regularly cited in the international media, they currently show just 9,044 “suspected” cases, still far below the numbers in the “Northern triangle” countries.
What will the opposition do next?
COHA has already documented the disinformation campaign taking place against Nicaragua during the pandemic and how this has been repeated in the international media. So far, however, warnings of the health system’s collapse have proved to be unfounded.[16] If, as happened with the Indio Maíz fire and the social security protests in 2018, the opposition fails in its attempt to use the pandemic to destabilize the Ortega government, what will it do next? A recent incident shows that attempts to seize on events to spur a crisis will continue. On July 31, a fire occurred in Managua’s cathedral. The fire department responded quickly and put out the blaze within ten minutes, but a crucifix and the chapel where it stood were badly damaged. Within minutes opposition newspaper La Prensa reported that “an attack” had occurred involving a “Molotov cocktail” and that the government or its supporters were implicated.[17] This was echoed by other local and international media, opposition parties, the Archbishop of Managua, and by one of the NGOs which received USAID funding.[18] Despite the lack of any evidence to back up the media stories, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) also condemned the incident, obviously implying that it was an attack on human rights.[19]
Yet a police investigation quickly established that there was no evidence at all of any foul play, or that petrol or explosive materials were involved.[20] Their investigations pointed instead to a tragic accident involving lighted candles and the alcohol spray being used as a disinfectant as part of the cathedral’s anti-COVID-19 precautions. The Catholic Church has already announced that the damaged chapel will be restored to its former state. However, the damage that has been done to the government’s national and international reputation, and to its highly politicized relationship with the Catholic Church, will be more difficult to repair.
John Perry is a writer based in Nicaragua.
[1] Downloadable in English (pdf) at https://s3.amazonaws.com/rlp680/files/uploads/2020/07/31/aid-mayo-2020-ingles.pdf
[2] “EEUU lanza descarado plan intervencionista para tumbar al FSLN”, https://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/287264/eeuu-lanza-descarado-plan-intervencionista-A histotrypara-tumbar-al-fsln/
[3] “International Forces ‘Distorting’ Nicaragua’s Indio Maíz Fire,” https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/International-Forces-Distorting-Nicaraguas-Indio-Maiz-Fire-20180414-0019.html
[4] See details at https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php (NED is nominally independent of the US administration, but is funded by Congress.)
[5] “Laying the groundwork for insurrection: A closer look at the U.S. role in Nicaragua’s social unrest,” https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/05/laying-groundwork-insurrection-closer-look-u-s-role-nicaraguas-social-unrest/
[6] “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html
[7] “Asi financia EEUU a los terroristas,” http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/286068/asi-financia-eeuu-a-los-terroristas/
[8] “The Other Nicaragua, Empire and Resistance,” https://www.coha.org/the-other-nicaragua-empire-and-resistance/
[9] “EEUU lanza descarado plan intervencionista para tumbar al FSLN,” http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/287264/eeuu-lanza-descarado-plan-intervencionista-para-tumbar-al-fsln/
[10] “NIcaragua targeted for US overthrow in 2020-21,” https://popularresistance.org/nicaragua-targeted-for-us-overthrow-in-2020-21/
[11] “Bolivia’s Struggle to Restore Democracy after OAS Instigated Coup,” https://www.coha.org/bolivias-struggle-to-restore-democracy-after-oas-instigated-coup/
[12] See https://www.state.gov/update-the-united-states-continues-to-lead-the-global-response-to-covid-19/
[13] “US Launches Brazen Interventionist Plan to Overthrow the FSLN,” https://popularresistance.org/us-launches-brazen-interventionist-plan-to-overthrow-the-fsln/
[14] See https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
[15] See https://observatorioni.org/
[16] “Experts Warn about Possible Health System Collapse in Nicaragua,” https://www.voanews.com/episode/experts-warn-about-possible-health-system-collapse-nicaragua-4320606
[17] See https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2020/07/31/nacionales/2702954-lanzan-bomba-molotov-adentro-de-la-capilla-de-la-catedral
[18] See for example https://confidencial.com.ni/atentado-con-bomba-molotov-en-la-catedral-de-managua/ and https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-07-31/un-atentado-con-bomba-molotov-incendia-la-capilla-de-la-catedral-metropolitana-de-managua.html
[19] See https://twitter.com/OACNUDH/status/1289574031159488514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1289574031159488514%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.laprensa.com.ni%2F2020%2F08%2F01%2Fnacionales%2F2703388-organismos-de-derechos-humanos-condenan-ataque-a-la-catedral-de-managua
[20] “Esclarecimiento de incendio en Capilla de la Sangre de Cristo, Catedral de Managua”, https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:105922-esclarecimiento-de-incendio-en-capilla-de-la-sangre-de-cristo-catedral-de-managua-presentacion
August 14, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Latin America, National Democratic Institute, NED, Nicaragua, United States, USAID | Leave a comment
Why Immunity for the CIA?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 11, 2020
Amidst the controversy over the doctrine of qualified immunity for cops, no one is talking about the full immunity accorded to the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency within the national-security establishment that wields omnipotent power.
Among the most interesting lines in the new Amazon Prime series The Last Narc is what a CIA official says to DEA investigator Hector Berrellez, who was charged with leading the investigation into the kidnapping, torture, and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The official tells Berrellez that the CIA is not a law-enforcement agency and, therefore, doesn’t have to comply with the Constitution. Its mission, he said, is to protect the United States. Therefore, the implication is that the Constitution cannot be permitted to serve as a barrier to that end.
That’s the way it’s been since the beginning. The CIA has had omnipotent power to do whatever it deems necessary to protect “national security.” That includes, of course, the power of assassination, a power that the CIA assumed practically since its inception. In fact, as early as 1952, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual for its assassins.
The CIA also wields the power of torture, the power to record its torture sessions, and the power to destroy such recordings to prevent Congress or the public from listening to them or viewing them.
The CIA also wields the power to lie, at least if it’s in the interest of “national security.”
No one jacks with the CIA. Not the Justice Department, including every U.S. Attorney in the land. Not the Congress. Not the president. Not the military. Who is going to mess with an organization that wields the omnipotent power to destroy or kill people and is more than willing to exercise that power in the name of protecting “national security”?
The kidnapping, torture, and execution of Kiki Camarena
A good example of this phenomenon is found in The Last Narc, which I wrote about in a blog post last week.
In 1985, 37-year-old DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was kidnapped on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico, and brutally tortured for 36 hours before finally being executed.
It was commonly believed that the crime had been committed by the Guadalajara drug cartel, which was headed by Rafael Caro Quintana, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, all of whom are featured in Netflix’s series Narcos: Mexico. But Mexican officials steadfastly refused to extradite the three drug lords to the United States for trial.
The DEA assigned Berrellez to take charge of the investigation. Berrellez, who felt as comfortable operating in Mexico as he did in the United States, found three former members of the Jalisco State Police who were willing to talk. They came to the United States and told Berrellez that back in 1985, they had been working double jobs — as state policemen and also as bodyguards for Caro, Fonseca, and Gallardo.
Berrellez interviewed them separately to ensure the integrity of their statements. They each pointed toward complicity of high Mexican officials with the cartel in the distribution of drugs into the United States, which I don’t think would surprise anyone.
The three former cops and bodyguards told Berrellez that they were in the room while Camarena was being tortured. Each of them stated that there were several high Mexican officials present in the house in which Camarena was being tortured while he was being tortured.
The heroism of Hector Berrellez
But then Berrellez discovered something else. According to the three former Mexican state policemen, a man named Max Gomez, also known as Felix Rodriguez, was inside the torture room and taking an active role in the brutal interrogation of Camarena. Berrellez investigated and determined that Rodriguez was a “retired” CIA agent.
Among the principal questions that was being addressed to Camarena was the extent to which he had discovered, in the course of his investigation, the nexus between the drug cartel, the CIA, and the Mexican government in the drug trade.
It was later learned that the interrogation was being recorded, which is something that one would not expect drug lords to do but that one would expect a CIA agent to do.
At that point, Berrellez was in trouble. It’s one thing to conduct an investigation that leads to the Mexican government’s involvement in Camarena’s torture and murder. It’s another thing to conduct an investigation that leads to the U.S. government’s involvement in the torture and murder of a DEA agent who is also an American citizen.
As Berrellez states in The Last Narc, he was warned to back off and let sleeping dogs lie. He was warned that if he didn’t, his life would be in jeopardy. If he didn’t back off, U.S. officials even threatened to forcibly return him to Mexico to face criminal charges that the Mexican government had leveled against him.
But Berrellez refused to back off, and so U.S. officials removed him from the investigation. Even though he could have remained silent, he instead decided to go public with his findings and cooperated in the making of The Last Narc. He comes across as a heroic figure in the series.
For his part, Rodriguez denies that he was in the torture room or that he has had anything to do with Guadalajara cartel and with drug dealing. The problem, however, is that CIA agents will lie if they believe that it is in the interest of “national security.” And they all know that they have immunity when it comes to lying and anything else that touches on “national security.”
Full immunity for the CIA
Here you have a prima facie case of U.S. governmental involvement in the torture and assassination of a U.S citizen, one who was an agent of the DEA. The alleged purpose of the torture was to determine if Camarena had uncovered evidence of CIA complicity with the Guadalajara Cartel and the Mexican government in the drug trade. Three witnesses, all giving their testimony separately, identified Rodriquez as one of Camarena’s interrogators.
That’s clearly enough evidence to launch a formal investigation into the matter. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that Camarena’s murder took place during Iran Contra, when U.S. officials were breaking the law to raise the money to give to the Nicaraguan contras.
Has any of this caused any U.S. Attorney or the U.S. Congress to launch an aggressive investigation into the matter?
Don’t make me laugh. This is the CIA we are talking about. No one investigates the CIA, which makes the U.S. government as crooked and corrupt as the Mexican government. If you want to get a good sense of how both governments operate, I highly recommend watching The Last Narc.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics.
August 11, 2020 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Film Review | CIA, Latin America, Mexico, Nicaragua, United States | 4 Comments
‘Coup-Plotters for Hire’: Unearthed USAID Nicaragua Regime Change Doc Puts 2018 Protests in Context
Sputnik – 05.08.2020
An uncovered US Agency for International Development (USAID) document lays out a blueprint for regime change in Nicaragua. An expert told Sputnik the playbook shines a new light on the 2018 protests in Nicaragua as well as similar operations in other countries targeted by the US, such as Venezuela.
A new report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) has revealed a guide to regime change in Nicaragua by USAID. The document, which dates to March-April of this year, describes in frank terms how the agency, which maintains close ties with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), could create or exploit a variety of scenarios to remove democratically-elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his FSLN party from power in or around the upcoming 2021 elections.
Jill Clark-Gollub, assistant editor and translator at COHA, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear Wednesday that many of the tactics outlined in the USAID document can be observed in the demonstrations that rocked Nicaragua in the summer of 2018.
‘Code-Speak for a Coup’
“It’s a contract hiring coup plotters – a ‘coup-plotters for hire’-type contract. And it’s really astounding how the whole document is based on the premise that we can impose a better version of democracy for the Nicaraguan people. It talks about a crisis and a transition, and all of this is code-speak for basically bringing about a coup.”
“It talks about three scenarios in which the transition can take place, and it says a transition could take place if our candidate wins the election, but other parts of the document make it clear that they don’t expect their pro-US candidate to win the election. They don’t even have a candidate. Then they talk about creating a crisis for a sudden transition – another code-speak for a coup – and then it talks about a delayed transition in which the FSLN party, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation, wins. And it’s even a free and fair election, and it’s recognized internationally, so it takes a longer time to get them out of there.”
“If you really hadn’t been paying attention at all, you would think there’s this country in crisis and that the US would be doing them a favor to get rid of that government and put in somebody else.”
US Officials Admit to Venezuela ‘Coup’
The news comes amid statements before a Senate committee on Tuesday in which US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) frankly admitted to having attempted to engineer a coup d’etat against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro beginning in January 2019.
“Our Venezuela policy over the last year and a half has been an unmitigated disaster,” Murphy told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We have to admit that our big play, recognizing [Juan] Guaidó right out of the gate, and then moving quickly to implement sanctions just didn’t work … First, we thought that getting Guaidó to declare himself president would be enough to topple the regime. Then we thought putting aid on the border would be enough. Then we tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year, and it blew up in our face when all the generals that were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end.”
Josh Hodges, the senior deputy assistant administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), told the panel USAID support has been instrumental in helping Guaidó’s movement to function.
“We are using development assistance to support the interim government and the National Assembly with technical training, staffing support, equipment and communication efforts,” Hodges said. “USAID’s support bolsters the interim government’s ability to effectively operate and interact with constituents, despite the increased repression from the illegitimate regime. Our assistance has enabled increased participation with legitimate officials.”
Manufacturing Crises via ‘Psychological Warfare’
Clark-Gollub told Sputnik that USAID being directly involved in plotting a coup was “interesting,” because “this in the past, I believe, would have been done by the CIA. Now it’s being done by USAID, and as I said, it’s advertised on LinkedIn. It’s like they have no shame anymore.”
“USAID has been funding Nicaraguan opposition and media groups for years,” she said, noting the 2018 civil disturbances were a case study in what the document describes. “You just need to go back two years and look at this document and all of this doublespeak and understand what I mean.”
“It’s almost embarrassing for the people who are allowing themselves to be used for this. The document talks about how they’re going to use NGOs and opposition parties and the media kind of to corral them to do what they need to do for this plot. So it reveals a lot of stuff that we’ve known, and it brings it out in the open. We have known the media is paid by the US; this is recognition that they’re directed by the US. And the shameful thing for people outside of Nicaragua is that our mass media just parrots what the self-serving Nicaraguan opposition media publishes in Nicaragua.”
She further noted the US was “trying to use the [COVID-19] pandemic for this crisis” mentioned in the document as a possible regime change scenario. “They even created their own citizens’ observatory with mysterious ‘scientific experts’ who they would never say who they were, who were publishing their own statistics on the number of infected and dying people in Nicaragua from the pandemic.”
Instead, Nicaragua’s health system, which the FSLN government has spent 13 years rebuilding and expanding, did not collapse on itself under the weight of the pandemic, as the US embassy in Managua predicted it would, but instead has weathered the storm well, with the lowest COVID-19 case fatality rate in Central America and a very low per capita fatality rate.
Clark-Gollub said use of these tactics “amounts to psychological warfare. They are just going to keep trying to build up, dig up things to make things into a crisis, and it’s terrible,” noting Nicaraguans are being “bombarded” with “fake news” about mass deaths and burials that are actually occurring in other countries.
Especially in 2018, the opposition was “on top of social media,” which the document also urges as a tactic. “We know that in 2018, there had been 2,000 young Nicaraguans recruited, mostly through the Catholic Church, to be social media influencers. And these were the ones putting out ‘color revolution’ type posts,” such as urging painting national colors over FSLN symbols. She also noted they would announce police violence at an event before it had happened, which created confusion and drove demonstrations about events that never occurred.
She recalled that former US national security adviser John Bolton called Nicaragua and Venezuela, along with Cuba, a “troika of tyranny,” writing in his recently released memoir that if one of the three falls, so will the others.
“These three countries are working toward a multipolar world, and the US does not want to see that succeed,” she noted.
“The Nicaraguan people got a big education in 2018; they understand that they’re under attack. It’s not as easy for them to be duped again about fake news that comes out, especially on social media. But that said, this does not mean this is not wearing on people, this psychological warfare … I think that the Nicaraguan people are standing firm and are going to continue to build their country.”
August 5, 2020 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Latin America, Nicaragua, United States, USAID, Venezuela | Leave a comment
How the Nicaraguan Opposition Distorted the Government’s Response to COVID-19
By John Perry | Council on Hemispheric Affairs | April 21, 2020
Masaya, Nicaragua – The right-wing opposition in Nicaragua, having failed in their attempted coup in 2018, still looks at any potential crisis as a new opportunity to attack the Sandinista government. Their latest chance, of course, arrived with the coronavirus pandemic. Even though the virus has barely hit the country yet, the government is under attack. The international media are lapping up opposition propaganda and ignoring or disparaging the government’s efforts to deal with the coming crisis, even though preparations began before those in many other countries.
Since early April, Nicaragua’s well-connected opposition leaders have used their contacts in the international press to push a series of stories relating to the pandemic. These stories – detailed below – variously claim that President Daniel Ortega is in quarantine or has died, that his government is in denial about the coronavirus or that it is ill-prepared and inactive in the face of the threat. None of this is true. What is worse, it seems based on the tone of news coverage, that reporters who are unable to visit the country nevertheless make little attempt to find out what action the government is actually taking and whether opposition criticisms have any substance.
At the time of writing (April 16, 2020) Nicaragua has only nine confirmed virus cases, all of them people who have come from abroad or their immediate contacts.[1] The opposition and the media pour scorn on the official figures and (without evidence) claim that infection levels are far higher. Ignoring the daily press briefings by Dr. Carlos Sáenz, Secretary General at the health ministry, the opposition claims that Nicaraguans are being kept in the dark. Despite health officials having visited 2.7 million households,[2] sometimes on several occasions, to dispense advice (see photo), the opposition complains that there is little or no guidance on combating the virus.
How the international media attacks developed
The attacks began on April 4 with BBC World, which in addition to criticising President Daniel Ortega for not making public appearances asserted that his government had taken “no measures at all” in the face of the virus threat.[3] Then The New York Times (April 6), asking Where is Daniel Ortega?, said his government had been “widely criticized for its cavalier approach” to the pandemic.[4] It quoted opposition supporters who say the public “is deeply dubious about government claims.” On April 8, The Guardian said that Ortega was “nowhere to be seen.” [5] By April 13, The Washington Post said Ortega had “vanished” and castigated his government’s “laissez-faire approach” (the Post’s print edition even managed to report that nine virus victims had died, when there has been only one death so far).[6]According to The Guardian, on April 12, the “authoritarian” Daniel Ortega is one of only four world leaders who are in denial about the coronavirus (among the others is, of course, the right-wing Bolsonaro in Brazil).[7] The attacks have even been reproduced by the international medical journal, The Lancet. On April 6, an article entitled Love in the time of COVID-19 labelled the government’s approach as “erratic” and “violating the human rights of its citizens.” [8]
The real situation in Nicaragua
What is the real situation in Nicaragua? The country has had health checks at its borders for months, far sooner than in the US. Travellers entering Nicaragua are managed tightly, and officials follow up with new arrivals by phone and by house visits, as I know from my own and friends’ direct experiences after arriving in the country. Two lengthy and porous land frontiers make it preferable to keep borders open so as to minimise informal crossings which make health checks impossible. When people do cross illegally, neighbors often report them using a free, dedicated phone number set up a few weeks ago. This number is also used to obtain more general advice on the virus. Nineteen hospitals have been identified to receive virus cases and 37,000 health workers and 250,000 volunteers have been trained accordingly.[9] The result is that – so far at least – Nicaragua’s nine virus cases represent the lowest infection rate in Latin America.
Social distancing and its costs
In the international press, opposition spokespeople call for more drastic measures such as social distancing and school closures. Reporters ignore the obvious dilemma that faces poor countries in deciding when to take such steps. Importantly, even though the World Health Organization has emphasized the importance of social distancing, it also recognises this dilemma. Its Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said this on April 16:
“Governments must consider that for some countries and communities, stay-at-home orders may not be practical, and may even cause unintended harm. Millions of people around the world must work every day to put food on the table. They cannot stay at home for long periods of time without assistance.”[10]
In Nicaragua, because all confirmed COVID-19 cases so far have come from abroad, the government assessment is that no or very limited local, community transmission has taken place.[11] This is why there continues to be vigilance while wider measures have not yet been imposed. If self-isolation becomes necessary it will carry a massive cost as seen for example in the US and other countries, as most people need to go to work daily to eat. There is no reliable mechanism to distribute subsidies, nor can small, poor countries like Nicaragua borrow with impunity to pay for them. Many Nicaraguans live in cramped houses in densely populated neighbourhoods, making social distancing extremely difficult. The government is genuinely attempting to balance the fight against the virus with the economic needs of the population. To impose an untimely lockdown, at a time when the spread of the virus appears to be still under control, would not only cause huge resentment and hardship but could be totally counterproductive. Of course, government policy is subject to change as the situation evolves and any objective assessment must be based on the government’s future handling of the crisis, not only on its response to date.
The Lancet article cites approvingly the contrasting policies of El Salvador and Honduras. In the former, President Nayib Bukele forced people to self-isolate, offering a subsidy of $300 per family which caused massive, unregulated queues and then rowdy protests outside government offices.[12] The Los Angeles Times reported (April 7) that in some areas the lockdown is enforced by gangs with baseball bats.[13] In Honduras, a “militarized quarantine” has led to police violence, more than 1,000 arrests and the confiscation of almost 900 vehicles, according to respected human rights group COFADEH.[14] Despite these actions, both countries have much higher infection levels than Nicaragua. So does Costa Rica. All of these neighbouring countries are quick to criticise the Ortega government and express fears for cross-border contamination, when the reality is that Nicaragua should be the country that fears contamination from its neighbours. This is not to say that mitigation is inherently counterproductive; the point is that if a situation does call for quarantine, state actors ought to inspire a sense of solidarity and understanding rather than impose punitive and coercive measures that divide people rather than unite them.
International media are more sympathetic to other low-income countries
The irony is that international media have carried a number of articles about the dangers of imposing draconian measures in poor countries. In The Observer, Kenan Malik pointed out that whether in the UK or the developing world, we’re not all in coronavirus together.[15] As he says, in many poor countries “only the privileged can maintain any kind of social isolation.” David Pilling in the Financial Times points out that in developing countries, the lockdown cure could be worse than the disease.[16] Mari Pangestu, a managing director with the World Bank, says in the Daily Telegraph that for the poorest countries, the full danger from coronavirus is only just coming into view, because of its effect on their ability to maintain food and medical supplies.[17]
Astonishingly, the international media treat their sources in the Nicaraguan opposition as bone fidewhen there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Even in the current crisis, they have excelled themselves, as Ben Norton has shown in The Grayzone.[18] They created a fake account posing as Nicaragua’s TV Channel 4, with invented statements supposedly by Vice-President Rosario Murillo, announcing school closures that were never planned.[19] They purport to give advice on issues such as social distancing, as if this isn’t available from the government, when in fact, it is (and, as Norton points out, in their daily lives several of them ignore their own recommendations).[20] Within Nicaragua, Facebook is alive with false rumours from opposition sources about deaths allegedly caused by the virus, attempting to undermine people’s confidence in official figures.
President Ortega addresses the nation
When he addressed the public on April 15,[21] President Ortega said little about the criticisms being made by his opponents, although he noted one item of fake news. A Nicaraguan woman, returning recently to Costa Rica where she works, via a route with no border controls, had been accused in local media of carrying the coronavirus. However, when tracked down and tested by the Costa Rican authorities, she was shown to be free of the disease. Ortega also pointed out that a hospital, various health centers and supplies of medical equipment had been destroyed in opposition arson attacks in Nicaragua during the attempted coup of April 2018; all of these have now been rebuilt or restored, and are available to deal with the pandemic. Referring indirectly to the clamour for Nicaragua to adopt measures like the lockdowns employed in adjoining countries, he pointed out that without work the country dies. And he was able to quote one new statistic: since the worldwide pandemic was officially declared on March 11, a total of 1,237 people had died in Nicaragua; but only one of these had been killed by the coronavirus. In the days ahead we may see a change in public health policy in Nicaragua, but any such change will likely be informed by the situation on the ground, rather than by ill-judged comments in the international media.
John Perry is a writer based in Nicaragua and writes on Central America for The Nation, London Review of Books, Open Democracy, The Grayzone and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
[1] See https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
[2] Informe Pastran, April 15 2020 (http://www.informepastran.com/prueba/).
[3] “La larga ausencia en Nicaragua de Daniel Ortega, el único presidente de América Latina que no ha aparecido en público ante la crisis del covid-19”, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-52145204
[4] “Where Is Daniel Ortega? Nicaragua’s Leader Drops From View”, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/americas/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-coronavirus.html
[5] “President nowhere to be seen as Nicaragua shuns coronavirus curbs”, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-missing-anger-fear-month
[6] “The president has vanished; his wife, the VP, says the coronavirus isn’t a problem. Nicaragua declines to confront a pandemic”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-nicaragua-daniel-ortega-missing/2020/04/11/3ad1fafc-79c3-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html
[7] “Bolsonaro dragging Brazil towards coronavirus calamity, experts fear”, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/bolsonaro-dragging-brazil-towards-coronavirus-calamity-experts-fear
[8] “Love in the time of COVID-19: negligence in the Nicaraguan response”, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30131-5/fulltext
[9] “Brigadistas de salud visitarán a un millón de familias brindando las medidas preventivas ante el coronavirus”, https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:101463-brigadistas-de-salud-visitaran-a-un-millon-de-familias-brindando-las-medidas-preventivas-ante-el-coronavirus-
[10] WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the Mission briefing on COVID-19 – 16 April 2020”, https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-mission-briefing-on-covid-19—16-april-2020
[11] This and other details about the effects of the epidemic and steps being taken are published in daily press briefings and on the website of the health ministry (http://www.minsa.gob.ni/).
[12] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv0zv1Xv0MQ (March 31, 2020).
[13] “In El Salvador, gangs are enforcing the coronavirus lockdown with baseball bats”, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-07/el-salvador-coronavirus-homicides-bukele
[14] “Informe: Crisis de derechos humanos durante la pandemia Covid-19”, https://defensoresenlinea.com/informe-crisis-de-derechos-humanos-durante-la-pandemia-covid-19/
[15] “Whether in the UK or the developing world, we’re not all in coronavirus together”, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/whether-in-the-uk-or-the-developing-world-were-not-all-in-coronavirus-together
[16] “In poor countries, the lockdown cure could be worse than disease”, https://www.ft.com/content/6c3a34c2-73f8-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
[17] “For the poorest countries, the full danger from coronavirus is only just coming into view”, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/poorest-countries-full-danger-coronavirus-just-coming-view/
[18] “As Nicaragua confronts Covid, its US-backed opposition exploits the pandemic to create chaos”, https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/13/regime-change-coronavirus-nicaragua/
[19] See https://www.facebook.com/Canal4Nica/videos/205790274093519/
[20] See https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-Gi31SHlTH/?utm_source=ig_embed
[21] See https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:102299-presidente-daniel-ortega-se-dirige-al-pueblo-de-nicaragua . For an English translation of President Ortega’s complete speech of April 15, 2020, see “DANIEL : ‘It is time to swap nuclear weapons for hospitals’ in Tortilla Con Sal. April 16, 2020, http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/9104
April 22, 2020 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Nicaragua, The Guardian | Leave a comment
Green-smearing – from Nicaragua to Bolivia
By Stephen Sefton | September 11, 2019
A fundamental dimension of contemporary psychological warfare has been dual-purpose corporate co-option of non-governmental organizations. In that psy-warfare dimension, NGOs serve both as disinformation partners with Western news media and too as false interlocutors in international forums and institutions, where they attack governments challenging the US elites and their allies. They actively subvert governments inside countries challenging the West, for example, in Latin America, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. But they also pervert due process in institutions like the UN, posing as civil society but in fact serving Western elite corporate imperatives, for example in international human rights and environmental mechanisms and forums.
Among these NGOs figure high profile human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights and Avaaz along with environmental organizations from 350.org and the World Resource Institute to Global Witness and Greenpeace. An increasing interrelationship has developed between corporate NGO funding and the exploitation of people’s general willingness to volunteer for and support apparently good causes. Symbolic of this is the way World Economic Forum attendees like Kumi Naidoo move readily between top management from one NGO to another, in Naidoo’s case from Greenpeace to Amnesty International. From Libya and Syria to Venezuela and Nicaragua, Amnesty International has played a key role using false reports to demonize governments resisting the US and its allies.
As Cory Morningstar has pointed out, Greenpeace is a key player in promoting the corporate driven New Deal for Nature aimed at financializing what remains of the natural world, especially its biodiversity, as a way of engineering a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Western corporate greed underlies the identical patterns of news media and NGO misrepresentation and outright deceit supporting regime change offensives against Libya and Syria, or Venezuela and Nicaragua. Right now, that very same pattern of media and NGO manipulation is clearly at work preparing for an intervention to prevent Evo Morales being re-elected as President of Bolivia.
Bruno Sgarzini and Wyatt Reed have noted how Western media and NGOs have falsely attacked Evo Morales blaming him for not controlling the fires in Bolivia’s Amazon. This is exactly what happened in Nicaragua immediately prior to the coup attempt in 2018 when the Nicaraguan authorities were fighting a fire in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve. That episode softened up Nicaraguan public opinion and set in motion social media networks involving thousands of youth activists trained for that purpose beforehand over several years with US and also European government funding. In mid-April 2018, barely a week after the Indio Maiz fire was extinguished, those networks launched a social media blitzkrieg of lies and inventions marking the start of the actual coup attempt. A practically identical process is well under way now in Bolivia, which holds presidential elections next October 20th.
The timing of the fires in Bolivia’s Amazon is extremely propitious from the perspective of the US authorities and their allies. It takes almost two months for the effects to wear off of the initial psy-warfare bitzkrieg of the kind waged against Nicaragua in 2018 and against Brazil’s Worker’s Party as part of Jair Bolsonaro’s successful 2018 election campaign that same year. Bolivia will almost certainly experience the same kind of psy-warfare assault via social media prior to the October elections. The campaign will be timed to optimize the effect of mass false accusations of government wrongdoing and corruption along with false media and NGO claims of security force repression. Opposition activists are likely to exploit peaceful demonstrations on indigenous peoples and environmental issues so as to commit murderous provocations, just as they did in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
All of these tactics are likely be deployed against Bolivia so as to destroy the current prestige and high levels of support for President Evo Morales. In Bolivia, as in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the governing progressive political movement enjoys around 35-40% core electoral support, the right wing opposition have around 25-30% with 30-40% of voters uncommitted. The Western elites know they need to motivate something over half of those uncommitted voters against Evo Morales so as to get the right wing government they so desperately need in Bolivia to try and make good the unmitigated debacle of Mauricio Macri’s right wing government in Argentina.
The intensity of any Western media and NGO campaign against Morales is likely to reach similar levels as their cynical campaigns of lies and defamation against Venezuela and Nicaragua. Should that offensive go ahead, as seems probable, the difference will be that this time Evo Morales and his team are alert and unlikely to be taken by surprise as the Nicaraguan authorities were by the vicious, sudden attack against them in April 2018. A likely variation in Bolivia’s case will be a higher profile of environmentalist NGOs working in tandem with their human rights counterparts feeding misrepresentations and downright lies into Western news media. For the US and European Union elites the regional geopolitical stakes are high enough to make an attack on Bolivia imperative.
(A longer version of this piece was published at Tortilla con Sal on September 4, 2019.)
September 13, 2019 Posted by aletho | Deception, Environmentalism | Avaaz, Bolivia, Greenpeace, Latin America, Nicaragua, United States | 1 Comment
Newspeak at the Media Freedom Conference
Joint UK-Canada Event Littered With Insidious Undertones
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 16, 2019
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article Hypocrisy Taints UK’s Media Freedom Conference, was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually… creepy.
Let’s just look back at one of the four “main themes” of this conference:
building trust in media and countering disinformation
“Countering disinformation”? Well,that’s just another word for censorship.
This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT accreditation. They claim RT “spreads disinformation” and they “countered” that by barring them from attending.
“Building trust”? In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, “building trust” is just another way of saying “making people believe us” (the word usage is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust).
The whole conference is shot through with this language that just feels… off.
Here is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour:
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral… we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence.”
Being “truthful not neutral” is one of Amanpour’s personal sayings, she obviously thinks it’s clever.
Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for “bias”.
Refusing to cover evidence of The White Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally claim to only publish “the truth”, to get around impartiality… and then set about making up whatever “truth” is convenient.
Oh, and if you don’t know what “creating a false moral equivalence is”, here I’ll demonstrate:
MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical media.
OffG: But you’re supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down.
BBC: No. That’s not the same.
OffG: It seems the same.
BBC: It’s not. You’re creating a false moral equivalence.
Understand now? You “create a false moral equivalence” by pointing out mainstream media’s double standards.
Other ways you could mistakenly create a “false moral equivalence”:
Bringing up Gaza when the media talk about racism.
Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights.
Referencing the US coup in Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia’s “interference in our democracy”
Talking about the invasion of Iraq. Ever.
OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT.
These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media’s double standards, and if you say they are, you’re “creating a false moral equivalence”… and the media won’t have to allow you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree.
Because they don’t have a duty to be neutral or show both sides, they only have a duty to tell “the truth”… as soon as the government has told them what that is.
Prepare to see both those phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along with people bemoaning how “fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality” by “being even handed between liars the truth tellers”. (I’ve been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).
Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda.
“Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support system for journalists facing hostile environments”, this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our “enemies” in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course), Russia. That is ALL it means.
I said in my earlier article I don’t know what “media sustainability” even means, but I feel I can take a guess. It means “save the government mouthpieces”.
The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news is getting lower viewing figures all the time. “Building media sustainability” is code for “pumping public money into traditional media that props up the government” or maybe “getting people to like our propaganda”.
But the worst offender on the list is, without a doubt…
“Navigating Disinformation”
“Navigating Disinformation” was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really feel the need. I already did, so you don’t have to.
The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what “disinformation” they’re going to be talking about?
I’ll give you a clue: It begins with R.
Freeland, chairing the panel, kicks it off by claiming that “disinformation isn’t for any particular aim”.
This is a very common thing for establishment voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought.
The reason they have to claim that “disinformation” doesn’t have a “specific aim” is very simple: They don’t know what they’re going to call “disinformation” yet.
They can’t afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as “disinformation.” Left or right. Foreign or domestic. “Disinformation” is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague.
So, we’re one minute in, and all “navigating disinformation” has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start.
Interestingly, no one has actually said the word “Russia” at this point. They have talked about “malign actors” and “threats to democracy”, but not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that “propaganda”= “Russian propaganda” that they don’t need to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use “disinformation” has not just been dismissed… it was literally never even contemplated.
Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know “more than most” about disinformation, she says.
Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing… then immediately calls for regulation of social media.
Nobody disagrees.
Then he talks about the “illegal annexation of Crimea”, and claims the West should outlaw “paid propaganda” like RT and Sputnik.
Then he says that Latvia “protected” their elections from “interference” by “close cooperation between government agencies and social media companies”.
Everyone nods along.
If you don’t find this terrifying, you’re not paying attention. They don’t say it, they probably don’t even realise they mean it, but when they talk about “close cooperation with social media networks”, they mean government censorship of social media. When they say “protecting” their elections… they’re talking about rigging them.
It only gets worse.
The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster “traditional media”. The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren’t paid enough, and don’t keep up to date with all the “new tricks”.
His solution is to “promote financing” for traditional media, and to open more schools like the “Baltic Centre of Media Excellence”, which is apparently a totally real thing. It’s a training centre which teaches young journalists about “media literacy” and “critical thinking”.
You can read their depressingly predictable list of “donors” here.
I truly wish I was joking.
Next up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally “protect journalists”, but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda. (Their token effort to “defend” RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible). She talks for a long time… without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone told the truth. Inspiring.
Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting politicians should not endorse “propaganda” platforms. She shares an anecdote about “a prominent Slovakian politician” who gave exclusive interviews to a site that is “dubiously financed, we assume from Russia”.
They assume from Russia. Everyone nods. It’s like they don’t even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary.
Apparently, Orban has “created a propaganda machine” and produced “antisemitic George Soros posters”. No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to “fake news sites”. She calls for “international pressure”, but never explains exactly what that means.
The stand-out maniac on this panel is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to “counter lies about Ukraine”. Even The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through “disinformation” and becomes “incoherent rambling”. She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you’ll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian “cognitive influence” is “toxic… like radiation.”
Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists nod and chuckle.
On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again.
She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars “just for being muslims”, nobody questions her.
She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn’t mention that her side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were “forced”. A fact not supported by any polls done by either side in the last four years, and any referenda held on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It’s simply a lie.
Nobody asks her about the journalists killed in Ukraine since their glorious Maidan Revolution.
Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the “Ministry of Information”.
Nobody does anything but nod and smile as the “countering disinformation” panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this “threat” – here’s the list:
Work to distinguish “free speech” from “propaganda”, when you find propaganda there must be a “strong reaction”.
Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
Regulate social media.
Educate journalists at special schools.
Start up a “Ministry of Information” and have state run media that isn’t controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom… and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said, and who can say it.
They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia…. and Russia takes up easily 90% of that.
They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik.
This wasn’t a panel on disinformation, it was a public attack forum – a month’s worth of 2 minutes of hate.
These aren’t just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots, brainwashed to the point of total delusion. They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it wants, to anyone it wants… whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality.
They don’t know, they don’t care. They’re true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says “Freedom”.
And that’s just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of authority.
Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he’s forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.
July 16, 2019 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Courtney Radsch, CPJ, Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela | Leave a comment
Nicaragua Honors Police Killed During US-backed Protests
teleSUR | June 15, 2019
The National Police of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government held a ceremony Wednesday to honor the 22 police officers killed by right-wing protesters during the failed coup d’etat against President Daniel Ortega one year ago. Activists also paid tribute to two Sandinista supporters who were murdered during the same period.
The ceremony was held in the nation’s capital of Managua by senior National Police members and attended by the friends and families of the police officers who were killed during the violent coup attempt by armed right-wing groups backed by the United States.
Also Wednesday, the city of Jinotepe paid tribute to Marcos Gutierrez and Guillermo Mendez, two Sandinista activists, at the one year anniversary of their murder at the hands of the anti-government protesters.
In Managua, Police Commissioner General Aldo Saenz Ulloa said at the ceremony: “Thanks to the sacrifice of our 22 fallen brothers and sisters in defense of the well-being of Nicaragua’s families, we have peace, stability and security that we will carry forward to rebuild well-being (in Nicaragua) for all”.
Jinotepe Mayor Mariano Madrigal spoke at the city’s gathering, saying “Nicaragua will never forget the spirit of hate that was inculcated in the population when terrorist and coup elements kidnapped, tortured and assassinated citizens here.”
Violence broke out in Nicaragua during May and June of 2018 when the right-wing opposition launched a bid to overthrow the leftist Sandinista administration lead by Ortega. The opposition in Nicaragua have been recipients of funds and training from the U.S. government.
Right-wing elements also burned the leftist Radio Ya! Community radio station during the protests, and kidnapped and tortured elderly Sandinista supporter Bismarck Martinez, whose remains were recently found after a year long search.
The Amnesty Law was approved this week by the Nicaraguan National Assembly that grants a one-off amnesty for those involved in clashes on the condition that perpetrators do not re-offend. The government hopes this law will bring peace and reconciliation to the nation.
June 15, 2019 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular | Nicaragua | Leave a comment
Nicaragua Approves Amnesty Law To Bring Peace
teleSUR | June 9, 2019
In an effort lead by the FSLN, to bring peace and reconciliation, Nicaragua’s National Assembly has approved a law that will provide amnesty for those involved with right-wing violence during the distabilization process last year.
The new law will grant a one off amnesty to those who committed crimes during the right-wing protests last year, it will apply equally to those with or without active cases against them. However, article 3 of the constitution states that the amnesty is conditional and will be withdrawn if the perpetrators re-offend.
The law was proposed by 70 lawmakers of the ruling Sandinista party, the FSLN, who hold a majority in the Assembly, Edwin Castro, a FSLN lawmaker said; “this is a sovereign act that seeks peace, reconciliation, that seeks forgiveness with justice, with reparation, and with no repetition.”
Castro continued; “it hurts us to have to grant amnesty to confessed assassins of policemen, to torturers of the San Jose school in Jinotepe, who murdered Bismarck Martinez, but we are aware that we have to put our country first.”
The right-wing opposition in Nicaragua, who have allegedly received funds and training from the U.S. government’s NED, have been responsible for a number of criminal offenses in their bid to overthrow the elected government led by Daniel Ortega. Most recently, the remains were found of an elderly Sandinista supporter, Bismarck Martinez, who was kidnapped and tortured to death in Jinotepe by opposition activists. Another high profile offense was in 2018 when demonstrators set fire to the leftist “Radio Ya” station whilst journalists were still inside.
However, the government hopes that they can bring peace to the country by granting amnesty on the condition of not re-offending. This is part of wider efforts to bring the country together, other initiatives have included the establishment of peace talks between government and the opposition, which the government has remained committed to despite the failure of the opposition coalition, Alianza Civica, to condemn US economic sanctions, which was an early request from the FSLN.
June 9, 2019 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Latin America, Nicaragua, United States | Leave a comment
The United States Is at It Again: Compiling an Enemies List
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 24.01.2019
Many American still long for the good old days when men were still manly and President George W. Bush was able to announce that there was a “new sheriff in town” pledged to wipe terrorism from the face of the earth. “You’re either with us or against us,” he growled and he backed up his warning of lethal retribution with an enemies list that he called the “axis of evil.”
The axis of evil identified in those days in the 2002 State of the Union Address consisted of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Iraq, which had not yet been invaded and conquered by the American war machine, was number one on the list, with Saddam allegedly brandishing weapons of mass destruction deliverable by the feared transatlantic gliders that could easily strike the United States. Bush explained that “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.”
North Korea meanwhile was described as “A regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens” while Iran “aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.”
The phrase “axis of evil” proved so enticing that Undersecretary of State John Bolton used it two months later in a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil.” He included three more countries – Cuba, Libya and Syria because they were “state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations.” The nice thing about an Axis of Evil List is that you can make up the criteria as you go along so you can always add more evildoers.
Iraq was removed from the playing field in March 2003 while Libya had to wait for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be dealt with, but North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Iran are still around. Nevertheless, the idea of an enemies list continues to intrigue policy makers since it would be impossible to maintain the crippling burden of the military industrial complex without a simple expression that would convey to the public that there were bad actors out there waiting to pounce but for the magnificent efforts being made by Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon to defend freedom.
The Administration of President Donald Trump, not to be outdone by its predecessors, has recently come up with two enemies lists. The first one was coined by the irrepressible John Bolton, who is now National Security Adviser. He has come up with the “troika of tyranny” to describe Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, where he sees “… the dangers of poisonous ideologies without control, and the dangers of domination and suppression… I am here to convey a clear message from the President of the United States about our policy towards these three regimes. Under this administration, we will no longer appease the dictators and despots near our coasts in this hemisphere. The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — has finally found its rival.”
Bolton also demonstrated that he has a light touch, adding “These tyrants fancy themselves strongmen and revolutionaries, icons and luminaries. In reality, they are clownish, pitiful figures more akin to Larry, Curly, and Moe. The three stooges of socialism are true believers, but they worship a false God.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has apparently also been looking at Venezuela and not liking what he is seeing. On his recent road trip to the Middle East he told reporters that “It is time to begin the orderly transition to a new government [in Caracas].” He declared that “The Maduro regime is illegitimate and the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country. We are very hopeful we can be a force for good to allow the region to come together to deliver that.” “Force for good” is another key soundbite used by Pompeo. In his Cairo speech on January 10th, he described the United States as a “force for good” in the entire Middle East.
Bolton might have thought “troika of tyranny” was a hands down winner, but he was actually upstaged by the dour Vice President Mike Pence who declared to a gathering of US Ambassadors that “Beyond our global competitors, the United States faces a ‘wolf pack of rogue states.’ No shared ideology or objective unites our competitors and adversaries except this one: They seek to overturn the international order that the United States has upheld for more than half a century.” The states Pence identified were North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Of the five, only North Korea can even plausibly be considered as a possible threat to the United States.
As wolves are actually very social animals the metaphor provided by Pence does not hold together very well. But Pence, Bolton and Pompeo are all talking about the same thing, which is the continued existence of some governments that are reluctant to fall in line with Washington’s demands. They have to be banished from polite discourse by declaring them “rogue” or “tyrannical” or “evil.” Other nations with far worse human rights records – to include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt – are given a pass as long as they stay aligned with the US on policy.
So useful “lists” are all about what Washington wants the world to believe about itself and its adversaries. Put competitors on a list and condemn them to eternal denigration whenever their names come up. And, as Pence observes, it is all done to prevent the overturning of the “international order.” However, his is a curious conceit as it is the United States and some of its allies, through their repeated and illegal interventions in foreign countries, that have established something like international disorder. Who is really doing what to whom is pretty much dependent on which side of the fence one is standing on.
January 24, 2019 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, United States, Venezuela | 1 Comment
Connecting the dots: Crack, Contras, and the CIA
Brass Check TV
This 1996 interview with Gary Webb took place after his “Dark Alliance” newspaper series made waves across the country for piecing together the puzzle of the US crack epidemic.
The pipeline of CIA backed drug smuggling into the country and money smuggling out of the country to support the Nicaraguan Contras was wide open from the mid 1970s on, with players using everything from their shoes to freighters to move cocaine.
Webb was widely smeared by the CIA’s favorite newspapers (The New York Times, the Washington Post, The LA Times ) shortly after this interview.
He was eventually vindicated, but not before his career was destroyed. He was found dead of an apparent suicide in 2005. The price of being a whistleblower?
December 16, 2018 Posted by aletho | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | CIA, Latin America, Nicaragua, United States | Leave a comment
Kathy on MSM calls for “new definition…
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4531
|
__label__wiki
| 0.798348
| 0.798348
|
https://apnews.com/article/acc37ce8ed0246dc8b78780ef66a5404
From distillers to farmers, trade war would cause casualties
By PAUL WISEMAN and STEVE KARNOWSKIJune 2, 2018 GMT
Jeff Colombini looks over bing cherries in one of his orchards in Friday, June 1, 2018, in Stockton, Calif. Colombini is worried about the financial impact of retaliatory tariffs on his 1,800 acre farm, which grows and exports apples, cherries and walnuts. Mexico, Canada and the EU are threatening tariffs on a variety of US products in response to the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
WASHINGTON (AP) — If a trade war is coming, the cheesemakers of Wisconsin are standing in the line of fire. So are the farmers of the Great Plains and the distillers of Kentucky. And the employees of iconic American brands like Harley-Davidson and Levi Strauss.
The likelihood of a trade conflagration leapt closer to reality this week after the United States imposed tariff on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Infuriated, the jilted U.S. allies vowed to retaliate with tariffs of their own. And in a separate dispute, China is poised to penalize $50 billion in U.S. goods — many of them produced by supporters of President Donald Trump in the America’s agricultural heartland.
“They’re going to hit the farmers,” said Bryan Klabunde, a farmer in northwestern Minnesota. “We want things fair for all industries, but we’re going to take the brunt of the punishment if other countries retaliate.’”
President Donald Trump, who entered office promising to rip up trade deals and crack down on unfair trading practices, is clashing with trading partners on all sides. To the north, he’s battling Canada; to the south, Mexico; to the east, Europe; across the Pacific Ocean to the west, China and Japan.
“The president seems to be creating trade (and other) disputes with everyone — allies and adversaries alike -- and it’s difficult to discern any coherent strategy,” said Rod Hunter, a former National Security Council staffer under President George W. Bush. “The impacts of the disputes have been limited so far, but the economic and political costs will go up as retaliation by trading partners begins in earnest.”
Mexico, for instance, plans to retaliate against the steel and aluminum tariffs by targeting U.S. cheese, among other products.
“It’s our second-largest market,” Jeff Schwager, president of Sartori, a cheese company in Plymouth, Wisconsin, said of Mexico. Retaliatory tariffs “will reduce sales — there’s no question.”
“The hard-earned sales we’ve secured in Mexico could be at risk given the potential for retaliation,” the National Milk Producers Federation warned in a statement.
The EU is threatening to penalize Kentucky bourbon and the motorcycles of Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson. The potential tariffs pack a political punch: They’d hurt constituents of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.
On Friday, reporters in Louisville, Kentucky, asked McConnell if he thought the Europeans were trying to get his attention.
“Well,” the Senate leader said, “they got my attention. They didn’t need to do that. These are our friends. These are not enemies. Canada and Mexico, Europe — these are our allies, and we need to work this out in a way that’s comforting to everyone.”
Harley-Davidson has already absorbed higher steel and aluminum costs since Trump first announced the metals tariffs three months ago. Now, the threats of retaliatory tariffs from abroad raise the fear of higher prices for Harley motorcycles sold outside the U.S.
In a statement, Harley-Davidson said retaliatory tariffs “would have a significant impact on our sales” in those countries. The Milwaukee-based company said it was evaluating options for controlling higher materials costs. In April, its chief financial officer warned that cost increases could be worse than the company forecast in January and might last for several quarters.
The jeans maker Levi Strauss is also on the EU’s target list.
“American brands, workers and consumers will ultimately suffer,” the San Francisco-based company said in a statement.
Ben Steffen, a dairy farmer who also grows corn, soybeans, and wheat on 1,900 acres southeastern Nebraska near Humboldt, is angry about the U.S. tariffs being imposed on America’s closest trade partners and allies.
“I’m upset because it hits me in my pocketbook from multiple angles,” he said. “I sell beef, I sell corn, I sell soybeans and I sell milk. All of those products are vulnerable because we export significant amounts in those markets.”
The milk market has been depressed for about three years, and farmers have struggled to break even. About 14 percent of U.S. milk production is exported; the largest customer is Mexico.
“This is the worst possible thing to have for our milk market, and it’s the same for every other commodity,” Steffen said. ” These are important relationships.”
In Stockton, California, Jeff Colombini is worried about the financial damage a trade war would bring to his 1,800-acre farm. His company, Lodi Farming, exports walnuts, cherries and apples to Mexico, Canada, the European Union and other countries.
“With these tariffs, it’s going to make the product too expensive for the consumers in Mexico and in Canada and in the EU,” Colombini said. “We’re not going to be able to sell all of our crop. And so some of it is probably going to go unharvested or just dumped ... I have 200 employees, and they depend on the success of this operation for their jobs to feed and clothe their families.”
A trade fight with the Europe would also cause collateral damage across the Atlantic. Steelworkers in Port Talbot, Wales, who have struggled to protect their factory and 4,000 jobs, now face another threat.
Union leader Mark Turner said workers are trying to sort out what the tariffs will mean for Port Talbot. But they feel “everything is against us,” particularly given Britain’s economic uncertainty as the country prepares to leave the European Union.
“We will keep fighting,” Turner said. “If we can’t go into the American market, then there’s other markets out there we will try and get into.
An even higher-stakes trade dispute is playing out on the Pacific Rim. The United States and China are poised to impose tariffs on up to $200 billion worth of each other’s goods in a battle over Beijing’s strong-arm efforts to overtake U.S. technological supremacy.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is traveling to Beijing this weekend for talks aimed at preventing an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. On the Chinese target list are American soybean farmers, who send about 60 percent of their exports to China.
On Friday, Klabunde, who grows corn and soybeans on 3,000 acres near Waubun, Minnesota, spent two nerve-wracking hours with a hired hand, pulling a stuck tractor out of a drainage ditch. They finally got the machine free.
“I think the tariffs and trade war scare me more than a stuck planter,” Klabunde said. “I can lose only so much money on a stuck planter. I can lose a lot more money in a trade war.”
Karnowski reported from Minneapolis
AP staffers Terry Chea in Stockton, California; Carrie Antlfinger in Plymouth, Wisconsin; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa; Anne D’Innocenzio and Candice Choi in New York; David Koenig in Dallas; and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4536
|
__label__wiki
| 0.790472
| 0.790472
|
Apple's iOS 8.3 brings new, more diverse emoji to our iOS devices
by Joe White
Apple’s iOS 8.3 launched for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners earlier today, and among the comprehensive list of changes made to the mobile operating system is a revamped emoji keyboard. In particular, the range of emoji now available to iOS device users is far more diverse than before.
You’ll notice in iOS 8.3, for instance, emoji which reflect a bigger range of family types; both opposite-sex and same-sex parent families, each with different selections of children, are available in the revamped emoji keyboard. You can also hold down on certain emoji in order to access different skin tones, as you can see in the below screenshot.
Apple’s new emoji in iOS 8.3.
Usefully, the emoji picker itself is much easier to use: there’s a larger range of categories along the bottom of the keyboard, and these better reflect the kind of emoji housed in each one. Plus, users can swipe through every single emoji in the keyboard, moving through each and every category available, and this, too, is a nice change.
Of course, you’ll need to be running iOS 8.3 (or, on the Mac, OS X 10.10.3) in order to view the new emoji, but even if you aren’t, Apple has a solution. It seems, after running a few tests, that new emoji are substituted into old emoji in a rather formulaic manner when sent to a device which hasn’t been updated. So, for instance, the new emoji depicting two women kissing becomes, on pre-iOS 8.3 devices, an emoji string of girl-heart-kiss-girl, if that makes sense. This usefully means that the meaning of Apple’s new emoji is still communicated, even if the emoji itself doesn’t appear on a recipient’s iOS device.
Apple’s iOS 8.3 is available to download now in the “Software Update” section of the built-in Settings app. Besides new emoji, the update also brings additional languages for Siri, support for wireless CarPlay connectivity, and more.
See also: First reviews of Apple Watch say it’s nice but not essential, Cartoon Survivor pits you against deadly creatures, environments and dynamite, and Digital copies of the first 6 Star Wars films are an expensive proposition.
Apple officially releases iOS 8.3 with additional Siri languages, new emoji and more
Twitter sharing is gone in the latest iOS beta
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4538
|
__label__wiki
| 0.883239
| 0.883239
|
Ban Ki-moon pays tribute to victims of Paris attacks outside Bataclan
06.12.2015 - Sunday 6 December at 3pm, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo paid hommage to the victims of the Paris Attacks at the concert hall Bataclan where 130 people were killed.
With a bowed head, the Secretary-General laid a bouquet of flowers in front of the concert hall. Tens of bystanders applauded the gesture, chanting “merci merci, Monsieur Ban Ki-moon.”
Next, the UN chief visited “La Bonne Bière," one of the targeted restaurants where five people lost their lives. “Today, I too am Parisian,” said the Secretary-General sitting inside the café, with Mayor Hidalgo and other top UN officials.
“I am very moved. To the families and loved ones of the five people who were killed here, and to all the victims of the barbaric attacks on 13 November, I present my sincere condolences.”
Drinking a coffee, he said Paris is a symbol of culture and of the 'art of living', and noted that the reopening of the café ten days ago is also symbol of resistance to terror.
“In this regard, the Government of France's decision to maintain the UN climate change conference shows its determination to uphold the values of the United Nations: liberty, peace, equality and justice,” he said.
Moved by the Secretary-General's presence, a group of Parisians thanked the Secretary-General for his heart-warming visit.
UN Photos/Eskinder Debebe
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4539
|
__label__wiki
| 0.836778
| 0.836778
|
ARF Bureau
ARF Central Committees
Nagorno Karabagh
Javakhk
Hairenik
Armenian Weekly
Hairenik Weekly
Pianist Kariné Poghosyan to Perform at Southern Connecticut State University
NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Armenian pianist Kariné Poghosyan will perform a recital on Sat., April 30 at 7:30 p.m., in Southern Connecticut State University’s Charles Garner Recital Hall (Engleman Hall C112).
Karine Poghosyan
An avid musician who has been described as “extraordinary” and “larger than life,” Poghosyan made her orchestral debut at 14, playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and her solo Carnegie Hall debut at 23, and has since gone on to win numerous awards as well as perform in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls.
In fall 2007, Poghosyan organized and performed a three-recital concert series at the Yamaha Piano Salon titled, “Twentieth Century Piano Sonata.” She also helped organize the “Requiem and Resurrection” concert in commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at the Saint Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York, where her performance of the Piano Sonata by Khachaturian received a standing ovation and was described as “jaw-dropping.”
The Armenian Mirror Spectator wrote, “The three-movement Khachaturian Sonata—a rarely performed composition —is a real tour-de-force for the virtuoso pianist. Technically pristine, Ms. Poghosyan brought out the driven qualities of the outer movements, and the heart-rending beauty of the middle section.”
Kariné Poghosyan has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras and has participated in the master classes of distinguished artists such as Alicia de Larrocha, Claude Franck, Jon O’Connor, and Jerome Rose. She has won numerous piano competitions and has been the recipient of several prestigious musical scholarships.
Her music studies began in her native Yerevan in School of the Arts, No. 1, and later at the Romanos Melikian College as well as the Komitas State Conservatory. Her teachers in Armenia included Irina Gazarian, Vatche Umr-Shat, and Svetlana Dadyan. After moving to the United States in 1998, she received her B.M., summa cum laude, from California State University in Northridge, under Françoise Regnat, and her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees at the Manhattan School of Music, under Arkady Aronov. She completed her D.M.A. in a record-breaking two years with a thesis on “Aram Khachaturian for Piano.” Poghosyan is currently based in New York, where she teaches at her alma mater, the Manhattan School of Music.
Her solo CD of Khachaturian’s piano works and ballet transcriptions was released in 2015, on the NAXOS label. There is a $5 admission fee at the door for Poghosyan’s performance. For more information, call (203) 392-6631.
Source: Armenian Weekly Mid-Atlantic
In Memory of Barbara Haroutunian
Trump could be the first US President to be impeached twice
Armenia: What’s Next, Not Who
Fighting on Two Fronts
A case for a scientific education
Հայրենիք Շաբաթաթերթ
Գարեգին Նժդեհի Ծննդեան 135-ամեակին Առիթով
ՈՒՍԱՆՈՂԱԿԱՆ ԸՄԲՈՍՏՈՒԹԻՒՆ՝ ԹՐՔԱԿԱՆ ԳԱՐՈ՞ՒՆ
Սահմաններու Բացումով Կը Վտանգուի Հ․Հ․ Տնտեսական Անվտանգութիւնը
ՍՈԽՈՒԿԸ
Armenian Heritage Cruise
ARS Eastern Region
AYF-YOARF Eastern Region
Camp Haiastan
Hamazkayin Eastern Region
Homenetmen Eastern Region
125th Anniversary Facebook
ARF Florida Facebook
ARF Washington DC Facebook
Armenian Heritage Cruise Facebook
Armenian Weekly Facebook
AYF Facebook
Camp Haiastan Facebook
Hairenik Facebook
Hairenik Weekly Facebook
ARF Eastern Region, USA
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4540
|
__label__wiki
| 0.802244
| 0.802244
|
Marcus Jansen - Finalist at The International Art Prize Arte Laguna 2013 – Venice
Art Press Release from Italy. Published by anonymous on Friday 08 March 2013.
The Italian Cultural Association MoCA (Modern Contemporary Art), in collaboration with Arte Laguna, organized the Seventh Edition of the International Art Prize “Arte Laguna”, aimed at promoting and enhancing contemporary art. List of Finalists: www.artelagunaprize.com/12.13/painting_section.pdf
This important event will take place in Venice in March 2013 and will contemplate prizes in money, a collective exhibition in Venice Arsenale, a special exhibition at the Romanian Institute for Arts Culture and Research, a number of exhibitions in art galleries and an official catalogue.
This makes Jansen’s third International participation and selection for a major Internationally curated exhibition in less than six month’s. Recently, the New York City native was selected for the “New American Paintings No. 94” cover and the upcoming “Studio Visit” publication both published by The Open Studio Press. Jansen also won “The Dave Bown Project” International Award at the 5th Semi- Annual and was awarded “The Aesthetica Art Prize”, in York, UK. Jansen has been mentioned by many Art Historians as one of the most exciting rising stars on the world scene to watch. The artist and Gulf War Veteran, has upcoming Museum exhibitions in Rome Italy and other parts of Europe to be announced this year. his collections include the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), The New Britain Museum of American Art and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan.
The total value of the Prize is 170,000 Euros. The Prize is open to all Artists, without any limit of age, sex, nationality or other qualifications. Each artist can participate with one or more artworks, in one or more sections.
Photographic art
Video art and animation
Virtual Art
http://www.artelagunaprize.com/
www.Unitaspace.com
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4542
|
__label__wiki
| 0.795282
| 0.795282
|
Armenia, Russia Sign More Arms Deals
Armenia’s Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu on Feb. 8 in Moscow
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia and Russia have reportedly signed fresh contracts for the supply of Russian weapons to the Armenian army.
Citing the Russian Defense Ministry, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday that the contracts were signed in Moscow by Armenia’s Deputy Defense Minister Davit Pakhchanyan and top Russian defense industry executives. It gave no details.
The Armenian Defense Ministry confirmed the information, according to the Armenpress news agency. It too did not divulge financial details of the contracts or specify the types of weapons covered by them.
The ministry linked the deal to Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan’s recent trip to Moscow. Tonoyan met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu and the head of a Russian government agency overseeing arms deals with foreign states.
Tonoyan’s office said on February 8 that he and Shoygu discussed, among other things, supplies of Russian-made “state-of-the-art and precision-guided weapons” which would give the Armenian military “preventive superiority” over its adversaries. It did not elaborate.
Earlier in February, Yerevan confirmed the signing of a Russian-Armenian contract calling for the delivery of four Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jets to the Armenian Air Force. Tonoyan said last week that Yerevan will seek to acquire more such aircraft after receiving their first batch by “the beginning of next year.”
The military alliance with Russia entitles Armenia to buying Russian weapons at discounted prices. Moscow lent the Armenian government $200 million for such arms acquisitions in 2015. The weapons provided to the Armenian military under that deal included, among other things, multiple-launch rocket systems, anti-tank rockets, and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
Yerevan secured another Russian loan, worth $100 million, for further arms purchases in 2017. It is not clear whether the latest Russian-Armenian defense contracts will be financed from that loan.
According to Interfax, the two sides are now discussing the possibility of a third Russian credit.
mgl - March 1, 2019 said:
LOL. For how much Russia will sell the same to Azeries? Whet needs to be signed is an agreement that Russia will stop selling any weapon to the animals.
Raffi - March 5, 2019 said:
Why don’t you ask the same question to Israel? it’s better to buy the weapons from a friend than from a f..kn S holes.
State of Emergency - March 1, 2019 said:
Why is it that it’s always not disclosed? What is there to hide. If they are powerful enough to defend from the enemy then the enemy should also be aware of the firepower. The only possible reason to conceal the deal is to deny observers the extent of the so-called help from the so-called ally. It’s public funds that are being used and therefore the right of the people to know where and when the money is being squandered. What shady deals are being made behind “closed-doors” no one knows. Perhaps the deal isn’t as good as they claim. Maybe comparing to the Azeri side, we’re being sold Polikarpov U-2 biplanes and BM-13 Katyushas.
Don’t be naive, Armenia is not US, even in US is not disclosed everything
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4548
|
__label__cc
| 0.727721
| 0.272279
|
To the fullest extent legally possible, all dealings between any Customer (“Customer”) and any member of the Brickworks’ Group (“Brickworks”) relating to any goods (“goods”) or services (“services”) are subject to the following Terms and Conditions of Trade (“these Terms”) unless otherwise agreed in writing.
(a) Payments to be within 30 days of end of month of invoice date without deduction or set-off of any kind.
(b) Brickworks may apply a payment received from the Customer to any amounts owed by the Customer (including interest, part payment of an invoice, administration, collection and other costs) in any order.
(c) Brickworks is entitled to set-off or deduct any amount payable by Brickworks to the Customer.
(d) Brickworks’ may require the Customer to pay a credit card surcharge (in addition to any payment) of up to 3% plus GST of the payment amount where the Customer pays by credit card.
(e) A payment dishonour fee may be charged by Brickworks if a Customer’s payment is dishonoured in any way. This fee will be in addition to any fees the Customer’s financial institution or credit provider may charge the Customer.
(f) In its absolute discretion Brickworks may at any time and without needing to obtain the consent of the Customer, assign:
(i) any overdue debt owed by the Customer; and/or
(ii) Brickworks’ rights under these Terms and/or any other document or registration effected in accordance with these Terms (including but not limited to a security interest registration under clause 49 and a mortgage under clause 23), to another member of the Brickworks Group.
2. Interest:
Interest is payable on overdue accounts at a rate of 2% per calendar month (calculated daily), plus a monthly administration fee of $25 will apply.
3. Property:
(a) Property in goods will not pass until payment in full of all monies owed to Brickworks on any basis (“Full Payment”).
(b) Brickworks reserves the right to take possession and dispose of goods as it sees fit at any time until Full Payment and the Customer grants permission to Brickworks to enter any property (whether owned by it or otherwise) where any goods are, in order to do so and with such force as is necessary.
(c) Immediately upon delivery the Customer accepts liability for the goods.
(d) A document signed by an officer of Brickworks identifying goods and certifying that monies are owing to Brickworks will be conclusive evidence of Brickworks’ title thereto.
(e) Until Full Payment the Customer agrees:
(i) to keep all goods as fiduciary for Brickworks and to store them in a manner which:
A. shows Brickworks as owner; and
B. will keep them safe and free from deterioration, destruction, loss or harm.
(ii) only to sell goods in the usual course of business; and
(iii) sale on terms, at cost or less than cost will not be “in the usual course”.
(f) Clause 3 is not intended to create a charge and must be read down to the extent necessary to avoid being a charge.
4. Limitation of Liability:
To the extent permissible at law (including under the schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) –“Australian Consumer Law”) and without purporting to limit its obligations thereunder and subject to clause 51:
(a) Brickworks will not be liable for any claim arising after 7 days from delivery of goods or performance of services (or at all once goods have been unpacked, modified, on- sold or otherwise used or applied) after which there will be deemed to be unqualified acceptance.
(b) Brickworks will not be liable in any way for any contingent, consequential, direct, indirect, special or punitive damage arising whether due to Brickworks’ negligence or otherwise and the Customer acknowledges this limit of liability and agrees to limit any claim accordingly. Previous reference – page 8 clause (8)(h)
(c) no other term, condition, agreement, warranty, representation or understanding whether express or implied in any way extending to or otherwise relating to or binding upon Brickworks is made or given.
(d) Brickworks will not be liable for any claim relating to or arising from any alleged fault or defect, whether caused or contributed to by Brickworks, the Customer or any 3rd party or otherwise.
To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law) and without purporting to limit its obligations thereunder:
(a) if Brickworks agrees to take back product it must be in as new and saleable condition and upon terms agreed and a re-stocking fee will apply.
(b) custom made or custom processed goods or goods acquired by Brickworks specifically for the Customer will not be returnable.
(c) any goods which are accepted by Brickworks as defective may be returned and will be replaced free of charge or be the subject of a credit for the invoiced value. “Free of charge” does not include labour, transport or material costs.
6. Specific Orders:
Customer specific orders may be rejected by Brickworks at its election, unless accompanied by a non-refundable deposit of at least 50% of the total order price.
7. Placement of Orders:
(a) If any dispute arises concerning any order (and including any measurement, quality, quantity, identity, or authority or any telephone, facsimile, e-mail or computer generated order) the internal records of Brickworks will be conclusive evidence of what was ordered.
(b) Each order placed will be and be deemed to be a representation made by the Customer at the time that it is solvent and able to pay all of its debts as and when they fall due.
(c) Failure to pay in accordance with these Terms will be deemed to be conclusive evidence that the Customer had no reasonable grounds for making the representation referred to in 7(b) and that the representations were unconscionable, misleading and deceptive.
(d) When any order is placed, the Customer must inform Brickworks of any material facts which would or might reasonably affect the commercial decision by Brickworks to accept the order and/or grant credit in relation thereto. Any failure to do so will create and be deemed to create an inequality of bargaining position and will constitute and be deemed to constitute the taking of an unfair advantage of Brickworks and to be unconscionable, misleading and deceptive.
(a) Brickworks accepts no responsibility for delivery but may elect to arrange delivery at its discretion and without any liability and at the Customer’s costs and responsibility in all things.
(b) Brickworks reserves the right to charge for any delivery.
(c) The Customer will be deemed to have accepted delivery and liability for the goods immediately Brickworks notifies that they are ready for collection or when they are delivered to a carrier or to the Customer’s business premises or site whether attended or not.
(d) A document (including without limitation a consignment note) purporting to be signed by an officer(s) of Brickworks confirming delivery will be conclusive evidence of delivery as will any signed delivery docket.
(e) Brickworks will not be liable for delay, failure or inability to deliver any goods.
(f) Once the Customer has been notified that goods are ready for collection, the Customer agrees to pay all costs of holding or handling goods.
(g) Frustrated Delivery: If time spent delivering exceeds 30 minutes or requires more than one attempt, the Customer agrees to pay all costs relating thereto plus a loading of 10% to cover administration costs.
9. Variation:
Variation or cancellation of any order, dealing or arrangement must be agreed in writing.
10. Exclusions
To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law) and without purporting to limit Brickworks’ obligations thereunder :
(a) no dealing with the Customer will be or be deemed to be a sale by sample or description.
(b) if Brickworks publishes material about its goods and prices, any part which is incompatible with these Terms is expressly excluded.
(c) the Customer will rely on its own knowledge and expertise in choosing any product for any purpose.
(d) any advice or assistance given for or on behalf of Brickworks must be accepted at the Customer’s risk and must not be or be deemed given as expert or adviser nor to have been relied upon.
11. No misrepresentations:
The Customer agrees not to make any misrepresentations to third parties about the goods.
12. Severability:
Any part of these Terms can be severed without affecting any other part.
13. Purchase Price:
(a) All sales are made by Brickworks at its ruling price at the time of delivery.
(b) All Government imposts and any GST (“Imposts”) will be to the Customer’s account.
(c) Brickworks’ price lists exclude Imposts unless expressly noted thereon.
14. Default:
To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law) and without purporting to limit Brickworks’ obligations thereunder:
(a) default or breach by the Customer of these Terms or in any dealings with Brickworks will entitle Brickworks to retain all monies paid, call-up all monies due or owing (whether currently due and owing or not), cease further deliveries, recover from the Customer all loss of profits and/or take immediate possession of any product, without prejudice to any other of its rights and without liability to any party;
(b) the Customer agrees not to commence or continue or permit to be commenced or continued any action against Brickworks whilst the Customer is in default under any part of these Terms; and
(c) if the Customer on-sells any product, the Customer agrees to pay to a stakeholder nominated by Brickworks, the cost price incurred or payable by Brickworks for the acquisition of the product for supply to the Customer (estimated at 75% of the amount invoiced to the Customer by Brickworks), before the Customer is entitled to take any step in any proceedings commenced by Brickworks for payment for that product. The Customer agrees that this clause may be pleaded as a bar to any action by the Customer until payment to the stakeholder has been made. The stakeholder nominated is authorised to invest the moneys at 30 day call with any major banking institution in Australia. The money so held to be applied in accordance with any appropriate Court determination or agreement between the parties resolving the proceedings.
15. Goods and Services:
(a) To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law) and without purporting to limit its obligations thereunder:
(i) Brickworks disclaims any responsibility or liability whatsoever relating to suitability for any particular purpose or process;
(ii) Brickworks disclaims any responsibility or liability relating to any goods:
(A) processed or made to designs, drawings, specifications or measurements etc. or with materials which are provided or approved (whether in part or fully) by or on behalf of the Customer; and/or
(B) utilised, stored, handled or used incorrectly or inappropriately.
(b) The Customer agrees to check all goods prior to use alteration or any application thereof whether in relation to suitability for any particular purpose, process or otherwise.
(c) The Customer agrees to check and test all goods for compliance with all relevant applicable standards and regulatory bodies before use, on-sale or application and to use or apply same in accordance with all applicable standards, regulations and guidelines, with all manufacturers and/or Brickworks recommendations and directions as well as with good commercial practice.
(d) Brickworks may update, modify, make substitution or alter any of its goods or any component or raw material incorporated in or used in forming any part of any goods as part of its ongoing business.
(e) The Customer agrees to accept current goods in substitution for any goods ordered provided they are not materially different.
16. Other Terms and Conditions and Notice:
(a) Terms and/or conditions sought to be imposed by the Customer upon Brickworks will not apply unless agreed in writing by Brickworks.
(b) The Customer will be deemed to have notice of any change to these Terms, immediately Brickworks adopts them.
17. Recovery Costs:
The Customer will pay (on a full indemnity basis) all costs and expenses of Brickworks, its legal advisers, mercantile agents and others acting on its behalf in respect of anything instituted or being considered as a result of any breach of these Terms or breach of any dealings with Brickworks.
18. Attornment:
To give effect to its obligations arising under these Terms (and especially clause 23) the Customer hereby irrevocably appoints any officer or manager of Brickworks from time to time, as its attorney.
19. Customer Restructure:
(a) The Customer will notify Brickworks of any change in its structure or management including any sale or disposition of any part of the business of the Customer, any change in director, shareholder, management, partnership or trusteeship or sale of any material part of its business (“Restructure”) within 7 days of any such change.
(b) The Customer agrees it will:
(i) cause any new entity created by virtue of a Restructure (“New Entity”) to be bound by these Terms;
(ii) continue to be bound by these Terms despite a Restructure and will indemnify Brickworks for any loss or damage it suffers as a result of a breach of these Terms by the New Entity.
20. Jurisdiction:
All contracts and dealings with Brickworks shall be deemed to be in the State/Territory nominated by Brickworks & the Customer agrees to submit to the jurisdiction of the appropriate Courts in or nearest Capital of that State/Territory.
21. Credit Line:
Brickworks can vary or withdraw any credit facility or limit it at any time at its discretion and without any liability to the Customer or any other party. The Customer acknowledges and agrees that credit granted by a Brickworks Group member does not entitle the Customer to trade on credit with any other Brickworks Group member. Where credit is sought from another Brickworks Group member, Brickworks may require the Customer to complete a separate Credit Application.
22. Waiver:
If Brickworks elects not to exercise any rights arising as a result of breach of these Terms it will not constitute a waiver of any rights relating to any subsequent or other breach.
23. Security for Payment:
The Customer agrees that:
(a) despite anything to the contrary contained herein or any other rights which Brickworks may have howsoever, where the Customer is the owner of property (tangible or intangible), land, realty or any other asset capable of being charged and/or over which a security interest may be created (“Asset”), the Customer agrees, upon Brickworks’ written request, to mortgage and/or charge all of their joint and/or several interest in the Asset to Brickworks to secure all amounts and other monetary obligations payable by the Customer to Brickworks;
(b) it grants a lien to Brickworks over any of its property in the possession or control of Brickworks until Full Payment;
(c) it will execute any documents and to do all things requested by Brickworks to register a mortgage (or such other security Brickworks requires) over any current or later acquired real property the Customer has an interest in;
(d) it consents unconditionally to Brickworks lodging a caveat noting Brickworks’ interest in any current or later acquired real property the Customer has an interest in;
(e) any officer of Brickworks may (without limitation) sign documentation to effect the Customer’s compliance with this clause 23 by virtue of the provisions of clause 18.
(f) agrees that if it is in default of any part of these Terms,
Brickworks may, in order to make good any default (in whole or in part), garnishee moneys:
(i) held by third parties on behalf of the Customer; and/or
(ii) which the Customer is entitled to payment of (whether that entitlement is past, present or future)
24. Force Majeure:
Brickworks will not be in default or breach of any dealing with the Customer as a result of Force Majeure (i.e: anything beyond Brickworks’ reasonable control).
25. Sampling:
The Customer must pay for all goods provided to or ordered by the Customer as “sampling” unless otherwise agreed in writing.
26. Intellectual Property:
(a) If Brickworks utilises any design, patent, copyright material or other intellectual property or follows any instruction provided by or on behalf of the Customer, the Customer indemnifies Brickworks against any claim, proceeding, damages or liability for any loss, cost or expense arising as a result whether for any alleged infringement of any intellectual property or otherwise.
(b) The Customer must not reproduce, communicate to the public or, use any material in which copyright subsists and which is owned by Brickworks without the prior written consent of Brickworks.
(c) If the Customer breaches or permits any breach of this clause, it acknowledges Brickworks may suffer claims by third parties as a result and clause 35 will apply:
27. Discounts:
(a) Any discount offered by Brickworks is at its complete discretion and will only be available provided the Customer is not in breach of any part of these terms nor in default in any of its dealings with Brickworks.
(b) Unless otherwise agreed in writing, early payment discounts (if any) will be noted on the face of the relevant invoice and are subject to these Terms.
28. Specifications:
(a) To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law), any illustration drawing or specification supplied by Brickworks (“Specs”) are drafts and approximates and are for illustration purposes and the Customer should not rely on the accuracy of such Specs in any way.
(b) Any tangible or intellectual property rights in Specs remain the property of Brickworks and may be recalled at any time.
(c) Specs are to be treated at all times as confidential and not made use of without the prior written consent of Brickworks.
29. No Set-Off:
No Set-off or counterclaim will be made or applied by the Customer until payment in full of all bona fide invoices raised by Brickworks (whether current or overdue) and this clause may be pleaded as a bar to any action taken prior to such payment in full.
30. Trusts:
The Customer agrees that these Terms binds it not only in its own capacity but also as the Trustee of every trust of which it is a trustee.
31. No Merger:
Termination of these Terms and/or dealings between the Customer and Brickworks (“Cessation”) will not end those provisions of these Terms that are capable of surviving Cessation.
32. Stock Discretion:
Brickworks has a continuing discretion to allocate available stock and gives no warranty as to certainty of supply unless expressly agreed in writing in advance.
33. Partial Delivery/Forward Orders:
If the Customer places forward orders or request partial or instalment delivery, the Customer agrees:
(a) to pay for so much of any order as is from time to time delivered by Brickworks; and
(b) that no delay or failure to fulfil any part of any order will entitle the Customer to cancel or vary any order or delay or reduce any payment.
34. Acceptable Variation:
The Customer will accept variation in quantities at plus or minus 5% and will pay pro-rata for the actual quantity delivered.
The Customer indemnifies Brickworks against any claim or loss arising from or related in any way to any contract or dealing between Brickworks and the Customer or anything arising therefrom or arising as a result of or subsequent to any breach of these Terms.
36. Insolvency:
(a) If the Customer commits or is involved in any act of insolvency, it will be deemed in default under these Terms.
(b) An act of insolvency includes bankruptcy, liquidation, receivership, administration or the like and failure to pay in accordance with these Terms.
37. Exports:
Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (known as the Vienna Sales Convention 1980) are expressly excluded unless otherwise stipulated in these Terms or on Brickworks’ invoice for the goods.
38. Quotations:
The Customer agrees:
(a) quotations must be in writing;
(b) Brickworks shall not be bound by any quotation if an order is placed outside the period of the quotation’s validity noted thereon and in the absence of such period being noted, 14 days from the date of the quotation;
(c) prior to receipt of any order Brickworks may amend a quote;
(d) Brickworks shall not be bound by any quote if:
(i) it forms the view that the subject matter of the quotation is to form part of a larger transaction or series of transactions with the Customer and those circumstances have materially changed; or
(ii) the Customer is in breach of these Terms;
(e) to pay any reasonable charges Brickworks claims for holding any goods referred to in any quote pending placement of an order.
39. Credit Information and Privacy Act 1988 (Cth):
(a) The Customer and the Agent irrevocably authorise Brickworks, its servants and agents to make (subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act, the Credit Reporting Privacy Code and Brickworks’ privacy policy) such enquiries as they deem necessary to investigate the credit worthiness of the Customer (and its directors if a company) and the Agent from time to time, including the making of enquiries with (without limitation) persons nominated as trade references, other entities which in Brickworks’ opinion the Customer may have had dealings with, the bankers of the Customer (and its directors if a company), any credit provider or Credit Reporting Agency or Credit Reporting Bodies (“CRBs”) such as Veda Advantage and Creditor Watch and including personal credit and consumer credit information and Land Data/property inquiries and name searches (hereinafter called “Sources”).
(b) The Customer (and its directors if a company) and the Agent (subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act, the Credit Reporting Privacy Code and Brickworks’ privacy policy) hereby authorise the Sources to disclose to Brickworks such information concerning the Customer (and its directors if a company) and the Agent which is within their possession. The Customer (and its directors if a company) and the Agent agree that the information provided on this Credit Application concerning the Customer (and its directors if a company) and the Agent and any relevant trading information arising from any dealings between the Customer and Brickworks may (subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act, the Credit Reporting Privacy Code and Brickworks’ privacy policy) be disclosed to a Credit Reporting Agency or CRB subject to Brickworks’ Privacy Policy and can be obtained by writing to the
Credit Manager,
Brickworks Ltd,
PO Box 6550 Wetherill Park,
New South Wales 1851.
Where Brickworks collects personal information that Brickworks is likely to disclose to a CRB please note:
(i) the CRB may include that information in reports provided to Brickworks to assist it to assess the Customer’s creditworthiness;
(ii) if the Customer fails to meet payment obligations in relation to consumer credit or commits a serious credit infringement, Brickworks may be entitled to disclose this to the CRB;
(iii) the Customer – if an individual- may access
information from Brickworks in accordance with Brickworks’ privacy policy at www.brickworks.com.au; and
(iv) the Customer – if an individual – may access this information for the purpose of requesting Brickworks to correct the information and make a complaint to Brickworks; and
(v) other notifiable matters (as defined in the Credit Reporting Privacy Code) are posted on Brickworks’ website at www.brickworks.com.au.
(c) The Customer warrants to Brickworks that it has (where it is a company) obtained the consent of its directors to Brickworks carrying out the searches specified in subclause (a) and (b) above.
40. Silica Warning:
Always “wet” cut, saw, drill, chase etc. goods as dust from goods may contain silica and/or other material which is harmful to health. Avoid inhaling any dust to avoid the risk of respiratory impairment etc. Brickworks will provide further information on request.
41. Products and Services:
To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law) and without purporting to limit Brickworks’ obligations thereunder
(a) Delamination, Failure etc: The Customer acknowledges and accepts all risks associated with any delamination or failure relating to any laminated, veneered, plywood and decorated goods sold which are not manufactured/produced by Brickworks.
(b) Timber: The Customer acknowledges that Brickworks’ timber goods have (inter alia) the following characteristics:
(i) it is a natural product and variations in colour, texture and inherent quality occur;
(ii) it is susceptible to exposure to the elements;
(iii) it is susceptible to bending, warping, crushing, swelling, delamination and fungal growth etc., if not stored or used properly;
(iv) it is susceptible to damage and size variations which may be caused (inter alia) by relative humidity and/or moisture content;
(v) it may contain or be treated with poisons and/or potentially toxic chemicals (formaldehyde, preservatives, adhesives etc.) and should be stored and worked upon in well ventilated areas with proper exhaust systems and not burned; and
(vi) product related dust and saw dust are inherently dangerous if inhaled and may be associated with Nasal Cancer.
(c) Due to variations in colour and texture of materials (including without limitation, natural materials) used in manufacture, to the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law), no warranty, condition or guarantee is given by Brickworks that any goods and/or services will correspond (including without limitation, in glaze, colour, texture, appearance, blend or otherwise) with any sample, display or any previous goods and/services sold or displayed or any other batch of similarly described goods and/or services.
42. All Divisions:
(a) The Customer agrees that these Terms will apply to all dealings between the Customer and Brickworks and any part or member of the Brickworks’ Group.
(b) While these Terms will cover all dealings the Customer will have with any member of the Brickworks’ Group, any claim the Customer may have against any member of the Brickworks’ Group will be limited to that member of the Brickworks’ Group that supplied the goods and/or services to the Customer and the Customer agrees to limit any claim accordingly.
43. Recalls:
In the event of a product recall (“Recall”), the Customer must give Brickworks such assistance as Brickworks reasonably requires in relation to that Recall.
44. Pallets:
The Customer will return all pallets and any re-useable packaging provided with goods and indemnifies Brickworks for the full replacement cost thereof, if not returned to Brickworks promptly and in good order.
45. Adverse Environments:
The Customer acknowledges and agrees that goods can be adversely affected by severe environments, temperature extremes, frost, wind borne salt or abrasives which cause flaking, eat-away glaze or finish and reduce expected operating life especially in seaside locations.
46. Industry Levies etc:
The Customer must pay any industry or legally imposed levy which applies to any goods from time to time in addition to the purchase price.
47. Exclusion of warranty:
To the extent permissible at law (including under the Australian Consumer Law), Brickworks is not bound by any warranty (and the Customer agrees not to make any claim against Brickworks in relation to any warranty) in respect of goods or services unless all goods and services have been paid for in full without set-off or deduction of any kind.
48. Definitions:
In these Terms and Credit Application:
(a) “Brickworks’ Group” means jointly and severally the entities listed on page 2 of the Credit Application and any new member admitted to the Brickworks’ Group from time to time by Brickworks (whether with notice or not to the Customer) and each of their subsidiaries, divisions, affiliates, associated and related entities and their successors and assigns; and
(b) “Credit Application” means Brickworks Credit Application as used by Brickworks from time to time.
49. Personal Property Securities Act 2009:
(a) The Customer acknowledges that these Terms create a security interest under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (“PPSA”) in favour of Brickworks in all goods supplied by Brickworks to the Customer (and all goods previously supplied by Brickworks to the Customer), and for avoidance of doubt, the proceeds of sale of those goods.
(b) The Customer consents to Brickworks effecting a registration on the PPSA register (in any manner Brickworks considers appropriate) in relation to any security interest contemplated by these Terms (including but not limited to an interest under clause 3 in relation to retention of title) and further agrees:
(i) to do all things necessary and required by Brickworks to make sure that the security interest is a perfected “purchase money security interest” under the PPSA; and
(ii) not to allow any third party to acquire a security interest in the goods.
(c) To the extent that the goods are for the Customer’s business use, the Customer agrees to the extent permitted under the PPSA, that the Customer has no right:
(i) to receive notice of removal of an accession under the PPSA;
(ii) under Chapter 4 of the PPSA; or
(iii) under the PPSA to receive a copy of any verification statement of financing change statement under the PPSA.
(d) Without in any way limiting clause 49(c), the Customer agrees that to the extent permitted under the PPSA, the Customer hereby waives its rights under sections 95, 96, 117, 118, 120, 121(4), 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 142 and 143 of the PPSA.
(e) Unless otherwise agreed to in writing by Brickworks, the Customer waives its right to receive a verification statement in accordance with section 157 of the PPSA.
(f) The Customer hereby waives its rights to receive notices under sections 95, 118, 121(4), 130, 132(3)(d) and 132(4) of the PPSA.
(g) The Customer must not assign or grant a security interest in respect of any accounts owed to it in relation to the goods without Brickworks’ prior written consent.
(h) Without limiting any other provision of these Terms, if the Customer makes a payment to Brickworks at any time whether in connection with the supply of goods or otherwise, Brickworks may, at its absolute discretion, apply that payment to first satisfy obligations that are not secured, then obligations that are secured, but not by a purchase money security interest, in the order in which those obligations were incurred, and then obligations that are secured by a purchase money security interest in the order in which those obligations were incurred.
(i) Everything the Customer is required to do under this clause 49 is at the Customer’s expense. The Customer agrees to pay or reimburse Brickworks’ costs and expenses in connection with anything Brickworks does under this clause 49.
50. The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) and Fair Trading Acts:
(a) Nothing in these Terms is intended to have the effect of contracting out of any applicable provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) or the Fair Trading Acts in each of the States and Territories of Australia, except to the extent permitted by those Acts where applicable.
(b) If the Customer is a consumer for the purposes of the Australian Consumer Law, (ACL)nothing in these Terms limits any remedy available for a failure of the guarantees in sections 56 and 57 of the ACL.
51. Limitation of Liability:
(a) This clause 51 is subject to any contrary provisions of any applicable law (including without limitation the Australian Consumer Law, the operation of which cannot be excluded.
(b) Except as provided in subclause (c), Brickworks’ liability for a breach of these terms, a condition, warranty or a guarantee of supply or in relation to defective goods and services is limited to (at Brickworks’ election):
(i) in the case of goods Brickworks supplies:
A. the replacement of the goods or the supply of equivalent goods;
B. the repair of the goods; or
C. the payment of the cost of replacing the goods or of acquiring equivalent goods;
(ii) in the case of services Brickworks supplies, the supplying of the services again, and the Customer will limit any claim upon Brickworks accordingly.
(c) If goods or services Brickworks supplies are of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption, and there is a “major” failure of the goods or services to meet any consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law then the Customer may choose one of the following remedies:
A. ask for a refund;
B. return the goods and ask for an identical replacement, or one of similar value if reasonably available; or
C. keep the goods and ask for compensation for the drop in value caused by the problem; or
(ii) in the case of services Brickworks supplies:
A. cancel the contract and pay a reasonable amount for the work done, or seek a refund; or
B. for money already paid, keep the contract and negotiate a reduced price for the drop in value of the service — this may mean asking for some of the money back the Customer has already paid.
52. Building and General
The rights, powers and remedies available to Brickworks under these Terms are in addition to and are not in derogation of Brickworks’ powers, rights and remedies existing at common law, or given by any law at any time in force (including but not limited to the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002 (Vic) and similar legislation in other states and territories of Australia).
Australian Consumer Law Warranty
Our goods come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. You are entitled to a replacement or refund for a major failure and compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have the goods repaired or replaced if the goods fail to be of acceptable quality and the failure does not amount to a major failure.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4553
|
__label__cc
| 0.683452
| 0.316548
|
Tag: Naturschutz Oryx
Update from our Arabian desert expedition / working holiday volunteering with oryx and wildcats in the United Arab Emirates (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/arabia)
Citizen scientists help for the sixth year in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve
Biosphere Expeditions, the international award-winning non-profit conservation organisation, has just finished its sixth annual survey expedition in the wildlife haven of the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR).
Seventeen citizen scientists and conservation professionals from nine nations in Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East joined forces to survey the biodiversity of the sand dunes not far from the glittering metropolis of Dubai. Together they counted 31 bird, 11 mammal & reptile, 11 insect and 15 plant species. Amongst them 104 Arabian oryx, 77 Arabian gazelle, 4 sand gazelle, 140 palm trees, 843 ghaf trees, 28 acacia, 12 Sodom’s apples and a whopping 8,000 or so broom bushes.
Greg Simkins, Conservation Manager of the DDCR, says: “The annual survey with Biosphere Expeditions this year was the most productive we’ve ever had. This joint effort by people from across the globe is important for us. The data that the citizen scientists collect help us to manage the reserve more effectively. For example, by adjusting oryx feed or working out how many gazelles the reserve can support. And on top of this it is both rewarding and humbling to have so much interest and support from so many places around our planet.”
Expedition leader Dr. Matthias Hammer, who is also the founder and executive director of Biosphere Expeditions, adds: “We have wildlife conservation projects all over the world. This one really stands out because of our excellent working relationship with the DCCR. It is a pleasure to work with Greg and to see how our survey efforts translate into direct and immediate conservation and management solutions.”
The United Arab Emirates, and Dubai in particular, are well known for its rapid development over the past 50 years as well as for mega-construction projects such as the Palm Islands and the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building). Less well known is the diversity and beauty of the natural environment, from the dugongs and corals in the Arabian Sea to the serene splendour of the sandy dune inland desert. Also little known is that the largest piece of land given to any single project in Dubai was for the establishment of the DDCR in 200; at 225 km², 4.7% of Dubai’s total land area, and the expedition’s study site.
“Stepping into the DDCR is like stepping back in time”, says expedition participant Tessa Merrie. “You see the Dubai desert as it must have been before lots of camels and guns killed off the native wildlife. You can see oryx standing majestically on the dunes and gazelles flitting across the sands. It was also a joy to live out in the desert for a week in a beautiful ghaf tree grove, surrounded by rose-coloured sand dunes.”
The Arabian oryx is the largest of the antelopes in the region and it is very well adapted to the extremely arid environment. Oryx once roamed all across Arabia, but the advent of firearms saw their rapid decline. The Arabian oryx is classified as “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List. Re-introduced into the DDCR in 1999, the population has steadily grown from the original 100 individuals to over 400 today. For the next phase of the oryx project, local scientists need a greater understanding of how oryx fit into the DDCR’s natural environment, which habitats and plants they prefer, what the social structure of the herd is and how this is affected by the environment. “This can only be achieved through monitoring, for which Biosphere Expeditions provides the manpower”, says Simkins.
Other species seen by the expedition included a very rare Gordon’s wildcat, as well as Arabian hares and Macqueen’s bustards. There was also an exciting sighting of four short-eared owls, a first for the DDCR. The expedition also surveyed vegetation such as the beautiful ghaf tree.
Biosphere Expeditions is an award-winning not-for-profit conservation organisation, and a member of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Governing Council & Global Ministerial Environment Forum. Achievements include the creation of protected areas on four continents, scientific and lay publications, as well as capacity-building, training and education all over the world. Biosphere Expeditions conducts citizen science projects in wildlife conservation and research. Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists. Formally, citizen science has been defined as “the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily a vocational basis.”
A journalist from National Geographic also took part in the expedition, as well as an assessor from the World Tourism Council, as Biosphere Expeditions has been shortlisted for the very prestigious “Tourism for Tomorrow” Award.
The 2017 expedition was kindly supported by Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa, as well as Platinum Heritage Luxury Tours & Safaris. The next annual expedition will run from 20 – 27 January 2018 and “anyone is welcome to join”, says Dr. Hammer. “The more citizen scientist we have helping us, the more we can achieve”, concludes Simkins.
More information about the expedition can be found on www.biosphere-expeditions.org/arabia.
Continue reading “Update from our Arabian desert expedition / working holiday volunteering with oryx and wildcats in the United Arab Emirates (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/arabia)”
Here’s a selection of images of the expedition:
So the expedition is over. Our scientist Greg summarised the results for us this morning.
We found 168 known fox dens and discovered 19 new ones. On our circular observations we counted 104 oryx, 77 Arabian gazelle, 4 sand gazelle, 140 palm trees, 843 ghaf trees, 28 acacia, 12 Sodom’s apples and a whopping 8000 or so broom bushes. The random observations yielded 31 bird, 11 mammal & reptile, 11 insect and 15 plant species. The 18 camera traps took 16247 (!) pictures, 13000 from one camera photographing moving tree branches or something similarly exciting :), but also of course a variety of species.
Our live trapping was unsuccessful this year, but if you don’t try, you don’t get. Who knows when we will get the next sand fox or Gordon’s wildcat. We’ll keep at it.
So all that remains is for me to thank the team again for all its efforts. Thank you Jörn, Karin, Jörg, Sigi, Kathie, Albert, Jim, Martina, Yvonne, Samar & Laura. You could have gone to the beach for your holiday, but you chose to help Greg here in his beautiful office. I take my hat off to you for this and I hope you will come and join us again. Thank you Amadeus & Tessa for being the kind of staff that makes Biosphere Expeditions what it is. And thank you Al Maha and Platinum Heritage for your support. And thank you Greg for letting us share your office and vision.
Farewell everyone, safe travels home and I hope to see you again someday, somewhere on this beautiful planet of ours.
It’s already Friday and the team have worked really hard. For the first time ever we will manage to cover all cells of the reserve this year. That means 63 circular observations, some of which require quite some trekking through the beautiful dunes to get to. As you walk through this amazing landscape, you often wonder how anything can survive, let alone thrive here. But it does, thanks to the hard work of the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve staff, and especially Greg and Tamer, who we have the pleasure and privilege to support here. So as you walk, you come across fox dens, sand fish, gazelles flitting about between the dunes, oryx standing majestic on their crests, old date palm plantation swaying in the wind and the sun painting the dunes in a million hues of red, yellow and gold.
It also means six live and 18 camera traps out between the dunes, vegetation surveyed and dens accounted for.
Our days are full and the nights are now colder. The cloud has passed and the wind has lessened, so for the past two days we have experienced the desert as we expected it in our heads. Hot and with blue skies over a sea of sand.
On Wednesday night our routine was broken courtesy of Platinum Heritage Luxury Tours & Safaris who took us out on a beautiful sunset drive in some vintage Land Rovers and then treated us to some Arabian hospitality, food and an astronomy lesson under the night sky. Thank you for this!
As I write this, teams are coming in from the field with SD cards from the camera traps, live traps and the last lot of data for Greg. I will write more once the preliminary results are in tomorrow
It’s Wednesday and the expedition is in full swing. All camera traps are out, as are the live traps. We have four teams in the field, working for around six hours each day. We’ve had wind blowing the sand in our faces, overcast days and sunshine, even some rain at night at base camp. The team is doing well and we are on target to cover all our research cells by the end of the week and finish all the tasks that Greg has set us.
We’ve counted hundreds of oryx and gazelles, thousands of ghaf trees and broom bushes, seen beautiful Pharao eagle owls swoop up in the air on their silent wings, a red fox flitting across the dunes, a red streak against the wavy ocre of the desert, agamas burying themselves in the sand, gerbils racing for their lives in a white dash across the tracks, and the sun set and rise in all its fiery beauty as we get on with our jobs.
We have covered countless kilometres all across this beautiful reserve, crunching sand and gravel under our tires, without getting stuck yet, due to some very good driving skills. Two more days to go. Thank you to the team for working so hard!
It’s the morning of day four of the expedition. After a day and a half of training, the team did well to start collecting data on day two. By now all camera and live traps have been set and we are working our way around the 63 circular observation points (15 done already), filling in the random observations sheets (sightings thus far include Arabian oryx, Arabian and sand gazelle, Arabian hare, Arabian toad-headed agama, eagle owls, francolins, larks, shrikes, wheatears and more) and counting vegetation (lots of broom bushes, Sodom’s apples and ghaf trees) and fox dens.
We get up before sunrise, are out as the day dawns and back as the sun sets in an orange orb over the desert. Our camp in a ghaf tree grove echoes to the sounds of turtle doves who call this little oasis their home too. Yesterday we braved the winds and sand to push on with our work despite the stony grains crunching between our teeth. Last night it rained, but this morning looks calm and rosy as the morning rays bathe the sky in a pink hue over this beautiful, calm desert bubble, not far from the bustling machinations of commerce and development in Dubai. The food al Al Maha is great and since an army marches on its stomach, this army of citizen scientists is marching well.
Starting today, we will be checking our live traps daily (and the camera traps at the end of the week), continue to tick off circular observations (basically sitting on a dune and counting animals and vegetation for 30 minutes), check more fox dens and count other species of interest as we criss-cross the reserve in four teams all day.
We’ve arrived and we’re unpacking, shopping, setting things up. The food that Al Maha kindly provide for us is great. The sun is shining, it’s warm during the day and not too cold during the night to sleep under the stars (but there are plenty of tents too).
Today we are working with Greg on the research side (I hope you’ve read the 2016 expedition report to set the scene for you) and tomorrow we are tying up loose ends. And then we’ll see you at the right place and time on Saturday morning. Safe travels to get you there.
In another piece of excellent news, we’re a finalist for the 2017 Tourism for Tomorrow Awards! That in itself is another great feather in our cap. Now wish us luck for the final round, which entails an assessor joining our team for the week, who will take part in the expedition as normal, as will a journalist from National Geographic, and they will both want to talk to the rest of the team, so be nice to them please 😉
Hello and welcome to the first expedition diary entry of 2017, for our Arabia expedition to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR). I am Matthias Hammer, founder and executive director of Biosphere Expeditions, and also your expedition leader for this expedition. Other key people are Greg Simkins, head of the DDCR and also our expedition scientists, as well as expedition leaders in training Tessa Merrie and Amadeus DeKastle.
And then of course there’s you, the expedition team. There will be a full complement of 12 of you from the UAE, UK, USA, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as a journalist for National Geographic Traveller and an assessor from a major travel award, which I can’t tell you about yet, since there’s a news embargo until the shortlists are officially announced on 16 Jan. But suffice it to say that it’s great just to make it onto the shortlist, which in itself is a major feather in our awards cap.
But enough of this for now. Let’s focus on you all getting there and the work ahead.
I hope your preparations are going well and you are starting to get excited. Tessa and I will fly from Norwich in the UK via Amsterdam to Dubai on Tuesday and set things up with Greg, Tessa & Amadeus. Amadeus will be coming from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and you will all be coming from Europe, the USA and the Middle East.
Once we are all together, we will follow the recommendations of the 2016 expedition report, which was published at the end of December. Do have a look at this to be prepared. The methodology we will use and the skills you will need are explained in the report and there is also a YouTube playlist with it. We will follow the cell methodology, use camera traps and GPSs, as well as binoculars and spotting scopes. You might also want to watch some sand driving technique videos on YouTube; there’s plenty of them and this is a good skill to have too.
I’ll be in touch again from Dubai (then also with my contact number there). Good preparations and safe travels. I look forward to meeting you all.
Matthias Hammer
From our desert expedition volunteering with oryx and wildcats in Arabia (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/arabia)
More oryx, fewer rodents and efforts for wolves in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve
Twelve expedition team members from four different countries in January 2016 participated in a Biosphere Expeditions conservation project to evaluate the oryx and gazelle population in the Dubai Desert Conservation reserve in the United Arab Emirates. The research work also involved setting live traps to capture the endangered sand fox and Gordon’s wildcat. Rodents were also captured in small mammal traps.
The data gleaned in this way will now be analysed by the local scientist, Stephen Bell, who will soon be releasing a report detailing the outcome of the 2016 expedition. He explains that “we captured only few rodents and this could be a reason for the absence of the desert eagle owl, which was not spotted over the week, as well as the wildcat.”
130 fox dens were also checked and several new dens logged. This high number of Arabian red fox could be “detrimental to the balance of the reserve’s ecosystem”, according to Bell.
39 of 42 observation cells (an area of 2 by 2 kilometres) were surveyed in the course of the week throughout the 227 km² reserve. Expeditioners navigated to their cells in the desert by 4×4 and then walked to elevated points to count the animals they could sport with binoculars and spotting scopes. That way over 400 oryx, almost 140 mountain gazelle, around 50 sand gazelle and two hares were counted over the course of the week. The rare lappet-faced vulture was spotted on several occasions and in great numbers when a fresh carcass was found.
Since starting its partnership with the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR) in 2012, Biosphere Expeditions has made several important contributions to the management of the reserve and its rare species. Initially expedition work prompted the DDCR to change oryx feeding patterns, resulting in a much healthier population. Rare Gordon’s wildcats and a very rare and elusive sand fox were captured by the expeditions over the years, prompting the reserve to increase research and conservation efforts for these threatened species. Finally, data gathered by the expeditions showed that the introduction of the Arabian wolf would be beneficial. The UAE government accepted these arguments and the DDCR is now investigating processes and options to make what will be a major showcase conservation success story for Arabia become reality.
We’ve walked many more kilometres on the sand and dunes over the last two days with all teams determined to complete their surveys. By Friday afternoon we had surveyed 39 out of a total of 42 cells, making the scientist very happy. Heavy wind and downpours stopped us from surveying on Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately all tents were still in place when we returned to base.
Instead of sitting around the fireplace, that evening was spent in the main tent with some of us playing games after the daily review. On Thursday a broken cooker forced us to cook on the fire. Having a hot tea or coffee in the morning around the fireplace truly felt like being on expedition.
The week was over too soon. Before we went out to a special event on the last evening, Steve summed up the results after six days of working in the field. Not including Friday’s results, 399 oryx were counted at feeding spots, 126 mountain and 49 sand gazelles were encountered as well as two hares. The new method of visiting two predefined observation points in each cell to survey the area for 15 minutes will definitely result in more accurate/comparable results. We caught only three rodents during the week using 16 traps, leading to the conclusion that the number of rodents is down. This could influence the number of desert eagle owl – a bird target species that was not recorded on the surveys – but also on the cat population. 130 fox dens were observed and quite a few new dens were recorded. All of this will go into the expedition report.
We left camp after the obligatory team picture session to go out for a night dune drive. Sponsored by Platinum Heritage the team was invited to spend the evening at traditional Arabian dune camp. We learnt about Arabic coffee, cuisine, dance, henna painting, smoking shisa, etc. The dinner was delicious! It was far beyond our usual bed time (22:00 ;)) when we were dopped back off at base. Still everyone had enough sleep since we decided to have breakfast late today, our last day.
Thank you so much, again for joining this project, putting sweat, time and money into research & conservation. I hope you’ve enjoyed the week as much as David, Steve and I did and I hope to see you again sometime somewhere.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4559
|
__label__wiki
| 0.868309
| 0.868309
|
Elsa Martinelli (born 30 January 1935) is an Italian actress and former fashion model. Born Elisa Tia in Grosseto, Tuscany, she moved to Rome with her family and in 1953 was discovered by Roberto Capucci who introduced her to the world of fashion. She became a model and began playing small roles in films. She appeared in Claude Autant-Lara's Le Rouge et le Noir (1954), but her first important film role came the following year with The Indian Fighter opposite Kirk Douglas. Douglas claims to have spotted her on a magazine cover and hired her for his production company, Bryna Productions. In 1956 she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 6th Berlin International Film Festival for playing the title role in Mario Monicelli's Donatella. From the mid 1950s through the late 1960s, she divided her time between Europe and the USA appearing films such as Four Girls in Town (1957) with George Nader, Manuela (1957) with Trevor Howard, Prisoner of the Volga (1959) with John Derek, Hatari! (1962) with John Wayne, The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) with Charlton Heston, The Trial with Anthony Perkins, The V.I.P.
Adapted from the novel by Franz Kafka, THE TRIAL stars Anthony Perkins as Joseph K., an innocent victim charged with an unnamed crime. Masterfully directed by Orson Welles, who sets a riveting, maddening and brilliantly disturbing pace. While the source for THE TRIAL is described as "restored" it...
"Say what you like, but THE TRIAL is the best film I have ever made." - Orson Welles
Source: Elsa Martinelli on Freebase, licensed under CC-BY
Other content from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4562
|
__label__cc
| 0.546016
| 0.453984
|
The evisceration of storytelling
Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling
By Sujatha Fernandes
In his seminal essay “The Storyteller,” published in 1936, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin decried the loss of the craft of oral storytelling marked by the advent of the short story and the novel. Modern society, he lamented, had abbreviated storytelling.
Fast forward to the era of Facebook, where the story has become an easily digestible soundbite on your news feed or timeline. The popular stories on social media are those that are accessible. Complexity is eschewed in an effort to create warm and relatable portraits of others who are just like us. If modern society abbreviated storytelling, the digital era has eviscerated it.
In recent times, carefully crafted narratives with predetermined storylines have been used in philanthropy, diplomacy, and advocacy. From the phenomenon of TED talks and Humans of New York, to a plethora of story-coaching agencies and strategists, contemporary life is saturated with curated stories. “Tell your story!” has become an inspirational mantra of the self-help industry. Narrative research centers have emerged to look at the benefits of storytelling in areas from treating depression to helping new immigrants build community. An avalanche of books on the topic like Jonathan Gottschall’s “The Storytelling Animal” and Jonah Sachs’ “Winning the Story Wars” present storytelling as an innate human impulse that can help us to navigate life’s problems and change the world for the better.
But are stories really the magical elixir we imagine them to be?
Not in the curated form of storytelling that has come to reign. Curated stories omit the broader context that shapes the life of the storyteller. This was the case with the heartrending stories of abuse told by migrant domestic workers in New York to legislators in Albany as they campaigned for a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010. At one legal hearing, a Filipina worker related how her employers accused her of stealing a box of $2 Niagra cornstarch. Another spoke about how her male employer frequently exposed himself to his staff. And one West Indian domestic worker recounted that her employer violently beat her and called her the n-word. But these stories – limited in duration and subject to protocols – could not say why migrant women were so vulnerable and undervalued, and why they were forced to migrate for work. Instead, workers could speak only to the technical conditions of their employment. As a result, the stories encouraged the idea that the abuses were the result of a few bad employers who could be reined in by legislation, rather than a vastly unregulated global industry.
If modern society abbreviated storytelling, the digital era has eviscerated it.
The Italian narrative theorist Alessandro Portelli says that when we tell stories, we switch strategically between the modes of the personal, the political, and the collective. The contemporary boom of curated storytelling has involved a shift in emphasis away from collective and political modes of narration toward the personal mode. An online women’s creative writing project features personal stories written by women in Afghanistan. In one piece, Leeda tells the story of fifteen-year old Fershta. The girl is given by her father in marriage to a violent man who beats her and kills her seven year old brother. Leeda concludes that it is the father’s bad behavior that has led to this horrific situation. Other stories blame Afghan mothers for allowing violence to be perpetuated. Because the stories don’t often address the social or political backdrop of war and poverty, we have little means to understand the desperation that might lead a father to pull his daughters out from school and marry them off. As readers, we are helpless voyeurs without an avenue for effective action.
It has become increasingly common for stories to be harnessed for utilitarian goals – like a legislative victory or registering people to vote. For instance, during Barack Obama’s electoral campaigns, volunteers were trained to tell two-minute stories that they deployed when canvassing voters. While legislative campaigns and voter recruitment may be worthy goals, they require that stories be whittled down to a dull and formulaic soundbite that can be delivered in a legal hearing or a recruitment drive. Immigrant families who visited the offices of senators to tell their stories and ask for the passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) in 2010 seemed to be weary of reciting their stories all day long. And it’s not even clear that this strategy works. While activists mobilized to tell stories and extract promises for a bill that would never pass, legislators were busy passing anti-immigrant bills like SB 1070.
One response to this capture of storytelling has been refusal. Some prefer to remain silent rather than give in to the logic of the soundbite, to the reduction of their selves to a blurb that can fit within the lines of a grant application or legal protocol.
Others go off script. They employ their artistic skills to render their stories in all their depth and complexity. One group of domestic workers from the New York-based South Asian organization Andolan said that they did not want to speak any longer about simple narratives of exploitation and victimhood. They said that publicly telling stories of abuse can backfire for workers, who may have a harder time finding work. They preferred to go “off message” to talk about their families or the Liberation War in Bangladesh. These workers want to tell stories about the complicated nature of transnational lives.
Curated storytelling has extended deep into contemporary social life and political and cultural institutions. Curated stories package diverse histories and experiences into easily digestible soundbites and singular narratives of individual victims. The impact has been to deflect our attention from structurally defined axes of oppression and to defuse the oppositional politics of social movements. Perhaps, in response, we should heed Benjamin’s call for more deeply contextualized and complex storytelling – the slow piling of thin, transparent layers, one on top of the other – so much needed in today’s world.
Featured image credit: Black white vintage by rawpixel. Public domain via Unsplash.
Sujatha Fernandes is Professor of Political Economy and Sociology at the University of Sydney. She was previously a Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York. A former member of the Princeton Society of Fellows, she is the author of Curated Stories, Cuba Represent!, Who Can Stop the Drums?, and Close to the Edge. She has written for The New York Times, The Nation, and Dissent, among other publications.
Henry Greenspan 19th June 2018
Good piece. Storytelling has itself become part of the modern romance, like mindfulness, testimony, legacies, the “human spirit,” etc. Here is what one of my students wrote: ““Everything is supposed to have an arc, some form of resolution or non-resolution (purposeful open-endedness as opposed to a kind of fading away or spiraling outward), a dominant theme. This forces the contradictions inherent in almost all human experience, especially those at the edges of normalcy, to fall away or fall in line.”
Pretty amazing for a 21-year-old.
John Capecci, Living Proof Advocacy 20th June 2018
Wonderful points. I work with individuals who are telling their personal stories to create change and it is a constant battle for all of us not to slip into simplified, reduced, heroic stories that miss context, nuance and complexity. Curated stories are, indeed, all around us and they often shape advocates’ internalized view of what a “good story” is. Portelli captures what many of us are striving for–what Marshall Ganz expresses so simply as “The story of self, the story of us and the story of now”: personal, collective, political. I look forward to reading your book.
The evisceration of storytelling | Radio Free 28th June 2018
[…] This article was first published on the OUP blog. […]
John Zac 2nd July 2018
In times where common people are dominated by narcissists. When headlines, hype and sales pitches rule the roost. Well what else would one expect but this?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4563
|
__label__wiki
| 0.609799
| 0.609799
|
Why British communities are stronger than ever
Me, Me, Me? The Search for Community in Post-war England
By Jon Lawrence
Although it’s fashionable to bemoan the collapse of traditional communities in Britain and the consequent loss of what social scientists have come to call social capital, we should be wary of accepting this bold story at face value. For a start, the UK has not suddenly become an individualist nation—individualism has deep historic roots in the Protestant Reformation, roots that were further strengthened by the early adoption of market economics across large swathes of British society.
Even bodies that grew up to resist the logic of market atomization, such as trade unions and cooperative societies, often preached collectivism as the only way in which their members could hope to enjoy the individual freedom and personal autonomy that others took for granted.
The cosy, close-knit vision of community we project on to the recent past is a myth. Yes, poverty and close proximity obliged neighbours to look out for one another, but privacy remained jealously guarded, relations with neighbours were often fraught, and reliance on strangers, as opposed to family, was widely seen as a last resort.
In recent years, my research has focused on re-analyzing the surviving field notes and interview transcripts from a range of historic social science projects conducted between the late 1940s and the late 2000s. Interrogating original testimony from the forties and early fifties demonstrates that the motto of many living in tight-knit, working-class communities like Bermondsey and Bethnal Green—so often held up as the epitome of “traditional” Cockney London—was always “we keep ourselves to ourselves, and then we can’t get into trouble,” as one Bermondsey labourer put it. The famous sociologist Michael Young heard the phrase so often during his research for Family and Kinship in East London (1957) that he simply wrote “Again!” in his notes after a Bethnal Green housewife told him that “[you’re] better off if you keep yourself to yourself”. For many, the demands of forced community were a burden to be managed, rather than something to be celebrated.
In the years after the Second World War, people came increasingly to question the dictates of custom and tradition. Millions leapt at the opportunity to escape the close-quartered, face-to-face communities of Victorian Britain, where everyone knew each other’s business.
But this was not a rejection of community per se. Rather, it represented an attempt to find new ways of living better suited to the modern world. In the process, community became increasingly personal and voluntary, based on genuine affection rather than proximity or need. Contrary to the claims of the doomsayers, we have actually never been better connected or better able to sustain the relationships that matter to us than we are today.
Contrary to the claims of the doomsayers, we have actually never been better connected or better able to sustain the relationships that matter to us than we are today.
The desire to reconcile personal independence with social connectedness is in many ways the defining feature of English popular culture in the modern age. But this reconciliation is not easy to achieve. Many struggle to find a happy balance in their lives between self and society. In turn, policy-makers have also struggled successfully to reconcile the potentially competing claims of individualism and community, especially since the 1980s. But the fact that so many profess to lament the current bias towards materialism and narrow self-interest, and mobilize powerful narratives about the death of community to underscore their dissatisfaction, reminds us that the ascendency of economic liberalism may not be as securely based as we often imagine.
What we need is concerted, joined-up policy designed to facilitate social connection at the grassroots level. Much is already happening, notably in the help offered to local groups to run community resources like pubs and shops and in the heightened awareness of loneliness, but this will count for little if we don’t stop the decline of other vital community facilities such as libraries, parks, sports fields and civic space itself (all too often ceded to private developers in recent decades). Popular individualism and the powerful urge for personal independence will always limit the scope for grand, top-down plans to build community, but if policy makers, public bodies and voluntary groups work with the grain of popular culture, and focus instead on systematically providing the diverse contexts within which social connection can flourish on the ground, much can still be achieved.
People have long sought to reconcile autonomy with social connection—self and society. It is high time that we valued and nurtured the new groups and forms of sociability that have developed in recent decades, rather than bemoaning the passing of a largely mythic version of community.
Featured image credit: Image owned by Jon Lawrence. Used with permission.
Jon Lawrence has published extensively on British social, cultural and political history, and is an associate professor of history at the University of Exeter.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4564
|
__label__wiki
| 0.575777
| 0.575777
|
Texts distract pilot during landing
April 22nd, 2012 by elisa
One of the first things we’re all reminded to do before setting off on a flight is to turn our mobile phones off. You’d think that this would be second nature to pilots also, but a landing had to be aborted at Singapore Changi in May 2010 because the pilot was distracted by text messages beeping on his mobile phone.
According to reports in Australian press, pilots were distracted by the beeping and forgot to lower the wheels just 150 metres above the ground on the Jetstar airline flight.
A report into the incident has just been released this week by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. It found the pilot had been trying to unlock and turn off the mobile as the aircraft approached the airport. It did not find that text messages had been sent or answered during the approach, as early reports had speculated, but it did confirm the pilot had deleted some messages by the time he was interviewed.
As a result, Jetstar has made changes to its landing procedures and made the incident a case study as part of its pilot training. The takeoff checklist now includes a reminder to pilots to ensure their mobiles are turned off, and has increased the distance the landing checklist has to be completed from 500 feet to 1000 feet above the airport.
Despite these safeguarding changes, the Transport Safety Board made no findings against Jetstar or its procedures.
Discount airlines
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4566
|
__label__cc
| 0.690316
| 0.309684
|
Gloop Maker Story
There once was a sailor returning to his ship. Just as he approached the edge of the dock, he slipped and fell into the water between ship and dockside. As he hit the water, the ship began to swing toward the harbor wall, and he would have been crushed to death had not a little man, with great presence of mind, thrown a rope and hauled him to safety.
'Whew, thanks!' said the sailor. 'You saved my life. Tell me, is there anything I can do for you in return?'
'Well actually,' said the man, 'there is something. I'd dearly like to work aboard ship and, in fact, I was just on my way to look for a job when I saw you in the water. If you could put in a word for me. I'd be greatly obliged.'
'Done!' said the sailor. He took the little man on board and tracked down the Petty Officer. 'This man saved my life just now, and he really would very much like to have a job on the ship.'
'Well, I don't know,' said the Petty Officer. 'We have a full ship's complement, but I'll certainly put in a word on his behalf to my superior. What does he do?'
'I'm a Gloop Maker,' said the little man eagerly.
Not wishing to appear ignorant in front of his subordinate, the Petty Officer didn't want to ask what exactly a Gloop Maker was, so he went to see the Chief Petty Officer.
'This man saved the life of one of my seamen,' he told the Chief. 'Do you think we could find him a job aboard? He's a Gloop Maker.'
Not wishing to appear ignorant in front of his subordinate, the Chief Petty Officer asked the Warrant Officer, who asked the Sub-Lieutenant and so on, all the way through the chain of command until the request reached the Captain. After congratulating the little man, the Captain, not wanting to appear ignorant, named him ship's Gloop Maker and ordered the Supply Officer to provide whatever materials were necessary for work to commence.
The little man asked for a strong block and tackle fitted up on the afterdeck, a small stool, a hammer and chisel, a portable furnace, a big lump of iron, a few pounds of copper and several more of silver.
As the ship sailed, the little man set his stool alongside the chunk of iron, lit the furnace and began to melt down the copper and silver. Then, with much hammering and chiseling, he began to add blobs of copper and curlicues of silver to the sides of the lump of iron.
Each day crewmembers stopped and stared at the wondrously strange thing taking shape at the ship's stern. But not wishing to appear ignorant, nobody asked the Gloop Maker what he actually was making.
'Coming along nicely,' said the captain as he made his daily rounds. 'Any idea precisely when it will be :ah: ready?'
'Oh yes,' said the man. 'On July 15 at 14:00hours. That's when it'll be ready, and I'd like the crew assembled on deck at that hour, if you please, sir.'
And so, the great day came, the men assembled and the Gloop Maker put down his hammer and chisel. Proudly he stood back and indicated that the block and tackle should be lowered onto his masterpiece, whose copper and silver curlicues gleamed in the sun. Carefully he directed it to be lifted from the deck and swung round until it hung over the sea at the ship's stern.
'Ready, steady, go!' he cried, and he cut it free. And, as it fell into the deep blue waters of the Atlantic, it went ...
'GLOOP!'
Next Story Main Stories Page
May 01, 2017 - Joel
I told this story to end our campfire ceremony last weekend and the scouts thought it was great!
May 06, 2019 - Bill Stent
Oh, this is SO getting read out - with acting - at our next campfire.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4572
|
__label__cc
| 0.737468
| 0.262532
|
CARING FOR SOMEONE LIVING WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA
By Independent Media / 14/10/2020
Catch Doctor Gwen Tonyane as she speaks about Caring for someone living with schizophrenia, live on the Daily News and Saturdays star facebook page.
Dr Gwen is a specialist psychiatrist. Her main interests lies in biological psychiatry : depression, anxiety, bipolar illness, schizophrenia spectrum, trauma and stress related illnesses. She focuses on women’s mental health and currently has a private practise atAkeso Crescent Clinic in Randburg.She also holds an honors degree in Aerospace Medicine from the University of Pretoria.
Join the discussion Friday, 16 october at 17:00
CELEBRATE 160 YEARS OF THE ARRIVAL OF INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA WITH THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE
BREAST HEALTH BASICS WITH JENNA SKEWS
People are at the heart and soul of Independent Media. We are one of South Africa’s leading multi-platform content companies. Our stable of fine, quality publications includes 20 of the country’s most prominent newspapers with The Star in Johannesburg, Cape Times and Cape Argus in Cape Town and The Mercury in Durban firmly entrenched in millions of households throughout South Africans. African Independent is the only title that serves the African continent and I’solezwe lesiXhosa provides the daily news to millions of literate Xhosas in the Eastern Cape. Business Report is South Africa’s largest business newspaper. Independent Online, popularly known as IOL, is Independent’s current digital offering and brings millions of readers breaking news as events happen in the country and around the world. With a growing daily unique online audience, iol.co.za is one of the largest news and information websites in South Africa.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4573
|
__label__cc
| 0.659706
| 0.340294
|
Category Archives: Horror Movie Reviews
Before seeing this film, I thought right away that it looked like an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Perhaps it would be reminiscent of Signs (2002). I assumed that Shyamalan was the director until I saw that it was directed by, produced by, and stars John Krasinski.
I am really picky when it comes to horror movies that I get excited about. This one sparked my interest. I saw this on opening night, but I did not get to review it until now.
A Quiet Place takes place in the not so distant future where people are being hunted by vicious creatures that attack when they hear sound. The film follows one particular family that is trying to survive.
The movie was directed by John Krasinski and the noteworthy cast includes John Krasinski, Emily Blunt (Krasinski’s wife), Millicent Simmons, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward.
Krasinski has come a long way from his days of selling paper in The Office (2005). I really only started taking him seriously after seeing 13 Hours (2016). I think that he has successfully transitioned from comedy to more serious acting and this movie is further proof.
A Quiet Place was way better than Signs.
The chemistry between Blunt and Krasinski felt very genuine. Such a simple thing like that is easy when it is a real life couple onscreen. However, that connection can make all of the difference.
This is not a bloodbath horror movie. That is what I especially enjoyed about A Quiet Place. The film keeps you in suspense throughout basically the entire movie. It is edge-of-your seat excitement with enough jumpy scenes to make it worth your while.
The film is unique because it really does not contain a lot of dialogue. I feel like this adds to the suspense. The theater that I was in was eerily a quiet place. Our eyes were glued to the screen, and the hair on the back of our necks stood up as we were desperately wanting to know what was going to happen next.
A Quiet Place was a breath of fresh air for the horror genre. It is a reminder that a good spooky story meticulously executed is all that it takes to be a quality scary movie. It seems like such a simple concept, but most horror movies these days have trouble achieving this. There really was nothing wrong with this film. It was chilling from start to finish. Alfred Hitchcock would be proud.
High Tension (2003)
Sinister (2012)
The Others (2001)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Looper (2012)
13 Hours (2016)
Posted in Horror Movie Reviews
Tags: 13 Hours (2016), A Quiet Place (2018), Alfred Hitchcock, Cade Woodward, Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Emily Blunt, Film, High Tension (2003), House on Haunted Hill (1959), John Krasinski, Looper (2012), M Night Shyamalan, Millicent Simmons, movie, Noah Jupe, Signs (2002), Sinister (2012), The Conjuring (2013), The Office (2005), The Others (2001), The Purge (2013), Trailer
Given that this is a Rob Zombie movie, I sort of knew what I was getting myself into. I like some of his music, but I like even less of his movies. He has a tendency to be too extreme in his films and often in his music as well. It’s almost as if he is trying too hard to prove to the world that he is demonic. His movies are usually filled with obscene violence and or torture for no apparent reason at all. He likes to be crazy because well, maybe he is crazy. However, I did enjoy his remake of Halloween (2007). My wife likes horror movies, so I thought I would give this one a shot. From a film critic’s perspective, I’ll review almost anything.
The Lords of Salem is about Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie), a local radio DJ who receives a record in the mail that is labeled: “A gift from the Lords.” The record is played on the air and the radio station calls the band The Lords of Salem because they are in Salem, Massachusetts. The music triggers violent and evil flashbacks of witches trying to summon up the Devil in the town hundreds of years before. It seems as if the Lords of Salem are back for revenge, or maybe Heidi is just going crazy.
The movie was written and directed by Rob Zombie and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn, Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, and Maria Conchita Alonso.
The Lords of Salem was pretty much what I expected it to be. It’s just another Rob Zombie movie where he tries way too hard to be vile and disgusting. Once again, Rob Zombie has his wife, Sheri Moon Zombie star in the film. She is in like all of his movies.
I gave this movie a chance, but I wanted to turn it off about halfway through. There is a lot of grotesque nudity and mindless violence. At times, the story is all over the place and it takes a while to get to the point. Zombie pushes the envelope simply for the sake of trying to be evil, as if that is enough to be entertaining.
The movie is a slow, laughable, pointless waste of time and after a while feels like watching and hearing nails on a chalkboard. It was stupid and way over the top to the point of boredom. I kept asking myself, why am I watching this movie? The only answer that I could come up with was to warn you about it.
Buy, rent, or run? Run.
Posted in Don't Watch This Movie, Horror Movie Reviews
Tags: Bruce Davison, Dee Wallace, Halloween (2007), horror movie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Ken Foree, Maria Conchita Alonso, Meg Foster, movie, Patricia Quinn, Rob Zombie, Sheri Moon Zombie, The Lords of Salem (2012), Trailer for The Lords of Salem (2013)
To me, old black and white horror movies are much more entertaining than the majority of the horror movies that get made in this day and age. What I like most about the classics is that they rely mostly on the story, how it is told, and where it is taking place in order to try to frighten the viewers. Special effects hardly existed in the days of black and white movies, so filmmakers had to get their thrills with a chilling storyline instead of just blood and guts. House on Haunted Hill is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.
The film is about an eccentric millionaire (Vincent Price) who invites 5 people to a spooky overnight party with him and his wife in a rented mansion that is rumored to be haunted. He offers each person ten thousand dollars if they can live through the night in the locked house.
The movie was directed by William Castle and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Carolyn Craig, Alan Marshal, Elisha Cook Jr., and Julie Mitchum.
The film sets the mood nicely with a creepy character introduction and narration by Price as the guests are headed to the haunted party on the hill.
It is movies like this one that helped to start the horror movie genre. This is one of the classics. It is one of the originals. How many hundreds of movies have been released in recent years that take place in a haunted house? There are too many to count. Movies like House on Haunted Hill helped to pave the way for what a haunted house movie should be.
The film is full of spooky music, mysterious characters, and wonderful dialogue. There are excellent shadow affects in the movie that you can only get in a black and white film. There are slamming doors, falling chandeliers, and creaky floor boards. There are horrifying visuals and people screaming. The picture is painted so well for us that you can almost smell death in the air. All of these little attributes contribute to making House on Haunted Hill a true horror classic.
The entertainment is in the storytelling. If you enjoy classic films and you like a good ghost story, then this is the movie for you. For its time, it is a great movie.
Posted in Classics Movie Reviews, Horror Movie Reviews
Tags: Alan Marshal, Carol Ohmart, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr., horror movie, House on Haunted Hill (1959), Julie Mitchum, movie, Richard Long, Vincent Price, William Castle
High Tension is a French foreign horror film. The movie was made in 2003, but released in the US in 2005. You can watch the film with subtitles or have the French dubbed over in English. Some people don’t like watching movies with subtitles. Others don’t like watching a movie that has been dubbed over in a different language because the lips don’t match up with the words. I have never had a problem with either format, but sometimes it is good to know what you are getting yourself into before watching a movie like that.
The movie is about two college girls, Marie (Cecile De France) and Alexa (Maiwenn), who vacation to Alexa’s family’s house in the country, way out in the middle of nowhere. The girls planned on getting a lot of studying done in the quiet remote home. What they didn’t plan on was getting a strange visitor in the middle of the night who turned out to be a murdering psychopath.
The film was directed by Alexandre Aja, and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, and Gabriel Spahiu.
The first time that I watched this movie was in 2005. It was around the time that the movie Saw (2004) was popular. Horror movies had begun to master bloody brutality. Blood and guts seemed as real as they had ever been on screen and horror movies were celebrating this fact. High Tension joined the party of gruesome graphic violence.
It’s hard to enjoy a movie of this kind. However, the shock value throughout the film is highly prevalent. It’s disgusting and disturbing. It’s vile, but full of horror. The unspeakable acts of violence depicted in High Tension are grotesque, but the filmmaking is superb.
The soundtrack in the movie is spine-chilling and it only serves to magnify just how obscenely intense the film actually is. High Tension is the perfect title, because that is exactly what the movie is full of. The film may simply be a slasher strictly for the shock value, but it is one that will keep you on edge waiting for what will happen next. It’s like a horrific car wreck that is hard not to stare at. You don’t want to see it, but you cannot look away. The grisly images become a stain that you can’t seem to scrub from your mind.
The film is a bloodbath. It’s one of the bloodiest, most vicious movies that I have ever seen. If you couldn’t handle watching Saw, then High Tension is probably too much for you.
I don’t usually like this type of movie, and it is not one that I could watch often, but for its genre, the filmmakers did an excellent job. I know good filmmaking when I see it, and I’m not going to fault the film because of its genre. High Tension is the ultimate slasher with a twist.
Tags: Alexandre Aja, Andrei Finti, Cecile De France, Franck Khalfoun, Gabriel Spahiu, High Tension (2003), horror movie, Maiwenn, Oana Pellea, Philippe Nahon, Saw (2004)
Dolls can be creepy. Let’s face it; creepy dolls are one of the most common elements of horror movies. I could probably name at least 20 horror movies off the top of my head that had a scary doll in it. Child’s Play (1988) took this concept with its demonic redheaded killer doll and ran with it. It worked so well that the film spawned 5 sequels.
I have never been a big fan of the Chucky movies. The first film was okay, but the ones that followed were all pretty redundant. I will admit that the Chucky character himself, is pretty sinister.
Curse of Chucky is the 6th film in the series. The movie is about a wheelchair bound girl named Nica (Fiona Dourif) who lives alone with her mother (Chantel Quesnelle) in a large old house. Nica’s mother dies shortly after receiving a strange and unexpected package. In the package is a doll named Chucky. When the rest of Nica’s family comes to visit, Chucky introduces himself to the family.
The film was written and directed by Don Mancini and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Brad Dourif, Danielle Bisutti, A Martinez, Maitland McConnell, and Jennifer Tilly.
Deranged, psychotic serial killer doll Chucky, strikes again in another cheesy, lousy murdering escapade. The movie is so bad that it is laughable.
I couldn’t figure out what was worse, the low-grade dreadful acting, or the poorly written dialogue and crummy storyline.
This slasher film was formulaic, predictable, convenient, tacky, and overall pretty stupid.
I gave the movie a chance because the original was alright. I should have left well enough alone.
Don’t waste your time or money on this awful sequel.
Buy, rent, or run? RUN!
Tags: A Martinez, Brad Dourif, Chantel Quesnelle, Child's Play (1988), Curse of Chucky (2013), Danielle Bisutti, Don Mancini, Fiona Dourif, horror movie, Jennifer Tilly, Maitland McConnell
Before watching this film, I had assumed that it was rated PG-13. After watching the movie, I’m a little surprised that it was actually rated R. If it had been tweaked ever so slightly, I think that it probably could have gotten the PG-13 rating. I’m a little surprised that they would not have wanted to attract more of the teenage audience to this movie. It seems like so many other films these days go for that lighter rating to try to get the teeny boppers into the seats. Quite honestly, after learning of the rating right before the movie started, it actually made me raise my expectations of the quality of the film because of the genre.
The Call is a thriller about a 911 operator (Halle Berry) that makes a careless mistake while on an emergency phone call that causes the situation to end badly. Consumed by guilt and anxiety, she struggles to hold it together in order to perform her job. Time passes and one day the operator takes a call from a girl that has been kidnapped (Abigail Breslin). Determined not to make the same mistake again, the operator does everything in her power to try to help the girl on the other end of the line. She soon realizes that there is a link between the 2 emergency calls.
The film is directed by Brad Anderson and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Morris Chestnut, Michael Eklund, Michael Imperioli, Justina Machado, and Jose Zuniga.
I held off from seeing this movie in theatres because I wasn’t sure if it would be worth my time. I can usually give or take Berry. Breslin is a talented young actress, but the movie looked a little B-rated. What sparked my interest however, was Anderson’s involvement. He has shown us that he is capable of excellence with his film The Machinist (2004). With that being said, even though The Call looked questionable, I knew that it would at least be well-made.
The film did not allow for much character development. It was not the type of movie that required quality acting. Anderson makes up for this with quality filmmaking. The events that occur in the film were made intense enough to keep my attention throughout. The soundtrack helps to make the movie seem more fast-paced than it really is. Because the film is kept at a relatively fast pace for its entirety, it helps you to forgive and forget the aspects of the movie that are lacking. Bravo to the director for knowing what was necessary to make this B-rated film watch-able.
The film is a little predictable, but it will still suck you in.
Buy, rent, or run? Rent.
Posted in Action Movie Reviews, Horror Movie Reviews
Tags: Abigail Breslin, Brad Anderson, Halle Berry, Jose Zuniga, Justina Machado, Michael Eklund, Michael Imperioli, Morris Chestnut, movie, The Call (2013), The Machinist (2004)
I have not seen the original film that this movie is a remake of, The Evil Dead (1981). I hardly knew anything about this movie before watching it, except that it was about dead people that come back to life and are evil; go figure right?
A young woman with a drug problem goes to a remote cabin in the woods. Her brother and 3 of their friends join her to show support as she tries to quit her addiction. Unknowingly the woods had recently become haunted by evil spirits. They find a book in the cabin that causes each one of them to be possessed by demons. Eventually they are all desperately fighting for their lives.
The movie is directed by Fede Alvarez, and the noteworthy cast includes Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, and Elizabeth Blackmore.
This film is the epitome of what it wrong with the horror movie genre today. Instead of trying to be scary with a well thought out story and quality filmmaking and acting, this movie relies solely on blood and guts entirely for the shock value.
The story is ludicrous and hardly tries to make sense. It seems like its only intention is to try to depict evil and death. If that is in fact the only point of the film, then they were successful. There is a lot of evil and there is a lot of death. So much so, that it all becomes laughable and you just want the movie to end so that the suffering stops; the suffering of both the characters in the film and the viewers.
The acting was awful because it appears like they spent all of their money on the gory special effects and didn’t have any left over to pay for a decent cast. The only thing that this movie has going for it is how disturbingly grotesque and realistic the special effects are. However, the bloody special effects help this movie to be the true definition of a “slasher” film.
This horror movie does not scare, it tortures. It will probably easily be the bloodiest movie of the year and maybe even so far this century. If you enjoy gut-wrenching dismemberment and more liquids exiting the human body than it can actually hold, then this movie is for you.
Buy, rent, or run? Run far away and hide. Save your time, money, and dignity.
Tags: Elizabeth Blackmore, Evil Dead (2013), Fede Alvarez, Jane Levy, Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci, movie, Shiloh Fernandez, The Evil Dead (1981)
For those of you that you know me, you know that I am a horror movie skeptic. I get fed up with the endless slasher films and b-rated crap out there, so I usually only watch a horror movie if I think that it has potential. With that said, I showed up to watch The Conjuring on opening night in theatres.
The film is supposedly based on a true story. It follows Ed and Lorraine Warren who are known as demonologists, or paranormal investigators. The couple is called upon for help from a family who are experiencing horrific unexplained events in their new house. The movie tells the story of the case that turned out to be the most disturbing during their entire career as investigators.
The movie was directed by James Wan and the noteworthy cast includes Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor, Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, Kyla Deaver, Shannon Kook, and John Brotherton.
The Conjuring was spooky. The film does a wonderful job of gradually building the tension until the creepy climax of the story where horror is all over the screen. You’ll be able to feel the tingling down your spine from the chilling images scattered throughout the movie.
I think that I expected the film to be scarier. However, it did have a good amount of horror throughout. It was very tastefully made. It definitely didn’t feel like it tried too hard. It turned out to be just the right amount of freaky. Any more might have made it less believable.
For a horror movie, the acting was pretty decent, especially from Farmiga and Taylor. This was a major contributing factor to the quality of the film because more often than not, scary movies have poor actors.
The movie was slow at times, but that didn’t really take away from it. It just took its’ time building the tension.
The special effects were spooktastic and very haunting. It’s amazing what they can do these days.
Overall, if you are looking for a good creepshow, then look no further than The Conjuring. It could quite possibly be the best horror movie of the year.
I rate this movie an 8.5 on a scale of 1-10.
Tags: Ed and Lorraine Warren, Hayley McFarland, James Wan, Joey King, John Brotherton, Kyla Deaver, Lili Taylor, Mackenzie Foy, movie, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Shannon Kook, The Conjuring (2013), Vera Farmiga
When I first watched the preview for 6 Souls (2009), I wondered why the film had not been released yet in the U.S. It was completed in 2009 and released in the UK in 2010. Finally, 3 years later, as far as I know it went straight to DVD in the U.S. I was curious as to why they would wait so long to release a movie that didn’t look half bad. It looked creepy. It got my attention. I was intrigued. Why was it withheld from release for so long?
My hypothesis at the time and I quote, “There has got to be something wrong with this movie otherwise you would think that it would have been released 3 years ago.”
6 Souls is about a psychiatrist (Julianne Moore) who assists her father (Jeffrey DeMunn) who is also a psychiatrist, with one of his patients (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). The patient has a sort of multiple personality disorder. She figures out that each of this man’s personalities is a murder victim. After further investigation, things get more complicated and more dangerous.
The movie is written by Michael Cooney and directed by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein.
The rest of the notable cast includes Frances Conroy, Nathan Corddry, Brooklynn Proulx, and Brian Anthony Wilson.
Well my friends, I am here to tell you why the film was withheld from release for so long. It was half bad. And it was the second half to be exact. The first half of the film was actually pretty decent. I was hopeful that I might actually enjoy this horror movie because for me that is a very rare thing. But alas, the story took a turn for the worse midway through and I was left suffering through the second half of the film. I stuck with it though so that I could pass the word along. 6 Souls is not worth wasting your time watching.
Julianne Moore played her character convincingly and helped make the first half of the film enjoyable.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers also was entertaining, at least for a little while.
After the story fell apart and
went tumbling down, there was no amount of acting that could save it. The movie achieved setting itself up to be eerie, but never quite made it there.
Tags: 6 Souls (2009), Bjorn Stein, Brian Anthony Wilson, Brooklynn Proulx, Frances Conroy, Jeffrey DeMunn, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Julianne Moore, Måns Mårlind, Michael Cooney, movie, Nathank Corddry
The main concept in The Purge is a controversial one. The film takes place in the not too distant future where America has become a safer place to live because annually there is a 12 hour period of time where all forms of crime are legal. During this 12 hour period of time, you can get away with murder and the police will not be there to stop you. Hospitals also close down during this time. This 12 hour period of time where crime is legal is called “The Purge” because it allows citizens to rid themselves of all of the hatred and pent-up anger that they hold inside all year long. They purge themselves of all of the bad and all that they are left with is the good.
As I said, it is a very controversial concept but let me talk about the film first before I discuss my views on the topic.
The film is about a family doing there best to stay safe at home during “The Purge.” The father (Ethan Hawke) is a top-of-the-line security system salesman who has ensured that his house is as safe as it can be. In a world where crime is legal for half of a day every year, you better have a good security system to protect yourself and your loved ones. An unfortunate turn of events finds the family with a man in their home who is being sought after by a violent group of people who intend on murdering him. The family is given the choice to give up the wanted man or become the new targets of the group.
The Purge is written and directed by James DeMonaco.
The rest of the notable cast includes Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Rhys Wakefield, Edwin Hodge, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis, and Chris Mulkey.
The world that is created in The Purge would be a frighteningly dreadful one to live in. We already know that basically anything insane can happen in our world, but at least we have law enforcement and hospitals to help us when it does. If you take those services away, then you take away order and are only left with chaos. The film successfully depicts chaos in America.
The movie is vicious. The intensity of the film will keep your heart racing throughout as you try to anticipate what will happen next.
I felt that the entire cast did an excellent job with their parts of the film, but the standout performances were those of Ethan Hawke and Rhys Wakefield.
Hawke’s role was a great follow-up to Sinister (2012). If you enjoyed Sinister, then you will most likely enjoy The Purge.
This is the first movie that I have seen Wakefield in, and I have to say, he did an outstanding job being creepy. His character was tailor made for him.
Once you get past the holes in the main concept of the film, the movie is overall a very solid thriller/horror. I say that there are holes because it is hard for me to believe that America would ever allow its citizens to live in chaos and anarchy. Once you allow chaos, how do you bring back order? I don’t think it is as simple as putting a timetable on chaos and expecting people to actually follow it.
If there actually was “The Purge”, I think that all it would do is allow evil people to kill or commit crime and get away with it. How would that be good for anybody? I don’t believe that the crime rate would go down either. I think that there would probably be a lot of crimes and murder strictly out of retaliation for what happened during “The Purge”. It would almost be like encouraging people to do bad things. America would not be a better place to live in.
Those are just some of my thoughts on the topic. I’m sure that you have your own idea of what would be wrong with the idea of “The Purge” and I would be curious to hear what you have to say about it.
Tags: Adelaide Kane, Arija Bareikis, Chris Mulkey, Edwin Hodge, Ethan Hawke, James DeMonaco, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, movie, Rhys Wakefield, Sinister (2012), The Purge (2013), Tony Oller
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4577
|
__label__wiki
| 0.75358
| 0.75358
|
News releases in 2020
Associated links (A19Q0128)
Investigation report
Investigation page
Fatal collision with terrain highlights the risks of continued visual flight rules flights in adverse weather conditions
Gatineau, Quebec, 10 December 2020 — In its investigation report A19Q0128 released today, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) determined that flying in a degraded visual environment likely led to the pilot experiencing spatial disorientation and the aircraft subsequently colliding with terrain.
On 29 July 2019, at 15:55 (Eastern Daylight Time), a Beechcraft Bonanza V35B aircraft registered in the U.S. departed Wittman Regional Airport, Wisconsin, U.S., for a daytime visual flight rules (VFR) flight to Danbury Municipal Airport, Connecticut, U.S., with only the pilot on board. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft began to deviate north of the planned route and subsequently flew into Canadian airspace. At 19:12, while in the vicinity of a line of rain showers, thunderstorms and lightning, the aircraft entered a right turn, descended rapidly and collided with terrain approximately seven nautical miles northeast of Senneterre, Quebec.
At 23:31, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) in Trenton, Ontario, was notified of a missing aircraft and initiated search and rescue operations. The accident site was found four days later, on 2 August 2019. The pilot was fatally injured and the aircraft was destroyed. There was no post-impact fire and no signal was detected from the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter.
The flight profile and weather data suggest that the pilot deviated over 350 nautical miles north from his intended flight path in an attempt to bypass or outrun a moving line of thunderstorms and lightning. Numerous heading deviations and corrections all proved unsuccessful in either crossing the line of weather or regaining a suitable track toward the original destination. The commitment to the original plan indicates that the pilot’s decision making was likely affected by plan continuation bias, which led him to continue a VFR flight in adverse weather conditions. The final flight path also suggest that the pilot likely experienced spatial disorientation from a visual or vestibular illusion and, as a result, the aircraft entered a spiral dive and collided with terrain.
The investigation also highlights that if pilots do not have recent experience flying in instrument meteorological conditions, they may not possess the skills and proficiency required to do so, increasing the risk of loss of control and accident.
Canadian space-based ADS-B network. It was also determined that the knowledge level of ADS-B, including space-based ADS-B, was limited within the search and rescue (SAR) community. At the time of the occurrence, JRCC Trenton was aware that ADS-B technology had been available in Canada since March 2019, but also that not all aircraft operating in Canada were equipped with this technology. As a result, JRCC did not include ADS-B data in its data requests to NAV CANADA.
As such, if SAR authorities do not access or use data from emerging technologies, such as space-based automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast, in a timely manner, there is a risk that following an accident, potentially life-saving search and rescue services will be delayed. In this particular case, however, the accident was not survivable. Eventually, access to spaced-based ADS-B data helped in reducing the search area, locating the downed aircraft, and allowed the TSB to reconstruct the flight path.
Since this accident, the Department of National Defence SAR stakeholders were made aware of an ADS-B aircraft locating emergency response tracking service and the requirement to specifically request ADS-B data. Coordinators now routinely include such queries when investigating overdue or missing aircraft.
The TSB is an independent agency that investigates air, marine, pipeline, and rail transportation occurrences. Its sole aim is the advancement of transportation safety. It is not the function of the Board to assign fault or determine civil or criminal liability.
Email: media@tsb.gc.ca
Deployment notices
TSB Quarterly Review
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4578
|
__label__cc
| 0.73812
| 0.26188
|
New 52 Review – “Hawk and Dove #1”
A pair of heroes brought to the front lines in recent issues of Brightest Day and Birds of Prey also have a title of their own now.
Title: Hawk and Dove #1
Author: Sterling Gates
Illustrator(s): Rob Liefeld (art), Matt Yackey (colours)
Two very recognizable versions of Hawk and Dove are acting as the avatars of war and peace respectively. They have a few trials to undergo, not the least of which is the fact that they don’t complement each other very well. On top of that, one of them as a secret.
The cameo by Deadman. DC may be deliberately avoiding crossovers for the forseeable future, but this is still clearly a shared universe.
The history of these characters seems unchanged, and it is not particularly simple. As a result, this is one of the most exposition heavy issues of the relaunch, and it includes heavy-handed akin to 1980s TV dialogue to boot.
In the midst of a relaunch, using the most recent incarnation of a character doesn’t feel original. Add in the class dialogue of “and character X can never know” and we get a pretty good idea of where the character conflicts in the near future are going to come from. I give it 3 out of 6.
The artwork is exactly what you’d expect from Rob Liefeld. Some like his style and some hate it, but it’s unique and consistent. If you know what Liefeld’s art has looked like in the past, you know exactly what it will look like now: dynamic poses, clear emotions, anatomical liberties. I give it 4 out of 6.
The story is okay, but it’s so exposition heavy that it feels like it drags. I give it 4 out of 6.
The one dimensional versions of the characterizations are very clear for Hawk, Dove and Hawk’s father. The rest of the cast doesn’t get enough time to establish themselves. I give it 4 out of 6.
The emotional response should have been better. We know on the second page that Hawk’s old partner was his brother and that he felt his brother would have done a better job than the new Dove. Did we really need five pages of exposition later to say the same thing? The fun this should have been was replaced by tedium. Those aren’t even the only expository pages. I give it 3 out of 6.
The flow starts strong, and lags heavily when the expository second half kicks in. I give it 3 out of 6.
Overall, this is a title that has potential, but there was so much history awkwardly jammed into this first issue that I didn’t get enough content for this title to make the final cut. I give it 4 out of 6.
In total, Hawk and Dove receives 25 out of 42.
← New 52 Review – “Green Arrow #1” New 52 Review – “Justice League International #1” →
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4581
|
__label__cc
| 0.563004
| 0.436996
|
English - Indonesia
English - Vietnam
More about Scanners
Automatic image orientation
Blank page removal
Multi-crop
More about multi-function printers & fax
PBX/ System Handsets and Applications
Introducing the OneNet advantage
Introduction to SIP
Introduction to VOIP
Preparing for VOIP
Communication platforms
System handsets
SIP Desktop Telephone Terminals
SIP DECT single base unit
SIP DECT Wireless Multi Cell System
Capture software
All-in-one printers and fax
Consumables and options
See how Panasonic’s Communication Solutions have been employed across the industry
More about PBX/SIP
VOIP is an acronym which stands for "Voice Over IP".
Most of us are familiar with the "Public Switched Telephone System” (PSTN), which allows us to contact people around the globe by dialling a sequence of numbers. VOIP offers an alternative, which works by routing digitised voice signals over IP networks, such as Company Intranets, or in some cases the public Internet.
On the face of it, the PSTN hasn't really changed much in more than 100 years. There have been many technology changes and improvements, such as tone dialling and Caller ID, but as far as the user is concerned, it's still a matter of dialling (more recently, pressing) a sequence of numbers, and getting connected to the person who's number was dialled. However, what happens behind the scenes to make this happen has changed considerably in recent years.
VOIP isn't a particularly new technology; there are papers and patents about the subject dating back several decades, and there was some early VOIP software available as early as 1991. The basic principle is pretty simple; it is essentially the same technology that is used to stream music across the internet. Voice sounds are picked up by a microphone and digitised by the sound card. The digitised audio is then compressed using an audio codec. This works by removing unneeded data, while maintaining the legibility of the audio, to make the stream compact enough to be sent in real time over the network. The term codec is short for "enCODer/DECoder". The sounds are encoded at the sending end, sent over the network and then decoded at the receiving end, where they are played back over speakers or a headset.
The only requirements are a network connection between the two computers of an adequate speed, and matching codecs at each end.
Regular "off the shelf" PCs equipped with microphones, sound cards, headsets and a broadband connection fit the bill perfectly.
It is necessary, of course, that the two talking parties agree to use the same codec before making a call, so that the compression results in audio streams that can be decompressed properly by the system at the far end. Codec’s are always in a state of flux, as anyone with a digital music player will know - mp3, wma, ogg, mp4, and aac are all file extensions that you may have seen on compressed music files from online music stores, and they are all different. Some music players will play all of them, some only a few, and some will play only a single specific type.
Thankfully, there is some common ground in the telephony world that means that VOIP systems can usually negotiate with each other to find a codec that both sides can understand. Commonly used telephony codec’s include G.711, G.729 and G.726, though there are many others, including proprietary systems. These codec’s differ in two main ways. First, the amount of CPU power required to perform the compression and decompression, which has an impact on the type of hardware needed in the system (PC, PBX or telephone) and second, the size of the compressed audio stream or file, and therefore the amount of network bandwidth needed to transport the data between the two parties. This has an impact on the network infrastructure.
To be useful, a VOIP system needs some method for establishing and managing a connection, for example, calling the other computer, finding out if they accept the call, and closing the connection when a user hangs up. Because VOIP allows two way communication, and even conference calls, this part is more complex than simple audio streaming. Call management - session initiation, call setup and tear down, is one area in which VOIP systems fundamentally differ, and two VOIP users must be using the same system (or compatible ones) in order to be able to call each other.
Because most domestic Internet users don't have a permanent Internet address, domestic VOIP systems don't generally work by calling another computer direct - it is akin to having a telephone number that changes from time to time. Instead, each user of the service registers with an intermediate server, which maintains a record of their IP address all the time they are connected. A small application can be installed on each user's PC, which manages this data in conjunction with the server.
Another reason for using an intermediate server is that it eases the problem of getting VOIP to work through firewalls. Many firewalls block any data from the Internet that is not sent in response to a specific request. This makes it impossible to call another computer direct; because the called computer did not request any data from the caller, the call request would be blocked.
By establishing a connection with a server, the VOIP software opens a channel of communication through which other computers can call it. Communication may continue using the server, or information may be passed via the server that allows the two computers to open a direct connection between them and continue using this communications channel.
There are several 'standards' for communicating with Voice over IP. These can be split into 'open standards’ that are available for anyone to use, and proprietary systems. H.323 and SIP fall into the former category, while Skype uses its own proprietary system.
H.323 is a standard for teleconferencing that was developed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). It supports full multimedia audio, video and data transmission between groups of two or more participants, and it is designed to support large networks. H.323 is network-independent: it can be used over networks using transport protocols other than TCP/IP. H.323 is still a very important protocol, but it has fallen out of use for consumer VOIP products due to the fact that it is difficult to make it work through firewalls that are designed to protect computers running many different applications. It is a system best suited to large organizations that possess the technical skills to overcome these problems.
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard signalling protocol for teleconferencing, telephony, presence and event notification and instant messaging. It provides mechanisms for setting up, and managing connections, but not for transporting the audio or video data. It is probably now the most widely used protocol for managing Internet telephony. Like all IETF protocols, SIP is defined in a number of RFCs (Request For Comments), principally RFC 3261.
A SIP-based VOIP implementation may send the encoded voice data over the network in a number of ways. Most implementations use Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), which is defined in RFC 3550. Both SIP and RTP are implemented on UDP, which, as a connectionless protocol, can cause problems with certain types of routers and firewalls. Usable SIP phones therefore also need to use STUN (for Simple Traversal of UDP over NAT), a protocol defined in RFC 3489 that allows a client behind a NAT router to find out its external IP address and the type of NAT device. Thanks to STUN, setting up SIP-based VOIP hardware or software behind a home or small office firewall should be a simple affair, but in practise it can still be troublesome.
View our product range
We use cookies on this site to give you the best possible browsing experience. Cookie settings are automatically set to 'Allow all', so by continuing without changing, you are consenting to this. If you do want to change these settings, then just click the box below.
View/amend cookiesContinue
Multi-function printers and fax
PBX/System Handsets and Applications
Office and Communication Solutions
Broadcast and ProAV Solutions
Copyright © 2020 Panasonic Asia Pacific. All Rights Reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4582
|
__label__wiki
| 0.543639
| 0.543639
|
Posted inVoices
by Michaela Ritchie May 18, 2015 September 4, 2020
In a time when media coverage of rising racial tensions in the United States paints the story in black-and-white, journalists hold power to help neutralize the situation
I hated that stare I used to get back in grade school when I told people my dad was a cop.
I hated it then, and even now that he’s retired I despise it. There truly aren’t strong enough words to answer the kind of judgmental glares I’ve received for being a cop’s daughter. Over the years I have been continuously thrown under the same umbrella of idiocy as “oppressor garbage” based solely on proximity.
In the midst of the chaos brought about by recent police shootings and in-custody deaths of black men in the United States, I have even been told that people like me, and people who still believe in the police force are part of the problem.
When my dad goes to his post-force security job up north, and reports illegal activities to his supervisors (as is his purpose), he gets told by those he turns in that it’s “imbeciles like him that are the reason cops get killed.”
I really hate that ignorance.
The recent turmoil began with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Miss. last August, and since then there has appeared no end to the public protests and responding police violence portrayed in media coming from the south.
The riots that took place in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray came to an end just at the beginning of this month. The 25-year-old black man fell into a coma due to a spinal cord injury sustained while in police custody, after several eyewitnesses reported police as using excessive force to detain him.
In early April of this year, yet another black man was gunned down by a white police officer in South Carolina. Walter Scott was shot eight times as he fled from an alleged confrontation between himself and officer Michael T. Slager.
Effects of Eyewitness Evidence
This particular slaying might have been excused or covered up like seemingly all others before it. There has been a total of 54 officers charged in response to thousands of fatal shootings in America since 2005, as the Washington Post reports. However, one crucial element made all the difference in the case of Walter Scott: video evidence of the Scott shooting as filmed by a civilian bystander.
Officer Slager was charged with first-degree murder just three days after the shooting. Contradicting his recounting of events, the video, which depicted Slager using a questionable amount of force, I’d say, to restrain his suspect, in addition to planting evidence, lead to fast indictment and prosecution.
It may be gleaned from the unfolding of these events that the media’s portrayal of both black men and white cops have had a direct effect on public opinion and action surrounding current inequality issues. Though sparse evidence has surfaced to shed light on the Freddie Gray case, visual documentation proved invaluable in bringing Walter Scott’s case to justice. The video gave a more accurate recounting of events than official police reports, providing the court with an eyewitness perspective.
My father never talked about his work with us growing up, but his pride in his career was always evident. Dancing with my sister on his wedding day, Aug. 22, 1992, he was adamant on wearing his uniform for the occasion.
Photo courtesy of Michaela Ritchie
The video was presented to the public via the New York Times within a timeframe that warranted its newsworthiness against fears of the footage being gratuitous or sensationalized; the Scott family, although disturbed by the event itself, was glad to have the truth revealed behind the murder of their son, husband, and father.
I feel their pain. I can’t begin to imagine the anguish the families of the fallen must go through in the aftermath of these events. Indeed, whenever I hear of such police incidents, I feel grateful that my own father was not slain.
I think of all the times he could have been in his 30 years in the RCMP, had he not applied the necessary measures to keep himself alive in dangerous situations. My father has been in street fights with muggers, been rear-ended by intoxicated fugitives, and has both taken and given his fair share of beatings. But although he never pulled the trigger of his issued firearm during his career, many of his coworkers were not so fortunate.
My dad always told me that lethal force was only ever excusable in defense of his own life, and that as an officer who willingly stepped up to the plate, he had to be prepared to give that life for the cause at all times.
So I think about the damnation that videos like the one of Walter Scott’s murder wreak on proud and honourable police forces, and I am ashamed.
Not of the shooter, oddly enough, and not of Scott for running – nor the civilians brave enough to film such incidents.
I am ashamed of myself, because those people who accuse me of being part of the problem are completely right.
I am guilty. My crime? Defamation. Two counts.
Fanning the Flames
As much as any ‘suspect’ or ‘oppressive cops’ and their supporters are part of the problem when it comes to racial inequality in today’s media, so are journalists everywhere, and we really don’t seem to take notice.
Just as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray all deserve decency and justice, so do the men and women in uniform who go to work every day knowing they too might come home in a body bag.
My father was not always a serious man, pictured here in 1997 allowing my clumsy toddler self to spoon-feed him. However, a lifetime of public service and devotion to the police force changed him, leaving him with debilitating injuries and severe PTSD. This is why I get so defensive when people demean the sacrifices made by officers like him.
These officers took an oath to protect and serve their communities and all who reside within them. For the majority, their hearts beat with a desire to enforce justice.
Yes, they signed up for this. But doesn’t their willing sacrifice warrant at least a little gratitude on our part?
I am not denying that Canada’s police forces have flaws that desperately need to be addressed – racial profiling and power-tripping hierarchies among them. All occupations leave something to be desired in one way or another.
The real caveat lays in the fact that, simply, police are held to a higher occupational standard than the taxi driver who hits a pedestrian, or the doctor who is unable to save a life. More is demanded of our police force because we can see their modus operandi, and there’s lots of room to criticize when we don’t like it.
Cops aren’t allowed to make mistakes with the public watching – and thanks to news media, the public always are. Police forces operate under media watchdogs, which turn them into Public Enemy No. 1 when they inevitably screw up. Find egg on your face under our scrutiny, and you better believe us journalists will wring you through 20 different kinds of headlines and follow-up stories. It’s what we do.
However, sometimes this means our reporting leads us to rely on stereotypes, on our sole observation, on partial truths as we would spin them to polish any given narrative. It’s called reporter’s bias, and no matter how we try to avoid it, it always persists in subtle omnipotence.
Sometimes how journalists work the story contributes more to the frustration of justice than its unveiling. In the case of Eric Garner, video proof merely incited the public to hysterics. Although completely justified, that resulting resentment towards all officers, not just the perpetrators of the injustice, made the issue harder for police to resolve, likewise lending fuel to the fire during the Baltimore riots and others.
However, in the case of Walter Scott, and now Freddie Gray, recordings, eyewitness testimony, and transparent media coverage have brought guilty parties closer to their rightful chopping block. Think of the violence incited in Ferguson, and the change it has demanded.
So where do we draw the line when our coverage has the power to help avenge and pay homage to lives lost, but can also negatively impact those still struggling through the conflict – be they activists, families of the deceased, or cops that simply want to help?
The answer is we don’t.
Justice in the Media
True journalism is justified, considerate, and transparent. We can critique and call attention to issues and processes without demeaning parties on either side of the conflict.
To be clear, I do not agree with the oppression of minorities in America or any nation, and as the daughter of a proud, upstanding officer, I certainly do not condone the excessive measures utilized by cowards such as Slager.My father has dedicated his life to protecting others and building a better future for his family. Following the rise in police violence in the United States, he has had to watch his life’s work be dragged through the mud by corruption, protests, and tabloid sensationalism.
But when media begin to sensationalize or jump to conclusions based on half-truths, we can stop calling ourselves journalists right then and there. Ours is not to speculate. Journalists reveal meaning; we don’t create it. But that hasn’t stopped us from creatively shining light on specific fragments of the story.
In cases where video evidence is uncovered to corroborate events, we have little room to sway readers towards a preferred conclusion. But in the absence of video, when we think back to the Michael Brown case, how many different media outlets do you remember covering the story? How many spun Brown and Wilson as either martyr or villain, respectively, and vice versa, in an ongoing investigation with too many unresolved elements for anyone to play judge?
Our words are weapons. Sometimes we wield them mindless of the consequences. Sometimes that means my dad getting flak for a crime he didn’t commit, because some poor reader has gained the funnelled opinion that “Corruption of the Many = Corruption of the Whole.”
I’m not saying we should automatically give our authoritative respect to a force that won’t respect us as human beings – equality is a two-way street. I am simply here to suggest that the only way forward is to quell the hatred, and the fear, on both sides. Sensationalist tabloid journalism isn’t going to further that movement.
In today’s media landscape, the only way journalists can contribute to the betterment of our nation is to keep our eyes open and our cameras ready. Let your words be as clear and uncompromising as visual proof.
It is not our job to choose sides or comment, no matter how we want to play the moral guide or be a sympathetic comfort to our audience. In doing so, we taint mass opinion. We may be providing citizens with the facts, but it is not our jurisdiction to hold the reader’s hand.
Sometimes in order to report in the public interest, our job means leaving the final judgment to the public.
mritchie@cjournal.ca
To contact the editor responsible for this story; Ali Hardstaff at ahardstaff-gajda@cjournal.ca
Calgarians gather in protest for the #BLACKLIVESMATTER cause
Why are face tattoos becoming more popular?
46-year-old RCMP officer is still furthering his career 20 years in
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4586
|
__label__wiki
| 0.985594
| 0.985594
|
Platinum-selling artist Jon Pardi announced his highly-anticipated new album, tour and single titled Heartache Medication. Set for release on September 27, Pardi's upcoming album, Heartache Medication, includes the album's lead single and title track Co-written by Pardi, Barry Dean and Natalie Hemby, Pardi revealed the new single showcases a taste of what is to come on the next record exclusively to the Associated Press, noting the songs lift you up. They put you in a higher place. "The single 'Heartache Medication' has an 80's George Strait 'Fool Hearted Memory' feel to it, and is something people can dance to, said Pardi. That's something I really wanted for this album. There really are no sad songs on this record-it covers a range of subjects, but is ultimately about moving on, and having a good time. Recognized for his "state-of-the-art blend of traditional instrumentation and progressive grooves that points to country's future (Rolling Stone) and as a leader among a growing number of artists bringing back fiddle, steel and twang while still finding ways to freshen the sound (People), Pardi again serves as a co-producer on the new album, Heartache Medication. Heartache Medication is the follow up to Pardi's co-produced Platinum-selling breakthrough #1 album California Sunrise, which featured Multi-Platinum, chart-topping hits including Dirt on My Boots, Head Over Boots, Heartache on the Dancefloor and Night Shift." The CMA and ACM Award-winner also revealed plans for his HEARTACHE MEDICATION TOUR
Label: CAPITOL NASHVILLE
Heartache Medication
Artist: Jon Pardi
1. Old Hat
2. Heartache Medication
3. Nobody Leaves A Girl Like That
4. Ain’t Always The Cowboy
5. Me And Jack
6. Don’t Blame It On Whiskey (featuring Lauren Alaina)
7. Tied One On
8. Oughta Know That
9. Tequila Little Time
10. Buy That Man A Beer
11. Call Me Country
12. Just Like Old Time
13. Love Her Like She’s Leaving
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4595
|
__label__wiki
| 0.778071
| 0.778071
|
Charles Williams Charity
Supporting the education of Caerleon children since 1720
Current Purpose
Founded in 1720 to administer a bequest made in the Will of the late Charles Williams.
Charles Williams was born in 1633 and brought up in Caerleon, the son of a wealthy local businessman. As a young man he set sail for Turkey where he established himself as a very successful fig merchant. Much of his wealth was derived from his business activities and when he died, aged 87 years, he left £4,000 for the establishment of a free school in Caerleon. His Will also stated that any surplus income, after meeting the running costs of the schools, could be used to help young people into apprenticeships or other professions. Over time, with more and more students attending colleges and universities and less into apprenticeships, the Charity’s objects have been amended to reflect the changing trends in education.
Williams' Schools is a registered charity in Wales and England, #701554 | © Copyright
Warning: Use of undefined constant year - assumed 'year' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /homepages/44/d536995066/htdocs/app536995743/wp-content/themes/williamscharity/footer.php on line 16
2021 Williams' Schools
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4602
|
__label__wiki
| 0.740609
| 0.740609
|
Sell Your Cassettes
Cassette Coins
Type 1 / Normal Bias - Cassettes
Type 2 / High / Chrome Bias - Cassettes
Type 4 / Metal Bias - Cassettes
B Grade Cassettes
HiFi, Boomboxes
We Buy Your Sealed Cassettes - CLICK HERE
Maxell XLII - 1985 - US/EU - B-Grade
Tape Length 90 Minutes
90 Minutes - $13.80
Maxell XLII - 1985 - US/EU
"The first bite is with the eye". One of the finest all round cassettes, when you take into account, shell quality, looks and performance. One of our favourites.
Priced really for collection only, these still look so much cooler in your deck when taking pictures, rather than those poor quality "Reel 2 Reel" things.
And they're hardy. We've used many over the past 33 years, and they still sound great.
A true classic.
Minor scuffing and a Maxell Yellow sticker over front - These have very minor blemishes! Now four available! Take advantage! No-one gives these away at this price, and when you get them, you will be asking why did I rate these as B-Grade!
About Maxell:
Maxell Holdings, Ltd. (日立マクセル株式会社 Hitachi Makuseru Kabushiki-gaisha), commonly known as Maxell, is a Japanese company that manufactures consumer electronics.
Maxell was formed in 1960, when a dry cell manufacturing plant was created at the company's headquarters in Ibaraki, Osaka. In 1961, Maxell Electric Industrial Company, Limited was created out of the dry battery and magnetic tape divisions of Nitto Electric Industrial Company, Limited (now Nitto Denko Corporation).
On March 18, 2014 the company was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.[7]
The company's notable products are batteries—the company's name is a contraction of "maximum capacity dry cell"—wireless charging solutions, storage devices, computer tapes, professional broadcast tapes and functional materials.[4][5] In the past, the company manufactured recording media, including audio cassettes and blank VHS tapes, and recordable optical discs including CD-R/RW and DVD±RW.
On March 4, 2008, Maxell announced that they would outsource the manufacturing of their optical media.[6]
During the height of the Compact Audio Cassette's popularity, Maxell's audio cassettes were held in high regard, producing some of the finest examples of the standard available. The performance of the XLII-S (CrO2) and MX (pure metal particles) cassettes was regarded by many audiophiles to be the ultimate achievement in the pre digital domestic recording medium.
In the 1980s, Maxell became an icon of pop culture when it produced advertisements popularly known as "Blown Away Guy" for its line of audio cassettes. The original campaign conceived by Art Director Lars Anderson began as a two-page spread in Rolling Stone Magazine ad in 1980, and was made into television spots in 1981 which ran throughout the 1980s.[10]
Maxell audio cassettes are available in 46, 60, 90, 100, 120 and 150 minute lengths.
Follow Our Facebook Page For New Stock And The Latest Offers
© 2021, Cassette Comeback - Canada. Powered by Shopify
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4604
|
__label__cc
| 0.50279
| 0.49721
|
Accessing Scotland's Past Project
Event ID 560599
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Accessing Scotland's Past Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/560599
Two military roads meet at Corgarff. One of the roads led east, towards Aberdeen, and the other north, towards Fort George. In some places the road survives as a grass track, 4m in width, but elsewhere a modern road has been constructed over much of the military route.
During the eighteenth century, hundreds of miles of military roads were constructed in highland Scotland, improving communications and transport, and thus helping the government control the area. The routes linked places of military importance, like Corgarff, and were built using techniques pioneered by the Romans, layering gravel on top of small stones and boulders. This section of road was begun in 1753.
Major-General George Wade, Commander-in-Chief of Scotland, was responsible for initiating the road system. He later appointed Major William Caulfeild, who oversaw the construction of a further 748 miles of road.
Text prepared by RCAHMS as part of the Accessing Scotland's Past project
Related Site(s)
Ordnance Survey licence number 100057073. All rights reserved.
Canmore Disclaimer. © Copyright and database right 2021.
Coupar Angus - Braemar - Corgarff - Fort George
Military Road (18th Century)
Canmore ID 73373 |
Requires Javascript
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4605
|
__label__cc
| 0.578909
| 0.421091
|
Video – YouTube Feed
Enterprising Women 2020
40 Under 40 Awards Ceremony – 2020
« HR Roundtable
Building Inclusion & Diversity Strategies into Your Business »
Enterprising Women 2020 will be held via the Hopin.to virtual event platform on 11/19 from 1pm-4:30pm. There is no cost to attend the event thanks to the generosity of Cape Cod 5 Savings Bank.
Enterprising Women is the premier women’s business event in the region, bringing together varied experts to provide advice and inspiration in a hands-on setting.
Register on Hopin.to
1pm welcome, thank you to CC5 and overview of program
1:05pm Lessons Learned Regarding Work Life Balance During Covid panel (45 min + chat questions)
2:05pm Break (Hopin networking)
2:20pm Non-profit leaders serving women and families panel (45 min + chat questions)
3:20pm Closing remarks by Dorothy Savarese
3:30pm-4:30pm Post Event Networking via Hopin
4:30pm Conclusion
Our Panelists
Laura Newstead
Laura Newstead has 25+ years of executive human resources experience primarily in the financial services sector. She is the Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer for Cape Cod 5, joining the Bank in 2016, relocating from Michigan. Laura has extensive experience in the areas of human resources, talent management, learning and development. Since joining the Bank, she has become active in the community and serves on the Board of Trustees for Calmer Choice and is Vice Chairman of the Board for Cape Cod Community College. Laura is also involved at the state and national level serving on the Women in Banking Advisory Board, the Education and Management Development Committee, and the Human Resources Committee for Massachusetts Bankers Association, and serves on the American Bankers Association’s Professional Development Advisory Board.
Laura holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from Indiana Wesleyan University and a Master of Science Administration in Human Resources from Central Michigan University. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education and English from Western Michigan University. Additionally, Laura holds several Human Resources professional designations including: Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and the Society of Human Resource Management’s Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).
Laura resides in East Sandwich with her family.
Allison McEachern
Allison McEachern is responsible for RogersGray’s most trusted asset – its people. As Chief People Officer, Allison oversees the agency’s hiring, development, and training functions.
Allison joined RogersGray in 2011 as an Account Executive in our Employee Benefits Division, and most recently held the role of Director of Employee Benefits. Prior to joining RogersGray, Allison’s past Human Resources experience included positions at Frito Lay, Inn Seasons Resorts, and The Black Dog.
Allison holds a Bachelors’s Degree from Stonehill College and is Massachusetts licensed as a Life & Health Producer. Allison is also MA licensed as a Middle School and High School teacher and prior to beginning her HR career, she taught Social Studies – making her the ideal person to oversee the RG Academy.
Allison sits on the Board of Directors for Community Connections Inc., is a member of the Yarmouth Rotary Club, New England HR Association, and the Society for HR.
Bobbie Carlton
Bobbie Carlton, founder of Carlton PR & Marketing, Innovation Nights, and Innovation Women, has been called Boston’s Innovation Den Mother and the Startup Fairy Godmother. She’s an award-winning marketing, PR, and social media professional. She speaks regularly on marketing, public speaking, and women’s issues. Her humorous approach and fiery “let’s make something happen” brand is supported by the real-world results she helps drive: 1500+ new products launched, $4B in funding, 3 million monthly views, and 1000+ women speaking at conferences and events.
Currently a “parallel” entrepreneur (instead of a serial entrepreneur), Bobbie has spent the last 10 years building her own businesses as well as supporting client and community efforts. Previously, in addition to working with a number of Boston-area PR and marketing firms, she headed global PR at Cognos and PTC, both publicly held enterprise software companies. In 2006 she switched gears, joining a startup focused on supporting self-esteem and positive role models for preteen girls through a social network and book series.
In 2008, she started her own company…the first one.
Carlton PR & Marketing is a boutique agency servicing a wide variety of startups and small companies, providing support for PR, content creation, social media marketing, and marketing programs.
Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) is a social media powered new product showcase and networking event. MIN has launched more than 1500 new products for free. These startups have received more than $4 billion in collective funding. When coupled with Bobbie’s PR work, she figures she’s helped launch more new products than any other PR person on earth.
Innovation Women is an online “visibility bureau” helping drive visibility for entrepreneurial, technical, and innovative women through speaking engagements. Bobbie’s goal is to eradicate “Manels” (all-male panels) and get 2400 additional women on-stage a month. (This number should get us to gender-equity on-stage. Currently, more than 70 percent of all conference speakers are men.)
In 2010 she was called one of the “Ten Bostonians who have done the most for the startup community”. She’s also received numerous professional awards: Marketing Sherpa Viral Campaign of the Year, several PRSA Silver Anvils, Mass High Tech Luminary Award, Boston Business Journal Woman to Watch, PR News Gamechanger award, and Boston’s “50 on Fire.” See her TEDx talk for the Innovation Nights and Innovation Women stories.
Leah Kosnack Fennell
Leah Fennell is an experienced marketing director with a demonstrated history in the lumber and building materials industry. In addition, she has a strong background in management, training, and information technology. In her current role as Human Resources Manager for Mid-Cape Home Centers, she is leveraging her experience to recruit talent and engage the team with Company initiatives.
Leah is a past President of the Massachusetts Retail Lumber Dealers Association and has been honored by the Northeast Young Lumber Executives for mentorship, and by the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Cape Cod for volunteerism. Leah currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the Shea’s Youth Basketball Association and volunteers for the Housing Assistance Corporation. Leah is designated as a Certified Professional with the Society for Human Resources (SHRM-CP).
Leah and her husband reside in Eastham, Massachusetts.
Stacie Peugh
Stacie Peugh is the President and CEO of the YMCA Cape Cod. She believes we can make our communities stronger by investing in people of all ages to support them in pursuing a life of continuous learning & development. Stacie has a proven track record of transforming YMCAs to meet the needs of all people in the communities they serve. She is proud of her leadership strengths in fiscal and human capital approaches allowing the Y to attract and retain a thriving workforce & volunteer supporters to best serve the community.
Stacie has been awarded the Eastern Bank Community Advocacy Award for her outstanding commitment to the community as well as the Paul Lorusso Leadership Award. Stacie holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education & Biology from The College of Saint Rose.
Lisa Guyon
Lisa began her career in the for-profit sector in commercial real estate and the hospitality industry. In 2004, she founded Building Impact, an award-winning non-profit organization in Boston encouraging corporate citizenship in small and medium businesses. She went on to provide leadership at Housing Assistance Corporation in Hyannis. Before joining WE CAN, Lisa served as Director of Community Benefits and Grants Administration at Cape Cod Healthcare where she directed a system-wide community benefits program and managed relationships with community organizations and coalitions, task forces, public health providers, and governmental agencies.
Lisa currently serves on the Board for Community Development Partnership and founded and volunteers for the Cape Cod Pet Collective. She previously served on the Board of Cape Cod Young Professionals (CCYP) including serving as President of the Board of Directors in 2013 and 2014. Lisa has been recognized as a Social Innovator for her non-profit business ventures by the Social Innovation Forum in Cambridge, MA, and was selected as a ‘40 under 40’ rising business leader by the Boston Business Journal and Cape & Plymouth Business Magazine. She is a Cape Cod native, graduating from Harwich High School and Wheaton College and currently lives in West Barnstable.
Gwynne Guzzeau
Gwynne Guzzeau, J.D., M.S., is the Executive Director of Helping Our Women (HOW), a non-profit serving women living with chronic or life-threatening health conditions on the Outer Cape. Prior to joining HOW two years ago, Gwynne worked as a Research Associate at the Wellesley Centers for Women where she served on a national work group focused on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Office of Child Care, Department of Health & Human Services. Her non-profit experience includes her tenure as the Executive Director of the Gestalt International Study Center in Wellfleet, as well as consulting for the Barnstable County Healthy Aging Project.
In her legal career, Gwynne acquired extensive transactional experience representing lenders on multi-family housing loans, and then writing wills and trusts in her estate planning and elder law practice. In her first career as an educator, she worked as a teacher, director, researcher and consultant to school-age child care programs in urban and rural settings. She has published articles in each of her fields of experience and has spoken on local, regional and national panels. Gwynne lives in Orleans with her teen-age son and their dog, Ginger.
2020, Cape and Plymouth Business
https://hopin.to/events/enterprising-women-2020
Cape & Plymouth Business Media
laurel@capeplymouthbusiness.com
https://capeplymouthbusiness.com
The South Coast's Premier Media Company
100 Independence Drive Suite 7-555,
Hyannis, Massachusetts - 02601 United States.
Partner / Advertise
© Cape & Plymouth Business Media, LLC. – Privacy Policy
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4606
|
__label__cc
| 0.557605
| 0.442395
|
Scott Schuman, Rajasthan, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Ian Wallace in Conversation with Scott Schuman
IAN WALLACE
Your work involves a number of discourses around society, art, photography, and of course fashion as an aesthetic that expresses individuality. I would say you’ve got a very independent and original relationship to fashion as well as art—in that sense your influence has been felt and I see it’s opened up people to treat their natural sense of expressive fashion as an expressive form in the street.
SCOTT SCHUMAN
I grew up in Indiana and there’s not a big fashion community there. I grew up looking at GQ and Vogue and it seemed like such another world, but I really dreamed about a place where people dressed like that. I feel like what I’ve done is, I made that kind of dream—of people dressing in a certain way and living in a certain context—more of a reality, you know? I find it more interesting to go out—and that’s why, when I shoot, I try to pull back a little bit and have a little context of the place where people are and the setting where they are, because I think for someone that would be like, the fifteen year old me, now it would be even more exciting to realize that there are places where people live, that their lives are just as exciting as I was seeing in editorial magazines and they put together things in a way that’s even more interesting. A lot of people say it kind of gives permission. No one in their neighbourhood dresses that way, but they can go on a site like mine and see people in different parts of the world and find their community, so to speak.
I think that’s what makes your work speak to so many people in so many different places. You’ve wakened up a creative impulse of people who are in the outlying areas of the centres of culture. Creative people exist everywhere don’t they?
So, you picked up the camera very late in life after you moved to New York and were involved in the fashion business and such, but I was just wondering how you position yourself or see yourself in the tradition of street photography. Is there some specific inspiration or influence that that led you that direction?
Well I started in street photography because it was how I liked to spend my day. I loved the work of Bruce Weber and Paolo Roversi and a lot of the contemporary fashion photographers and then as I started to learn about Avedon and Penn, I started to learn more about historical photographers and not just fashion photographers but, you know, the history of photography, and I think there’s something that really clicked about that idea of Helen Levitt, Bruce Davidson, Brassaï, and to a certain extent Steve McCurry, people that were able to make a living just grabbing a camera and walking around and taking photographs.
I had never picked up a camera until late because I never found anything I wanted to shoot until I had my own kids. I started taking pictures of them at the playground and stuff like that, so I really liked the idea of moving around and around the subject, and with kids you can’t tell them what to do, you’ve got to place yourself around them. After doing that for a while I started thinking that I really want to do this more. By that time I was in my late 20s early 30s and I was smart enough to know if I was going to do this I have to do it in a way that I can do, that maybe nobody else can. I knew the two things that I had were the ability to just be able to go out and walk around and take photographs with a fashion point of view because that’s where I had a unique point of view.
Sometimes I take a picture of someone who is not wearing what’s currently fashionable but you can’t deny how stylish they are. For whatever reason, their charisma, their hair, whatever it is, there’s just something about it, about that person that really clicks, and so I knew I was good at finding that and so I just took a chance you know? When I started the blog it didn’t cost any money and my assumption that I could do something a little bit different than anyone else was correct. People started recognizing it right away.
I think more and more as I get older, the way I shoot is almost with the eye of like, a costume designer—someone that thinks that the clothes the person is wearing might tell you a little bit about who they are. I think my best photographs are very good portraits where the clothing plays an important part in the portrait.
Your first books, the Penguin series, are amazing—five hundred page photo books that are almost the size of pocket books. How did you come to this particular format?
It was very intentional. I knew my audience very well and for the most part they were young and I knew they really used the photographs. People would tell me all the time that they printed them out, put them on the wall, really look at them. When Penguin first came to me about the book I think a lot of photographers would want to do kind of a coffee table book that makes them look really important but I told them I wanted to do a little book that students and people can take, throw it in their backpack, they can put Post-its in. I’d have people coming into book signings who would have it all marked up and it was almost like a workbook more than a photo book.
I also did it in a way that was not chronological—you can pick it up and flip through any page and hopefully it makes you keep wanting to look at the next page and the next page because there’s no order. You never know where you’re going to be next. You might be in New York, you might be in South America, you might be in Italy. So just like with the internet and understanding that moment in time, that combination of spontaneity and being able to share images very quickly.
You’re right, there’s an infinity of space in those pages and clarity and focus of concept which equals a successful work of art in my point of view.
I also see those books as falling into the framework that I recognized as kind of a concept about how to use a format that a lot of conceptual artists like Gillian Wearing and Cindy Sherman use. I’m just wondering if you were inspired by, familiar with, any of that work?
Maybe just a little, like August Sander—I mean I really liked his work, particularly in the beginning; full body portraits but there’s still a lot of background.
August Sanders’s work is banal on one level, but his images are so strong that you know that’s why it’s captured our attention for so many decades.
Let’s move on to talking about The Sartorialist: India book. It’s just a very beautiful book. It seems to take another direction, both in terms of format and also the deep sense of portraiture, a real focus on the humanity of your subjects and less on the fashion, even though your eye is caught by the clothing. Is this a new direction you’re taking?
Well, if you look at the books you know even from the first book there are photographs from India, China, and Japan. The reality is when I started doing The Sartorialist I didn’t have any money so I could only go to the places where people would pay me to go. But the dream was always to have this kind of unique mix that I’d never seen before, somewhere in between Helen Levitt, Steve McCurry, Bill Cunningham, somewhere where, you know, I was mixing style, fashion, and something cultural in a way that no one else had done.
It took me ten years of working really hard where I could save enough money so that instead of shooting a lot of different places and showing the similarities and differences in the world, I chose one place to compare and contrast. I shot India the way I see it, the way I experience it, which is a mix of fashion week or staying at a beautiful hotel, but then also going to very small villages and, and really getting out amongst the people and showing that India is much more diverse than what most people see. I wanted to surprise people. I wanted people to see the images as portraits and I think as people look at this India book they can go back now to the other books and see them in a slightly different way.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4607
|
__label__wiki
| 0.611506
| 0.611506
|
COP24: Consensus eludes climate talks over finance and transparency
There has been little progress on framing rules to implement the Paris climate pact at the annual summit being held at the Polish coal mining town of Katowice | Image credit: Soumya Sarkar
Climate Policy Guest Blog
By India Climate Dialogue / December 10, 2018
The progress in the first week of climate negotiations in Katowice has been painfully slow, and a logjam over financial transparency can unravel agreements in other areas such as green technology transfer.
The Paris Agreement will not come into effect on schedule in 2020 if negotiators continue bickering the way they have done during the first week of the December 2-14 UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland.
In the past few weeks, the global scientists’ collective has warned of the dangers of inaction, the global doctors’ collective has described the diseases worsened by climate change and how much worse it can get, scientists have measured that emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the air have gone up in 2018, the UN has reported the ever-widening gap between current emissions and the level to which they need to be brought down, and from Kerala to California, from Odisha to Australia, storms and droughts and wildfires worsened by climate change have killed people and devastated economies.
But the real world still cannot penetrate the bubble that is the annual summit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in which bureaucrats negotiate ad nauseam over which country will do how much and pay how much. They have been at it since 1995, and the situation has worsened with the election of Donald Trump as US President. His delegates are determined to play spoiler.
As the US vacates the climate leadership space, instead choosing to stymie talks at Katowice, China and India have been hesitant to step into the breach. “We would let our actions speak rather than our words,” India’s environment minister Harsh Vardhan told indiaclimatedialogue.net while discussing the leadership issue. “We are favour of a balanced agreement,” said Arun Kumar Mehta, India’s head of delegation.
China has been similarly cautious in its public statements. Xie Zhenhua, China’s special representative for climate change, declined to comment on specific issues facing the Katowice summit. “We will meet your (India’s) minister and take stock of the situation,” he told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
Paris rulebook
The signing of the Paris Agreement at the 2015 summit was a rare bright moment in this process. But the agreement cannot come into effect on schedule in 2020 without a rulebook, and the negotiators from 195 governments cannot agree on the critical parts of it. It remains to be seen if their environment ministers —expected to arrive in droves during the second week of the Katowice summit — can do better. Past summits do not provide much reason for hope. The Kyoto Protocol — predecessor to the Paris Agreement — was signed in 1997 but came into effect only in 2005.
At the end of the first week in the summit, the issue of transparency remained the biggest stumbling block. Industrialised countries want developing countries to report on everything they do to go green. Developing countries say they cannot even start planning to go green till they know how much money they are going to get for it from rich countries. Industrialised countries refuse to name a figure. The logjam continues. “The success of the Paris agreement hinges on finance,” Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for international non-profit ActionAid, told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “We need clear rules governing climate finance.”
The good news is that climate finance is being mobilised, mostly from private funds. Large developing countries are getting it, but not the smallest and the poorest, which often have the least bankable projects. That is where public finance can play the vital guarantor’s role, but there is no information on how much public finance will be available. Latin America, one of the most vulnerable regions to the effects of climate change, has been asking throughout the week for a larger commitment by developed countries on funding.
The transparency logjam may negate progress made on other issues. Developing countries hit by heat waves, droughts, storms, floods, rising sea level have persuaded rich countries to resurrect the once-bankrupt Adaptation Fund, so that they can seek some money to deal with these impacts. However, there is still no agreement on how this section will read in the Paris rulebook, largely due to opposition by US government delegates, who are still in all the negotiating rooms. Despite Trump’s declaration that his country will pull out of the Paris Agreement, the US cannot legally do so till 2020.
For impacts that are beyond adaptation, the issue of loss and damage has been brought to the fore in the teeth of opposition from the US, Saudi Arabia and a few other countries. Compensation for such loss and damage is still a distant dream, but a start has been made by a training programme for the poorest countries on how to deal better with such disasters.
Sven Harmeling, Global Policy Lead on Climate Change and Resilience, CARE International, said, “We do not yet have all the answers on how to address loss and damage and how to finance the needs of poor countries, but we must start acting now. Developed countries who are committed to the Paris Agreement, like the European Union, New Zealand and Canada, must work proactively with vulnerable, developing countries to jointly push for a strong rulebook, rather than hide behind the inaction of the US.”
There was progress even over the vexed issue of transfer of green technologies without poor countries having to pay full patent costs.
However, as a veteran climate negotiator has said over the years, in these annual summits “nothing is final till everything is final,” and the logjam over transparency, especially financial transparency, can unravel agreements in other areas.
Bickering over a word
The prognosis can only be as gloomy as the rainy winter sky in this coal mining town ringed by thermal power plants. The world has been jolted by the special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this October, which pointed out in graphic detail the dangers of global average temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.
But the negotiators could not even agree on whether they “welcomed” the report or “noted” it. All developing countries and the European Union wanted to welcome, but this was opposed by the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia.
The US delegate even said, “The IPCC’s acceptance of the report does not imply that the US endorsed it.” Teary-eyed pleas from at least one developing country delegate failed to move the spoilers. The debate will continue, probably overtaken by events in the real world.
More ambition?
It is now clear that the pledges made by countries for the Paris Agreement will not keep global temperature rise within the two-degree limit they agreed to. It is probably leading to a three-degree warmer world, a fearful prospect given the current impacts in a world one degree warmer.
Governments have been asked to ratchet up their ambitions in what is so far an informal process called the Talanoa Dialogue. In the formal UNFCCC process, there is provision for a global stocktake of Paris Agreement pledges in 2023.
During the first week of the current summit, delegates could not agree even on the modalities of this exercise, leave aside increasing ambitions. Developing countries want differentiation with developed countries maintained, while the US strenuously opposes it.
On many of these issues, there is no consensus among developing countries either. The poorest among them as well as the small island nations want stronger climate action, while larger economies such as those of China, India, Brazil and South Africa oppose it on the grounds that if the Paris Agreement unravels, it will be difficult to come to any agreement at all. In the meantime, most of their climate pledges are still considered insufficient to reach the Paris Agreement targets.
Among industrialised countries, the European Union is on a completely different page from the US, but is scared to say so openly, especially in light of the recent riots in Paris against fuel price hikes and the pro-coal position of summit host Poland. Using the recent riots as an excuse, Trump used his Twitter account to question throughout the week the Paris Agreement. He described it as “ridiculous” and “extremely expensive,” calling for its end.
As delegates left the summit venue late on Saturday night, one wondered, “What will happen to the whole Paris Agreement Work Programme (as the rulebook is officially known) if we had so much trouble over one word — welcome or note (the IPCC report).”
This post first appeared on, and is copyrighted to, India Climate Dialogue.
India Climate Dialogue
https://indiaclimatedialogue.net/
India has had a National Action Plan on Climate Change since 2008, with eight specific missions under it. But there has been relatively little action since then.
These issues have been the subject of debate among policymakers, academics, think tanks and in the media for over 20 years. But much of the debate is affected by one form of bias or the other. So there is an urgent need to have a dedicated outlet for impartial and objective news and views on all aspects of climate change, how it affects India, and what can be done about it.
India Climate Dialogue has been launched by The Third Pole to fulfill this need.
Govt seeks to acquire forest land for coal mining in Korba
By Editorial Team / January 15, 2021
The 2020 Climate Policy news round up
UN Climate Ambition Summit: No shortage of intent, little in terms of plans
By Admin / December 14, 2020
Is it time for India to update its climate game?
By Shreeshan V / December 10, 2020
Green recovery a must to cover climate action gap: UN report
COP24: Business calls for strong guidelines and increased climate ambition
Won’t allow developed countries to backslide: India, China raise alarm
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4608
|
__label__cc
| 0.563447
| 0.436553
|
Executive/VP
The Opportunity and Key Responsibilities
The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (“MCAD”) seeks a collaborative, innovative, and strategic finance professional to serve as the new Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”). The CFO will join the College during a moment of transformation and opportunity. Working collaboratively with senior leadership and members of the board of trustees they will be pivotal in creating new systems, processes, and approaches for MCAD’s mission of educating the next generation of creative, cultural leaders.
In partnership with the president, and as a member of the Executive Leadership Committee of MCAD, the CFO is a strategic colleague to the Vice Presidents (Enrollment Management, Institutional Advancement, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, and Communications and Marketing Strategy) and to the broader College community. Additionally, the CFO serves as the treasurer of the Board and will provide reports and analysis to the Board of Trustees. MCAD has approximately 129 full time staff. This position will have supervisory oversight of four Assistant Vice Presidents (Finance, Human Resources, Technology, and Facilities). Leading with both accountability and empathy the CFO will establish objectives, and enhance policies, procedures, programs, and practices to assure MCAD has sound financial processes and structure, and develop a forward-looking financial strategy and metrics tied to that strategy.
Key Responsibilities (but are not limited to):
Board-Related Functions
Direct and manage all financial affairs of MCAD.
Work with the president and Board of Trustees’ Finance Committee on forecasting, modeling and analysis in order to establish a financial plan to support the strategic direction of the College.
Oversee the timely preparation of all financial reporting materials, and metrics and projections for MCAD’s president, senior management team, and the Board.
Prepare and present financial reports to the Finance/Operations and Audit Committees of the Board of Trustees.
Work with the Finance Committee on investment policies and decision making with MCAD’s outside investment management firm. Analyze with the Finance Committee the performance of the investment management firm and lead any search process that might be necessary for alternative managers.
Develop and receive Board approval of the annual budget of the College.
Oversight of Finance Operations
Ensure that finance staff maintains financial record systems in accordance with (GAAP) Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and monitor the use of all funds.
Ensure that the College’s operations and activity remain compliant with non-profit tax exemption and IRS requirements.
Ensure adequate controls are installed and that documentation is approved and available such that all transactions of the College may pass independent and governmental audits and develop detailed strategies to follow up on opportunities for improvement identified in opinion letters and related letters from the independent auditors.
Responsible for all insurance and risk management programs.
Responsible for tax-exempt financing, bondholder relationships, and compliance with bond covenants.
Responsible for the annual pension audit, financial audit, financial aid audit, and 990 tax-exempt tax return filing and auditor relationships.
Prepare short and long-range budget modeling based on the strategic parameters.
Assure the College’s financial reports are accurate and timely for College departments and the Board.
Prepare financial information for accreditors and organizations that request them.
Oversight of Facilities, HR, and IT
Oversee all facilities planning and public safety operations for the College. Review all formal finance, HR, and IT related procedures, processes, and administration, recommending improvements to the systems in place and managing the systems going forward.
Coordinate with Human Resources to evaluate and oversee all benefits negotiations, thus providing the most competitive packages for MCAD employees.
Direct facilities, public safety, and IT staff in the successful operation of their areas with a focus on customer-service.
Additional Responsibilities
Engage with Institutional Advancement to align annual and campaign fundraising plans and financial projections.
Keep current with higher education finances by attending professional education sessions sponsored by NACUBO and CACUBO. Keep current by attending semi-annual meetings for the Minnesota Private College Finance Officers and bi-annual meetings for the AICAD Finance Officers.
Effectively communicate financial concepts and results to a wide variety of audiences with varying financial expertise.
Work on other financial projects as requested by the president.
About Minneapolis College of Art and Design (“MCAD”)
MCAD is dedicated to educating the next generation of cultural leaders. The College has a long and rich history in the Twin Cities region. Founded in 1886 as a small school of drawing and painting, MCAD was governed for much of the 20th century by the Minneapolis Society for Fine Arts while sharing space with the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Since becoming a wholly independent nonprofit institution in 1988, MCAD has grown into a successful, stable, and fully accredited art and design college, with a current enrollment of 785 undergraduate and graduate degree-seeking students. The College’s campus is located in an historic arts district in South Minneapolis and its signature building is a bold, flexible, and light-filled modernist structure designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. The College is located in one of the country’s most arts-supportive regions. Bolstered by its robust and diverse economy, Minnesota ranks first in the nation in per-capita public funding of the arts, and Minneapolis has been named one of the top ten creative cities in the United States.
MCAD has maintained impressive financial stability and a strong value proposition for students and families during a time of significant challenges in higher education. Despite the after-effects of the 2008 recession, the rising cost of higher education, and daunting trends in demographics, full-time equivalent enrollment at MCAD has grown by 8.8 percent since 2010. The average first-to-second-year retention rate over the past 5 years is 80.6 percent and MCAD’s six-year graduation rate is consistently in the 60 to 65 percent range.
As it has grown over the years, MCAD has been a pioneer of new programs and curricula. MCAD was the first art college to start online master’s degree programs in 2000 and has made substantial investments in technology for labs and classrooms. In 2006, MCAD introduced a core curriculum that integrated its strong studio programs with a thoughtful liberal arts framework complemented by practical and professional learning, including required internships for all students. In 2016-17, the College restructured and expanded its Entrepreneurial Studies Department, adding new courses to create a forward-looking undergraduate program that helps students start and run their own enterprises or entrepreneurial endeavors and become effective creative leaders. In the fall of 2018, MCAD introduced a new undergraduate major in Product Design. Other recent innovative programmatic additions include undergraduate minors in Art History, Creative Writing, Engaged and Public Arts, and Teaching Artist, the latter affording art and design students the opportunity to develop meaningful connections between their own studio practice and teaching artist work in community and K-12 settings.
In 2017, MCAD concluded its first-ever comprehensive capital campaign which was a significant boost for the organization. The Next/Now Campaign raised nearly $24 million for scholarships, academic programs, and capital projects. The funds raised enabled the first major construction project in ten years, a 13,000 sq. ft. center for media arts (M/Lab); the build-out of space for the revamped Entrepreneurial Studies program (E/Studio); and increased endowment funds for scholarships. The campaign funds raised for financial aid have helped to advance the College’s strongly held value of access and opportunity. With a discount rate of 46%, MCAD is committed to enrolling a student body that is diverse in socioeconomic background.
MCAD is Minnesota’s only four-year independent, accredited college of art and design, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD). The College’s last NASAD accreditation visit in 2018 and HLC visit in 2019 both went very well, with the NASAD visiting team reporting in summary that “the institution is uniquely cared for and that an extraordinary forward-looking community has been created.”
For the most recently audited fiscal year ending May 31, 2020, MCAD’s financial position consisted of $91M in total assets. Of the $91M in total assets, approximately $57M were investments, $23M net property, plant and equipment, and $6.7M beneficial interest in perpetual trusts. The College’s endowment net assets were approximately $53.5M, of which 72% had donor restrictions. The annual operating budget was approximately $34M, of which $12M was spent on financial aid, $15M for personnel expenses, and $7M for general program and operating expenses. MCAD’s Department of Education composite score for the last three years has averaged 3/3 and its average CFI for the last three years is 7.6. MCAD employed approximately 39 full time faculty and 129 staff and administrators in fiscal year 2020.
LEADERSHIP: PRESIDENT SANJIT SETHI
After a nationwide search in late 2018/early 2019, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name Sanjit Sethi as MCAD’s new President and were impressed with his deep commitment as an educator to creative expression and problem-solving in highly diverse communities and settings.
Sanjit Sethi became President of MCAD on July 15, 2019 and has since partnered with the Board, Executive Leadership Committee (“ELC”), and the MCAD community around the concept of cultural leadership. Under his tenure, the ELC has gone through an evolution with recent appointments of a new Vice President of Academic Affairs and Vice President of Communications and Marketing Strategy.
An educator, artist, curator, and cultural leader, Sethi most recently directed the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University. During his tenure at the Corcoran, Sethi oversaw the $47.5 million renovation of the school’s historic Flagg Building and launched several new degree programs. Prior to the Corcoran, he served in a variety of arts leadership roles, including chair of community arts and director at the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts and executive director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. He holds a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MFA from the University of Georgia, and an MS in advanced visual studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sethi has lectured widely on issues related to culture, creativity, and equity. As an arts education leader, he holds the core belief that innovation, diversity, and a global perspective are essential keys to vibrant creative communities.
For more information on MCAD, please visit website.
Bachelor’s degree required, with focus on Accounting and/or Business Administration, or related field preferred. Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) or related area of study strongly preferred; Certified Public Accountant (CPA) strongly preferred.
The CFO will be strategic and results-driven with strong leadership skills and a proven track record of success in similar roles of progressively greater responsibility. The ideal candidate will have a robust administrative and finance background, excellent relationship-building capabilities, and impeccable verbal and written communication skills. The CFO will have good business judgment, an analytical mindset, great capacity for flexibility and adaptability to shifting priorities or needs, and sound, influential decision-making abilities.
Ideal candidates will have at least 8-10 years of experience leading the finance and accounting function (required) and financial management experience preferably in a nonprofit and/or higher education organization of similar size and budget. Finance executives with corporate experience who are mission-driven and passionate about education will also be considered. Candidates with experience leading human resources, technology, and facilities are strongly preferred. Experience with union negotiations desirable. A natural change agent, the CFO will have the opportunity to innovate and improve services toward greater integration, optimization, and efficiencies. They will be nimble, strategic, and budget-focused, incorporating internal perspectives while informing decisions based on industry best practices.
The CFO will have the business savvy, financial, and administrative expertise and good judgment to establish the necessary trust and credibility, and cultivate and maintain excellent working relationships with administration, staff, faculty, outside consultants, and advisors, and colleagues. The CFO will also be expected to earn the respect and confidence of the College's Board of Trustees.
In addition, ideal candidates will have the following core competencies, personal qualities, and qualifications:
Financial and Administration Expertise
The CFO will have had strategic oversight over finance, administration, and technology with a measurable track record of success in developing and implementing strategies, policies, and processes. This executive will have demonstrated expertise in a range of administrative functions, and have knowledge of industry best practices, standard tools, and metrics including long-range forecasting, budget development and control, cash management, investment practices, and debt structures. The CFO will have demonstrated experience with fund accounting and endowment accounting and knowledge of FASB reporting requirements. The CFO will have experience in managing and keeping current software systems as well as selecting and implementing successfully new software systems.
The CFO must have experience with Great Plains, Blackbaud, and/or Sage or similar financial reporting platforms. Advanced Microsoft Office Suite experience, and expertise and fluency in Microsoft Excel is required. Fluency with Google Suite or similar platforms is strongly preferred.
Strategic and Entrepreneurial Leadership
The CFO will have the ability to develop and implement clear, action-oriented, innovative strategies aimed towards elevating the administrative functions of MCAD, including in the areas of finance, human resources, facilities, and technology. The CFO will inspire quality performance and enhance morale with the leadership capacity to build, nurture, and retain a strong team of professionals that is focused on excellence, accountability, and efficiency. Critical to success in this role, the CFO will be a natural entrepreneur and be flexible in adjusting as priorities emerge and change; they will be a nimble problem-solver, able to balance multiple tasks efficiently and effectively while balancing a complex array of constituent needs. The CFO will have a high level of business acumen and judgment, with the ability to make practical, realistic, data driven, and timely decisions. This individual will understand, analyze, and interpret complex problems to achieve sustainable solutions that will have lasting impact at MCAD.
Relationship Builder and Collaborator
The CFO will have demonstrated success in developing, managing, cultivating, and leveraging strategic relationships and partnerships and have a proven track record of reaching agreements that benefit MCAD. The CFO will have experience in being a collaborative partner with the senior leadership across all administrative functions and have demonstrated experience developing strong working and interpersonal relationships across all levels of an organization. Strong facilitation and negotiation skills are required demonstrating the ability to communicate effectively with diverse constituencies, including Boards of Trustees, faculty, staff, students, and external stakeholders.
The CFO will have experience effectively sharing information with appropriate direct reports, keeping the president and others up-to-date on matters related to the overall financial and administrative priorities or needs. By leading collaboratively via relationships and partnerships, the CFO will be able to synthesize divergent views and coalesce all community members around a shared plan.
Passion for the Mission
The CFO will have to demonstrate they will have a passion for and commitment to MCAD’s mission, history, and its work, with a desire to work in a dynamic, mission-driven educational environment. The CFO will need to understand how this role contributes to the overall mission, drawing inspiration for the position of CFO from the community. The CFO will prioritize the experience of MCAD’s students, faculty, staff, and leadership, endeavoring to raise the quality of the academic and personal environment at the College. Driven by the mission, this individual will influence the culture and impact of MCAD through modeling and adoption of best practices. The CFO will be an inspiring and empathic individual of unquestioned integrity, ethics, and values, treating others with respect.
This position has been identified as security sensitive and will require a background check. At the discretion of the College, various background checks may be done during the course of employment.
Koya Partners, the executive search firm that specializes in mission-driven search, has been exclusively retained for this engagement. Stephen Milbauer and Naree Viner are leading this search. To make recommendations or to express your interest in this role please submit a compelling cover letter and resume by visiting this link or email Stephen directly at smilbauer@koyapartners.com. All inquiries and discussions will be considered strictly confidential.
MCAD is an equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages applications from people of color, persons with disabilities, women, and LGBTQ+ applicants.
For more information about Koya Partners, visit www.koyapartners.com.
Connections working at Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) 6 Days Ago
Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operation Officer Bethesda, Maryland
The Landon School 2 Days Ago
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4609
|
__label__cc
| 0.576347
| 0.423653
|
Armadillo by William Boyd
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Armadillo, armor, books, dark humor, diaries in fiction, fiction, Five Colleges Book Sale, insurance, literary fiction, London, multicultural fiction, novels, Penguin Street Art, reading, Scotland, William Boyd on August 28, 2018| 1 Comment »
At the Five Colleges Book Sale last April I got a Penguin Street Art edition of Armadillo by William Boyd. I have to admit I hadn’t heard of Boyd nor read any of his work, but I was intrigued. I picked it up over the weekend and really enjoyed it. Dark humor, a bit of intrigue, a hero who wants to live and prosper as his own man yet is also deeply loyal, kind, and ethical — I devoured it.
Lorimer Black, said hero, is “a young man not much over thirty, tall — six feet plus and inch or two — with ink-dark hair and a serious-looking, fine-featured but pallid face, went to keep a business appointment and discovered a hanged man.” That’s the opening sentence. Lorimer, we learn, was born Milomre Blocj, youngest of five in a family of Transnistrian Rom (gypsies) whose parents emigrated to Fulham during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, having landed there during previous upheavals in Eastern Europe. After a formative and “life changing” experience (too hilarious to give away here) at a Scottish Univerisity, young Milo makes a fresh start in the insurance business as Lorimer Black, the name he legally gives himself.
The dead man we meet on page one is proprietor of a factory that had suffered a fire, and Lorimer, who works as a loss adjustor was there on behalf of his employer. Lorimer is a fascinating character, who buys fresh flowers for his flat (but hates carnations), is partial to very old helmets and takes fashion advice from his antiques dealer, is part of a sleep study conducted by a man in his building, is sweet to an old lady and her dog who live downstairs, is in a relationship of sorts with a woman who owns a scaffolding company, and lives by a strong moral code that leads him to life-changing actions. The minor characters are also fascinating and even those with cameos — a surly waitress at Lorimer’s favorite “caff,” or the misogynist anti-tax flower seller whose kiosk Lorimer frequents, for example — come fully to life.
Throughout the book, Boyd includes excerpts from Lorimer/Milo’s diary, The Book of Transfiguration, where he muses on everything from revelations from the Institute of Lucid Dreams (where his sleep is analyzed) to the history of insurance to Milo’s personal history to words, literature, mythology. These shed even more light on Lorimer/Milo’s character. Between this very interesting hero and the other fascinating characters, the detailed settings (you can see, smell, and hear Lorimer’s world as you read) and the intriguing, black humor-laced plot, I could not put this down. The writing, too, kept me fully engaged. Here’s an example: ” . . . he gazed across the road through the porthole of clarity he had smeared in the condensation.” It’s the kind of book that you can’t read at breakfast, because it’ll make you late for work. The kind you might get a sunburn reading because you’ll forget to reapply sunblock.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to find William Boyd’s work but I want to read more of it. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but I think that’s because I’ve found a lot of interesting things to read this summer!
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Abdel Kader Haidara, Ahmed Baba Institute, archivists, Belmont Books, book reviews, books, conservation, extremists, Islamic scholarship, jihadis, Joshua Hammer, libraries, Mali, manuscripts, medieval manuscripts, nonfiction, reading, Sahel, Savama-DCI, terrorism, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Timbuktu, war on August 23, 2018| 4 Comments »
I got to know a small but lovely independent bookstore this summer, Belmont Books, and one Saturday I spied on their staff picks display Joshua Hammer’s The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts. I had heard about the book when it first came out — although clearly I didn’t remember much, as you’ll soon see — and who doesn’t love that title? Not this librarian.
Only it turns out, it’s only partly about the librarians and a good bit about extremist jihadis and their takeover of Mali. I’ll grant that a good bit of the beginning of the book explores Mali’s history and the personal story of the incredible librarian, scholar and conservationist Abdel Kader Haidara. His story and that of the manuscripts of Timbuktu weave throughout the book. But Joshua Hammer also writes in great detail about why the manuscripts needed saving.
Haidara, son of a scholar whose family treasures included a very large collection of medieval manuscripts, was only seventeen when his father died and he was named the heir of the family library. The director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, established by UNESCO and the Malian government in the 70’s, sought Haidara out and asked him to come work for them. At the time, they had only about 2,500 manuscripts in their collection. Nine years later, thanks almost entirely to Haidara’s personal efforts, the collection had grown by 16,500, “one of the largest public collections of Arabic handwritten books in the world.”
Haidara wasn’t done. He went on to establish a private library to house his family’s collection, and he also established Savama-DCI, an organization of other families in Timbuktu with manuscripts. With his own library housing around 50,000 manuscripts, and the growing number of private libraries he had influenced, Haidara had been a huge force in re-establishing Timbuktu as a cultural center, and in reminding the world of the city’s long heritage of scholarship.
All of that is very inspiring. What is amazing is that as Hammer tells readers, Haidara’s hard work had only just begun. Despite these accomplishments and his successful fundraising (many prominent foundations from around the world supported his work and that of his colleagues), the most challenging tasks were still to come.
And this is where I had a harder time reading The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. Hammer spares no grisly details as he describes the rise of radical Islam in the Sahara and the Sahel. I admit part of my discomfort came from realizing that even though I try to pay attention to news from around the world, I don’t recall hearing much about the civil war in Mali and the jihadist takeover of the northern part of the country. And part of my discomfort is because I don’t usually read accounts of brutality as detailed as Hammer’s.
Faced with a growing fear that the jihadis would destroy Timbuktu’s manuscripts, as they had smashed Sufi shrines, broken and burned musical instruments and threatened Mali’s other cultural treasure — musicians — with disfigurement if they continued to play or sing, Haidara, knew he had to do something. So together with an American woman in Mali, known in the book as Emily Brady, he once again raised funds and worked to evacuate the manuscripts. Like the gripping story of his collecting them in the first place, the story of Haidara’s rescue is uplifting and mind-boggling.
They gathered trunks, recruited donkey carts, trucks, and boats, recruited families to hide manuscripts in Timbuktu and then recruited them again, to evacuate the trunks. Despite the dangers and expense, they succeeded. Around 377,000 manuscripts survived. Hammer tells the story well. Just be prepared for a fair bit of geopolitics and out and out horror if you read this book — well written, but hard to stomach.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Canadian writers, desert explorers, fiction, golden Booker, historical fiction, Italy, Michael Ondaatje, novels, sappers, Sikhs, The English Patient, WWII on August 5, 2018| 3 Comments »
My book club decided to read The English Patient after the recent announcement that it had won the “golden” Booker, chosen by readers from a shortlist (selected by judges) of 5 books representing the five decades of the prize. I’d never read it before, but I had recently ordered Warlight, Ondaatje‘s recent novel, for my library and was curious to read the book he’s possibly most known for.
The copy I read has the movie cover — a marketing trend I dislike — with a blown up image of a kiss between two of the characters. This image misleadingly indicates that this love affair, between the man known throughout most of the novel only as the English Patient (because is burned beyond recognition) and the wife of a fellow desert explorer is the central story. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
The story is actually four fragmented stories which come together, as the people they belong to do, at the end of WWII in an abandoned monastery, Villa San Girolamo. Hana is the first to be there, when it was still an active war hospital. Only twenty years old, she has served as a nurse throughout Italy, where she has suffered her own losses as well as caring for dozens of wounded and dying soldiers. When the allied hospital staff move on she turns in her uniform and stays, in a place where she “felt safe . . . half adult and half child,” with the English patient, who is too injured to move. For some time it just the two of them in the ruined building, which really isn’t actually safe. Then Caravaggio, a man described as a thief who was Hana’s father’s friend in Toronto, shows up after hearing about the strange young nurse and her patient. Finally Kip, a Punjabi Sikh man from a British sapper unit, comes to stay at the Villa, clearing it of explosives, sleeping in a tent in the garden.
Ondaatje provides only glimpses of each of his main characters, just as one might get from meeting strangers in a war torn place in strange circumstances. Of the four, it is Kip we come to know best, and whose future Ondaatje most clearly portrays. And it is the love between these four, the comradely love that develops when people are thrown together in loss and danger, that is really the centerpiece, not the English Patient’s and his Cairo lover’s. I still think it is accurate to call it a love story set in wartime. But it isn’t just about passion.
It’s also the story of the end of the colonial world, and the rise of a world where wars will now have “mutually assured destruction” hanging over them in the shape of no longer theoretical mushroom clouds. The most moving parts of the book, for me, are towards the end, when Kip hears over his crystal radio set about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and is horrified, realizing that as he has been risking his life throughout the war to disarm bombs, the allies have been planning to unleash this new weapon. He sees, suddenly, that these people he has come to love and admire are the enemy of “the brown races” just as his militant brother in India has warned him.
This isn’t a book with a lot of action, although again, Kip’s story has the most. It’s a book with a lot of scenes in the dark, where the English Patient’s identity stays for much of the time. It’s incredibly interesting — salted with history, geography, literature and art, and a few real historical figures who appear as characters. And it’s a drama about the human capacity to wound and to heal.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4611
|
__label__wiki
| 0.646842
| 0.646842
|
Callahan v. Stanley Works
Kolanovic v. Gida
A potential spoliator need do only what is reasonable under the circumstances." Callahan v. Stanley Works,…
Gilleski v. Community Medical Center
Rather, plaintiffs' case is premised on a theory of "negligent" spoliation of evidence. The trial court,…
Full title:JOSEPH CALLAHAN, PLAINTIFF, v. STANLEY WORKS AND HOME DEPOT, U.S.A., INC.…
Court:Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Monmouth County
306 N.J. Super. 488 (N.J. Super. Law Div. 1997)
703 A.2d 1014
Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Monmouth County
holding that " jury could find that Home Depot owed a duty of care to [plaintiff] to preserve the pallet since a reasonable person in Home Depot's position `should have foreseen that the evidence was material to a potential civil action'"
Summary of this case from Gilleski v. Community Medical Center
Decided June 30, 1997.
Vincent Manning, Esq. for plaintiff Joseph Callahan.
Thomas Regan, Esq. for defendant Stanley Works.
Julie Battista, Esq. for defendant Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.
D'AMICO, J.S.C.
Plaintiff Joseph Callahan (Callahan) alleges that on December 31, 1993, he was employed at the Woodbridge, New Jersey, store of defendant Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (Home Depot). Callahan and another Home Depot employee, who was operating a fork lift or reach truck, were moving a pallet of storm doors between a storage rack and the selling floor. While doing so, the pallet and its load of doors tipped off the forks of the reach truck and struck Callahan, rendering him unconscious and causing him serious injuries.
Callahan originally filed suit against Stanley Works (Stanley), improperly pled as The Stanley Corporation, alleging negligent and careless packaging and shipping of the doors to Home Depot's store in Woodbridge, resulting in the creation of an unsafe and dangerous condition. Subsequently, Callahan amended the complaint to name Home Depot as a direct defendant, alleging that Home Depot negligently and carelessly lost or destroyed the pallet which may have been the instrument of the injury.
Stanley Works moves for summary judgment, arguing that the report of Callahan's expert constitutes a net opinion and is therefore inadmissible. Home Depot moves to dismiss Callahan's complaint, arguing that New Jersey does not recognize the tort of negligent spoliation of evidence.
The court has concluded that the expert's report does not constitute a net opinion and hence is admissible. As this court's reasoning leading to this conclusion was based upon established case law and otherwise did not satisfy the criteria for publication, this portion of the opinion has been redacted for publication purposes.
NEGLIGENT SPOLIATION OF EVIDENCE
When determining whether to dismiss a complaint pursuant to Rule 4:6-2(e), "a reviewing court `searches the complaint in depth and with great liberality to ascertain whether the fundament of a cause of action may be gleaned even from an obscure statement of claim, opportunity being given to amend if necessary.'" Printing Mart-Morristown v. Sharp Electronics Corp., 116 N.J. 739 , 746, 563 A.2d 31 (1989) (quoting Di Cristofaro v. Laurel Grove Memorial Park, 43 N.J. Super. 244 , 252, 128 A.2d 281 (App.Div. 1957)). A motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim should only be granted in the rarest of instances and if granted, it should be without prejudice in order to allow the plaintiff to file an amended complaint. See Printing Mart-Morristown, supra, 116 N.J. at 772, 563 A.2d 31.
In the present case, Callahan alleges in count four of his complaint that he has been damaged in his ability to demonstrate and prove the liability of Stanley due to Home Depot's alleged loss or misplacement of the subject pallet. The loss prevention supervisor employed by Home Depot, Michael Ippolito, states in his deposition testimony that he placed an evidence tag on the subject pallet shortly after the accident and put it away. Home Depot needed the pallet to investigate Callahan's workers' compensation claim in order to determine the cause of the accident. The complaint alleges that Home Depot lost or misplaced the pallet, thereby impairing Callahan's ability to prove his negligence claim against Stanley.
To date, New Jersey has not recognized the tort of negligent spoliation of evidence. In Hirsch v. General Motors Corp., 266 N.J. Super. 222, 628 A.2d 1108 (Law Div. 1993), the trial court noted:
New Jersey courts have not recognized negligent spoliation of evidence as an independent tort. See Nerney v. Garden State Hosp., 229 N.J. Super. 37 [ 550 A.2d 1003] (App.Div. 1988). In Nerney v. Garden State Hosp., supra, plaintiff alleged that defendant Dr. Eugene Cohen negligently misdiagnosed a wrist fracture. Plaintiff sent his X-rays, which Dr. Cohen had originally examined, to Dr. Paul Friedman. Dr. Friedman concluded that the X-rays evidenced a fractured wrist, but they were later lost or misplaced and unavailable for trial. The Appellate Division stated that "the negligent loss of evidence is comparable to a party's failure to comply with discovery obligations, which may result in an order barring introduction of evidence at trial . . ."
In Viviano v. CBS, Inc., 251 N.J. Super. 113 , 597 A.2d 543 (App.Div. 1991), a malfunctioning machine used to press plastic phonograph records malfunctioned, destroying three and a half of plaintiff's fingers. Defendant employer failed to produce a potentially incriminating memorandum which plaintiff needed in order to recover for her injuries in a products liability action against the manufacturer. The Appellate Division held that defendants who fraudulently conceal information relevant to a lawsuit for work-related injuries are liable in damages to the injured employee. In doing so, the Viviano court stated:
Plaintiff's cause of action in the present case is analogous to a recently recognized cause of action for destruction of evidence which has been dubbed `spoliation of evidence'. . . . The elements of that tort are:
(1) pending or probable litigation involving the plaintiff; (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that litigation exists or is probable; (3) willful or, possibly negligent destruction of evidence by the defendant designed to disrupt the plaintiff's case; and (5) damages proximately caused by the defendant's acts.
[citations omitted]. Id. at 125-6, 597 A.2d 543.
To accord its holding with the facts of the case, the court substituted the words "concealment of evidence" for "destruction of evidence," thereby creating a cause of action for willful concealment of evidence. Id. at 126, 597 A.2d 543. The court did not address negligent spoliation of evidence.
In Trump Taj Mahal v. Costruzioni Aeronautiche Giovanni, 761 F. Supp. 1143 (D.N.J. 1991), aff'd, 958 F.2d 365 (3d Cir. 1992), the court refused to recognize a claim of spoliation of evidence, arguing that the creation of a new cause of action is a matter best left to the New Jersey state courts. The present case therefore involves an issue of first impression: May an injured employee make a negligent spoliation of evidence claim against an employer on the ground that the loss or destruction of the evidence which the employer undertook to preserve disrupts the employee's ability to pursue a third party negligence action?
The court in Viviano v. C.B.S., Inc., supra, 251 N.J. Super. 113 , 597 A.2d 543, recognized that immunizing the willful destruction or concealment of evidence would not further the policy of encouraging testimonial candor. Id. at 126, 597 A.2d 543. The court then quoted the following language from Petrik v. Monarch Printing Corp., 150 Ill.App.3d 248, 103 Ill.Dec. 774, 781, 501 N.E.2d 1312, 1319 (1986), appeal denied, 114 Ill.2d 556, 108 Ill.Dec. 424, 508 N.E.2d 735 (1987):
This state's system of civil litigation is founded in large part on a litigant's ability under the authority of the Supreme Court rules, to investigate and uncover evidence after filing suit. Destruction of evidence known to be relevant to pending litigation violates the spirit of liberal discovery. Intentional destruction of evidence manifests a shocking disregard for orderly judicial procedures and offends traditional notions of fair play.
Many of the policy considerations which underlie the tort of intentional spoliation of evidence also favor adoption of the tort of negligent spoliation of evidence. Spoliation of evidence creates enormous costs for both the victimized party and the judicial system, prevents fair and proper adjudication of the issues, and interferes with the administration of justice. The Spoliation Tort: An Approach To Underlying Principles, 26 St. Mary's L.J. 351, 402 (1995).
Recognition of the tort of negligent spoliation of evidence would likely reduce the possibility of negligent as well as intentional destruction of evidence by putting individuals, business, and governmental entities on notice of acceptable societal behavior. The increased availability of relevant evidence would in turn further an individual's due process right to have one's grievances heard by a court of competent jurisdiction utilizing all relevant evidence. The failure to recognize negligent spoliation as a separate tort would invite destruction or suppression of relevant evidence by an opponent or third party, thus creating or continuing the perception that individual due process rights are unimportant or are somehow being trampled by the judicial system itself. Do Not Fold Spindle Or Mutilate: The Trend Toward Recognition of Spoliation as a Separate Tort, 30 Idaho L.Rev. 37, 63 (1993).
Recognition of negligent spoliation as a separate cause of action would also benefit litigants by reducing litigation costs. Costs associated with evidence reconstruction and identification of categories of documents requiring preservation would be avoided, as would the costs of propounding discovery to ascertain the fate of spoliated evidence. Id. at 65.
Adoption of negligent spoliation of evidence as a separate tort would also benefit society by promoting testimonial and discovery candor. If litigating parties are made responsible for preserving all relevant evidence, the number of cases in which decisions are made based on all relevant information would increase. An explicit prohibition against negligent spoliation would also tend to conserve judicial resources by reducing the number of motions to compel production of evidence and the corresponding costs of discovery. Id. at 67.
On the issue presented in this case, the most instructive negligent spoliation case is Boyd v. Travelers Ins. Co., 166 Ill.2d 188, 209 Ill.Dec. 727, 652 N.E.2d 267 (1995). In Boyd, an employee who was injured in an explosion allegedly caused by a propane catalytic heater he was using sued the employer's workers' compensation carrier for negligent spoliation of evidence based upon the carrier's loss of the heater before it could be inspected and tested. The employee also sued the heater manufacturer for products liability and negligence. Plaintiff contended that the carrier's loss of the heater impaired his ability to prove that claim. Ruling that plaintiff could maintain a claim for negligent spoliation, the Illinois Supreme Court noted that:
[T]he general rule is that there is no duty to preserve evidence; however, a duty to preserve evidence may arise through an agreement, a contract, a statute . . . or another special circumstance. Moreover, a defendant may voluntarily assume a duty by affirmative conduct [citation omitted.] In any of the foregoing instances, a defendant owes a duty of care to preserve evidence if a reasonable person in the defendant's position should have foreseen that the evidence was material to a potential civil action. Id. at 731, 652 N.E.2d at 271.
The scope of the duty to preserve evidence is not boundless. A "potential spoliator need do only what is reasonable under the circumstances." Hirsch, supra, 266 N.J. Super. at 251, 628 A.2d 1108. The Restatement (Second) of Torts Section 323 (1965) provides, however, that:
One who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another which he should recognize as necessary for the protection of the other person or things, is subject to liability to the other for physical harm resulting from his failure to exercise reasonable care to perform his undertaking, if
(a) his failure to exercise such care increases the risk of such harm, or
(b) the harm is suffered because of the other's reliance upon the undertaking.
In the present case, giving plaintiff the benefit of all favorable inferences, the facts indicate the existence of "special circumstances" from which a jury could conclude that Home Depot gratuitously undertook a duty to preserve the subject pallet and failed to perform that duty. Immediately after the accident, Home Depot took steps to preserve the subject pallet. Home Depot also imposed a lien on any damages Callahan might recover, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 34:15-40. A jury could find that Home Depot owed a duty of care to Callahan to preserve the pallet since a reasonable person in Home Depot's position "should have foreseen that the evidence was material to a potential civil action." Boyd, supra, 209 Ill.Dec. at 731 , 652 N.E.2d at 271.
To maintain a negligent spoliation of evidence claim, "a plaintiff must allege sufficient facts to support a claim that the loss or destruction of the evidence caused the plaintiff to be unable to prove an underlying lawsuit." Id. at 731, 652 N.E.2d at 271. In Boyd, the carrier not only lost the heater, but also failed to test it to determine the cause of the explosion. The court stated:
Plaintiffs were thereby deprived of the key piece of evidence in their products liability lawsuit against Coleman — the product itself. They claim that, as a result, no expert could testify whether the heater was defective or dangerously designed. These allegations are sufficient to support a theory that Travelers' loss of the heater caused plaintiffs to be unable to prove their suit against Coleman.
Id. at 731, 652 N.E.2d at 271.
The court did state, however, that a threat of future harm is not actionable. Id. at 732, 652 N.E.2d at 272. The court reasoned that a "plaintiff is required to allege that a defendant's loss or destruction of the evidence caused the plaintiff to be unable to prove an otherwise valid, underlying cause of action. A plaintiff must prove this before the harm has been realized." Id. at 732, 652 N.E.2d at 272.
This court adopts the principles set forth in the Boyd case and finds that Callahan has presented sufficient facts to withstand Home Depot's motion to dismiss his complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. The subject pallet is the key piece of evidence in this case. Because of its unavailability, Callahan may be unable to prove the underlying action against Stanley. In that event, his only remedy would be a claim of negligent spoliation of evidence against Home Depot.
Callahan has received workers compensation benefits with respect to the accident. Callahan's recovery of those benefits would not bar Callahan's negligent spoliation of evidence claim against Home Depot, since the claim is distinct and does not arise out of or in the course of employment. N.J.S.A. 34:15-8; Vega v. Standard Machinery Co. of Auburn, Rhode Island, 290 N.J. Super. 434, 675 A.2d 1194 (App.Div. 1996); Rothfuss v. Bakers Mut. Ins. Co. of New York, 107 N.J. Super. 189 , 257 A.2d 733 (App.Div. 1969); Imre v. Riegel Paper Corp., 24 N.J. 438, 132 A.2d 505 (1957); Mager v. United Hospitals of Newark, 88 N.J. Super. 421 , 212 A.2d 664 (App.Div. 1965), Aff'd, o.b. 46 N.J. 398, 217 A.2d 325 (1966). See also Coca Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles v. Superior Court and Jones, 233 Cal.App.3d 1273, 286 Cal.Rptr. 855 (1991) (Exclusivity provisions in worker's compensation act did not preclude employee's third-party action for negligent spoilation of evidence against employer, as the action asserted tortious conduct by the employer after the accident which irreparably disrupted plaintiff's third-party suit against an automobile manufacturer) and Pirocchi v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, 365 F. Supp. 277 (E.D.Pa. 1973) (worker's compensation action did not preclude an injured employee from suing his employer's carrier for damages resulting from alleged negligent acts of the carrier's agent leading to loss of physical evidence, thereby destroying the employee's cause of action against a third party).
For all of the reasons set forth above, Home Depot's motion to dismiss Callahan's complaint for failure to state a claim is denied. Procedurally, a single jury should be allowed to hear both actions — namely, Callahan's third-party negligence action against Stanley and his negligent spoliation of evidence action against Home Depot. Boyd, supra 209 Ill.Dec. at 732 , 652 N.E.2d at 272. At trial, the jury should first resolve Stanley's liability. The jury should be asked to determine whether the pallet in question belonged to Stanley. If the jury determines that it did, then the jury would proceed to consider the negligence claim against Stanley. If Callahan is able to prosecute his action against Stanley without the missing pallet, then he will not be permitted to pursue his negligent spoliation of evidence claim against Home Depot because he would not have been injured by Home Depot's loss of it. See Boyd, supra, at 733, 652 N.E.2d at 273. However, if the jury finds that the pallet did not belong to Stanley, then Callahan may proceed with the negligent spoliation of evidence claim and seek to establish the viability and worth of the claim against Stanley that was allegedly disrupted. In that instance, the jury would decide the following questions:
1. Did Home Depot voluntarily assume a duty to preserve the pallet?
2. Did the loss or destruction of the pallet disrupt Callahan's ability to prove his negligence claim against Stanley?
3. If so, what sum of money will reasonably and adequately compensate Callahan for damages for the lost value of his personal injury claim against Stanley? See Fuschetti v. Bierman, 128 N.J. Super. 290 , 297, 319 A.2d 781 (Law Div. 1974); Gautam v. De Luca, 215 N.J. Super. 388 , 397, 521 A.2d 1343 (App.Div. 1987).
If the jury awards damages to Callahan on the negligent spoliation of evidence claim, the amount payable by Home Depot will be reduced by the amount of the worker's compensation lien. This adjustment is required because the lien would have been imposed on any recovery by Callahan from Stanley pursuant to N.J.S.A. 34:15-40.
noting the efficiency in having the same jury consider both the underlying liability claim and the spoliation claim
Summary of this case from Coleman Construction, Inc. v. Diamond State Insurance Co.
In Callahan, the plaintiff, an employee of Home Depot, was injured at work when he and another Home Depot employee who operated a fork lift, attempted to move a pallet of storm doors between a storage rack and the selling floor.
Summary of this case from Kolanovic v. Gida
In Callahan v. Stanley, 57 Cal. 476, evidence of custom was admitted to explain the meaning of the word "stubble" as used in a lease.
Summary of this case from Miller v. Stults
In Callahan v. Stanley, 57 Cal. 479, it is said: "If there was an existing usage among farmers as to the meaning of the word 'stubble' where this contract was made, it must be inferred that the contracting parties, being farmers, contracted with reference to it, and that they used the word in the broader meaning which was given to it by that usage and not in the ordinary or popular sense.
Summary of this case from Corey v. Struve
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4613
|
__label__wiki
| 0.79326
| 0.79326
|
In re Kelly
In re Gannon
Thus, a debtor shall be denied his discharge if he knowingly and fraudulently makes a false oath or account…
In re Dubrowsky
Fraudulent intent must be shown by actual, not constructive fraud. In re Kelly, 135 B.R. 459, 461…
Full title:In re Michael W. KELLY, Debtor. Mary S. ZITWER, Chapter 7 Trustee of the…
Court:United States Bankruptcy Court, S.D. New York
Date published: Jan 8, 1992
135 B.R. 459 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 1992)
United States Bankruptcy Court, S.D. New York
stating an "[a]mendment does not expunge the falsity of an oath.... [however] the court may consider the debtor's subsequent voluntary disclosure as evidence of innocent intent."
Summary of this case from In re Bressler
Bankruptcy No. 90 B 10515 (TLB). Adv. No. 90-6208A.
Warshaw Burstein Cohen Schlesinger Kuh by Michele Kahn, New York City, for trustee.
Marc Stuart Goldberg Associates, P.C. by Lawrence M. Gottlieb, New York City, for Michael W. Kelly, debtor.
DECISION ON COMPLAINT OBJECTING TO DISCHARGE
TINA L. BROZMAN, Bankruptcy Judge.
Defendant Michael W. Kelly is an unemployed bond trader who filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. The Plaintiff Mary S. Zitwer was appointed as his trustee. She now seeks to deny Kelly a discharge pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 727(a)(2)(B) and (a)(4)(A) on the grounds that he fraudulently concealed property of the estate and knowingly and fraudulently made false oaths.
A § 341 meeting of creditors was held on March 26, 1991, continued on May 4th and continued again on July 12th. Kelly admits that he omitted from his schedules and, at the meeting on May 4th, failed to disclose the ownership of two automobiles, a 1980 Mercedes and a 1984 Volvo that was and always had been in his mother's possession. He also had failed to list in his schedules repayments of a $15,000 loan from an acquaintance and a $6,000 loan from his mother, but he did disclose these payments in his testimony at the § 341 meeting.
The attorney with whom Kelly had met and discussed his finances did not attend either the March or May meetings, but sent in his place an associate who was ill-prepared and unfamiliar with all of the details of the case. Kelly testified that he was, as a result, anxious and confused. He explained that his anxiety and confusion were exacerbated by the Trustee's manner, which he found intimidating and overly aggressive toward him as well as toward other debtors. (He had witnessed her removing a ring from the finger of an elderly woman and acting in what he described as a hostile manner.) At the May 7th session, the Trustee asked Kelly several questions aimed at determining whether he owned any automobiles. Plainly, Kelly lied, at least as to the Mercedes. At trial, he admitted that he had lied because he was wholly unprepared for his examination by his counsel, intimidated by the Trustee and fearful that the Trustee would immediately seize the vehicles. However, he contended that he did not prepare his schedules nor arrive at the § 341 meeting intending to perjure himself or defraud his creditors. Indeed, he testified without contradiction that accurate information regarding the ownership of the two vehicles was provided to his former counsel who assisted in the preparation of his bankruptcy schedules.
Kelly had fully expected his counsel to appear, and was nonplussed by being represented by an associate completely unfamiliar with his case. Kelly explained at trial that lying to support his schedules in the face of the Trustee's questions was a momentary indiscretion, not a preconceived scheme. His later actions support this assertion.
So guilty did he feel about having lied under oath that he communicated with another bankruptcy attorney known to a friend of his and had that attorney call the Trustee to inform her of the existence of the two automobiles. He also had that attorney recommend new counsel for him. As a result of Kelly's revelation to the Trustee, the two automobiles were ultimately sold for more than $14,000.
New counsel amended the schedules. Kelly contends that his former counsel did not adequately explain to him the nature of the property and the loan repayments omitted from the schedules. Under former counsel's tutelage, he believed that the Mercedes was too old to be of any significant value, and he considered the Volvo to be his mother's property, not his. This view of the Volvo was sufficiently strong that, after Kelly revealed its existence, he actually litigated the ownership issue. Thus, while Kelly concedes that he did make false statements, he asserts that he did not intend to fraudulently conceal property of the estate.
Objections to discharge must be construed strictly against the objectant and liberally in favor of the debtor. Bank of Pennsylvania v. Adlman ( In re Adlman), 541 F.2d 999 (2d Cir. 1976). The party seeking to bar discharge bears the burden of proof in establishing that (1) the debtor made a statement under oath; (2) such statement was false; (3) the debtor knew the statement was false; (4) the debtor made the statement with fraudulent intent; and (5) the statement related materially to the bankruptcy case. In re Arcuri, 116 B.R. 873, 879-80 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y. 1990).
Some courts have required the plaintiff to prove all the essential elements by clear and convincing evidence. Arcuri at 879; In re Bernard, 99 B.R. 563, 570 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y. 1989); In re Taub, 98 F.2d 81 (2d Cir. 1938); In re Braun, 98 B.R. 382 (Bankr.N.D.Ill. 1989). Other courts have applied the less stringent preponderance of the evidence standard. In re Shebel, 54 B.R. 199 (Bankr.D.Vt. 1985); In re Irving, 27 B.R. 943 (Bankr.E.D.N.Y. 1983). Recently, however, the Supreme Court has suggested in dicta, in a decision holding a preponderance of the evidence standard applicable to the § 523(a) discharge provision, that Congress intended the same standard to apply to § 727(a)(4)(A). Grogan v. Garner, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 654, 660, 112 L.Ed.2d 755 (1991). Consequently, it is now uncertain whether a court may require a plaintiff seeking denial of discharge under § 727(a)(4)(A) to meet the higher burden of the clear and convincing evidence standard. In re Sapru, 127 B.R. 306 (Bkrtcy.E.D.N.Y. 1991) (not necessary to decide which standard applies after Grogan because proof supports violation of § 727(a)(4)(A) by clear and convincing evidence.)
Turning to the facts here, it is undisputed that under oath Kelly denied owning the two automobiles, that these statements were false and that as to the 1980 Mercedes, Kelly knew his denial was false. Nor is Kelly claiming that the omissions were immaterial to the case. Any matter pertinent to the discovery of assets is material. In re Mascolo, 505 F.2d 274, 277 (1st Cir. 1974). Thus, the focus of the inquiry here is whether he made these statements with fraudulent intent.
Amendment does not expunge the falsity of an oath. Arcuri at 882; Shebel at 203. Nonetheless, it is well established that the court may consider the debtor's subsequent voluntary disclosure as evidence of innocent intent. In re Tabibian, 289 F.2d 793, 797 (2d Cir. 1961); In re Kilson, 83 B.R. 198, 203 (Bankr.D.Conn. 1988). Fraudulent intent must be shown by actual, not constructive fraud. 4 L. King, Collier on Bankruptcy, para. 727.02 at 727-15 (15th ed. 1990); In re Sawyer, 130 B.R. 384 (E.D.N.Y. 1991). Scienter and fraudulent, wilful intent are essential elements. In re Irving, 27 B.R. 943, 945 (Bankr.E.D.N.Y. 1983). Thus, the party objecting to discharge must show that the information was omitted for the specific purpose of perpetrating a fraud and not simply because the debtor was careless or failed to fully understand his attorney's instructions. In re Seablom, 45 B.R. 445, 449 (Bankr.D.N.D. 1984). As a debtor will rarely admit actual intent to defraud creditors, fraudulent intent may be established by circumstantial evidence or by inferences drawn from a course of conduct. In re Glaser, 49 B.R. 1015, 1019 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y. 1985).
Kelly advances three arguments to support his contention that he lacked the requisite intent. First, he notes that he amended the schedules when, after retaining new counsel, he became aware of the need to do so; second, he alleges that the omission of the automobiles from the schedules was an honest mistake and not an effort to conceal property; third, he asserts that his failure to disclose ownership of the automobiles in the schedules and his misstatements at the § 341 meeting reflect understandable fear, confusion and unfamiliarity with the requirements of the court rather than fraudulent intent.
The Trustee suggests that it was the Debtor's effort to conceal assets and withhold information from his own counsel that led him to obtain different counsel during the pendency of the proceeding. Yet the telephone call to the Trustee before Kelly had retained substitute counsel seems to support the contrary conclusion: Kelly sought new counsel precisely because he was concerned that his case was not being handled properly and that he was not communicating effectively with his former attorney.
The defense of reliance on counsel is not available when it is transparently plain that the advice is improper. In re Mascolo, 505 F.2d 274, 277 n. 4 (1st Cir. 1974); In re Nazarian, 18 B.R. 143, 147 (Bankr.D.Md. 1982). Here, however, Kelly took the necessary steps of retaining new counsel and amending the schedules when he realized his reliance was misplaced. Thus, the omissions from the schedules are excusable.
It is more difficult to believe that Kelly did not understand that he was concealing property of the estate when, under oath, he denied owning an automobile. However, as one court has stated, "we can understand how a debtor testifying in an atmosphere charged with hostility would choose to defensively minimize his disclosure." In re Brame, 23 B.R. 196, 200 (Bankr.W.D.Ky. 1982). Denial of discharge is reserved for the truly pernicious debtor. Only where there is a preconceived scheme to thwart the rights of creditors and the process of this court, or such a cavalier disregard of duty as to constitute the legal equivalent of those motives, is the discharge withheld. Id.
Kelly explains that he thought the 10-year-old car was of so little value that it was not material. Determining whether disclosure is material is not for the debtor to decide. Nor is it a defense that the property was worthless, which, of course, here it was not. Successful administration of the bankruptcy laws depends on the debtor's full disclosure. See In re Chalik, 748 F.2d 616, 618 (11th Cir. 1984); Diorio v. Kreisler-Borg Construction Co., 407 F.2d 1330, 1331 (2d Cir. 1969).
To support denying Kelly a discharge, the Trustee relies on Sapru. But Sapru underscores just how different this case is from those where a discharge is typically denied.
Sapru involved an involuntary Chapter 7 case filed by a creditor bank that was owed at least $860,000. The debtor failed to comply with discovery orders; he made numerous false statements concerning his business affairs, going so far as to omit from his schedules any interest of stock ownership in a corporation of which he was the sole shareholder; and he made no attempt to explain the false statements and omissions, merely claiming that the false statements were immaterial and that he lacked fraudulent intent. The court concluded that discharge should be denied because even if any one of the false oaths and omissions taken separately would have been too immaterial to justify denying discharge, the "multitude of discrepancies, falsehoods and omissions, taken collectively, were of sufficient `materiality' to bar discharge." Id., 127 B.R. at 315-316.
Kelly is not a debtor whose actions fit this mold. Although his statements at the § 341 meeting were clearly false, his subsequent prompt and voluntary actions to set the record straight went a long way toward vitiating his impropriety. This was not a case where the Trustee independently discovered the fraud and confronted the debtor who buckled under the weight of discovered truth, forced to acknowledge his guilt. Here, Kelly voluntarily retracted his false oath before it was discovered and without damage to the estate.
At trial, the court has the opportunity to observe the debtor's demeanor and assess his credibility. Although a debtor's education and business experience are factors to consider in determining whether he can appreciate what information must be disclosed, this debtor's misunderstanding of information to be set forth on his schedules is wholly believable. In no way do I condone Kelly's carelessness and his knowing denial of ownership of the automobiles. Nonetheless, I cannot find that he intended nor that the Trustee has proven, even by a preponderance of the evidence, that he made false statements with specific intent to deceive or such reckless indifference as to constitute actual fraud.
The Trustee's complaint to deny a discharge is dismissed. Settle an order for judgment consistent with this opinion.
Noting that the Grogan decision suggests that a preponderance of the evidence standard should be applied to § 727 actions and that "it is now uncertain whether a court may require a plaintiff seeking denial of discharge under § 727 to meet the higher burden of the clear and convincing evidence standard."
Summary of this case from In re Wolfson
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4614
|
__label__wiki
| 0.672501
| 0.672501
|
Williams v. State
Stephenson v. State
The scientific evidence pointed to by appellant as raising a reasonable doubt, is not conclusive in any…
Putman v. State
[Cit.]" Williams v. State, 153 Ga. App. 890, 892 ( 267 S.E.2d 305) (1980). We have examined the photographs…
Full title:WILLIAMS v. THE STATE
Court:Court of Appeals of Georgia
Date published: Mar 13, 1980
267 S.E.2d 305 (Ga. Ct. App. 1980)
267 S.E.2d 305
Court of Appeals of Georgia
SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 6, 1980.
DECIDED MARCH 13, 1980.
Damage to property. Cobb State Court. Before Judge Hines.
Irvan A. Pearlberg, for appellant.
Herbert A. Rivers, Solicitor, Charles C. Clay, Assistant Solicitor, for appellee.
BIRDSONG, Judge.
George H. Williams, III was convicted of the misdemeanor of tampering with an electric meter regulating and measuring the flow of electric current into his home. The facts show that Williams was a police officer on the force of the City of Acworth. As a police officer, Williams had investigated similar cases involving meter tampering. The meter in question was the property of the City of Marietta. The City of Marietta utilized three seals on their meters, orange-colored to indicate a meter in proper use, white to indicate that the past user had terminated service because of moving or other reason, and red to show that the meter was inactive (i. e., had been turned off) because of nonpayment of electric bill. The City of Acworth also utilized seals but it used a red seal to indicate a meter in proper use. It was not difficult for one to come into possession of a seal from Acworth and in fact they were often used as key rings. It was shown that the official in charge of the electric service of the City of Acworth had come into possession of a pamphlet showing by diagram and written description how electrical service could be disrupted or distorted by use of various types of devices attached to the meter or jamming of the meter. A copy of this pamphlet had been given to the Chief of Police of the City of Acworth.
In May, 1978, a meter reader for the City of Marietta, observed that the meter at the home of Williams had upon it a red seal (apparently coming from the City of Acworth). This indicated to the reader, who accepted it as a Marietta seal, that the meter should have been turned off for nonpayment of bill; yet the meter was obviously running. In accordance with established procedure, the reader filled out a standard card noting the discrepancy and turned the card in to his supervisor. The supervisor went to Williams' home and after informing Williams of the discrepancy, removed the meter and took it to the area where meters were examined. The investigation disclosed that the meter had had the cover removed and two cables attached to the circuit so that at least half of the current going into the house did not pass through the meter for recordation. A red seal from the City of Acworth had replaced the Marietta seal. The supervisor whose responsibility was to investigate meter tampering cases and who had investigated hundreds of such cases had never seen such a sophisticated by-pass procedure utilized. The pamphlet which had been given to the Chief of Police of Acworth described a similar procedure. Though the witnesses could not state with any degree of accuracy the amount of electricity being used or how long the cables had been in use, based upon the history of electric power use at the Williams' home, it was concluded that the by-pass had been in use only for a month or two. After a trial before a jury, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Williams brings this appeal enumerating as error the admission into evidence of the card prepared by the meter reader showing that he had discovered a meter that should have been in non-use for delinquent payment of electric bill (evidenced by the attachment to the meter of a red seal); the admission of the meter and red seal itself because of a break in chain of custody; a copy of the listing of monthly billings for electric service to the Williams' home; and the copy of the pamphlet because there was no showing that Williams was ever in possession thereof. In his last enumeration, Williams complained that the trial court erred in denying his motion for directed verdict of acquittal because the evidence did not show that Williams intentionally tampered with the meter with intent to prevent the meter from registering properly or to divert any services. Held:
1. Questions of the relevancy of evidence are for the court. Hotchkiss v. Newton, 10 Ga. 560. When facts are such that the jury, if permitted to hear them, may or may not make an inference pertinent to the issue, according to the view which they may take of them, in connection with the other facts in evidence, they are such that the jury ought to be permitted to hear them. Walker v. Roberts, 20 Ga. 15 (1); Brown v. Wilson, 55 Ga. App. 262 (1) ( 189 S.E. 860). That the testimony objected to falls short of proving the fact sought to be established, is not in itself sufficient reason for excluding it, provided that it, alone or in connection with other testimony, tends to prove the matter in issue. Livingston v. Barnett, 193 Ga. 640 (3a) ( 19 S.E.2d 385). As was further stated in McNabb v. State, 70 Ga. App. 798, 799 ( 29 S.E.2d 643): "Any evidence is relevant which logically tends to prove or to disprove a material fact which is at issue in the case, and every act or circumstance serving to elucidate or to throw light upon a material issue or issues is relevant." See Harris v. State, 142 Ga. App. 37, 41 (7) ( 234 S.E.2d 798); Garner v. State, 83 Ga. App. 178, 184 ( 63 S.E.2d 225).
In this case, we have no hesitancy in concluding the state established that the card prepared by the meter reader was prepared in the regular course of business and thus was admissible on its own merits. See Bramblett v. State, 139 Ga. App. 745, 749 ( 229 S.E.2d 484); Pickett v. State, 123 Ga. App. 1 (2) ( 179 S.E.2d 303). The meter itself with the seal attached was identified by the supervisor as being unique and having an individualized serial number. Unlike fungible items, distinct physical objects which can be identified upon mere observation require no custodial proof for their admission. Ramey v. State, 238 Ga. 111, 113 (4) ( 230 S.E.2d 891); Hayes v. State, 138 Ga. App. 223, 225 ( 225 S.E.2d 749). Moreover, we conclude that there was sufficient connection between the pamphlet, the appellant, and the unique way in which the meter had been modified, to warrant the trial court in admitting the pamphlet. Circumstantially, the pamphlet shed light on how a police officer might be aware of how to make so sophisticated a modification to an electric meter. Where the relevancy or competence of evidence is doubtful, it should be admitted and its weight left to the determination of the jury. Guy v. State, 138 Ga. App. 11, 13 ( 225 S.E.2d 492). The same observation can be made about the card prepared by the supervisor to show the monthly amounts of electricity used by Williams over the past several years. There was no objection made to the testimony and indeed the appellant himself adduced further testimony based upon the information contained upon the card. The admission of the document was thus cumulative to the oral testimony showing the monthly billings for electrical service. No objection being made to the oral testimony which established the billings for the months directly in contention, there could hardly be any prejudice resulting from the cumulative evidence contained on the document. See Crosswell v. Arten Const. Co., 152 Ga. App. 162, 165 ( 262 S.E.2d 522); Holmes v. State, 148 Ga. App. 817 (1) ( 253 S.E.2d 237).
Having examined the admissibility of each of the questioned pieces of real evidence, and considering that each of the parties utilized the evidence and elicited substantial testimony concerning each without objection being entered as to the oral testimony, we find no error in the admission of each over the objection of the appellant.
2. In his second enumeration of error, appellant complains that the trial court erred in refusing to direct a verdict of acquittal because the state had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Williams had intentionally modified the meter in question, nor excluded the possibility that because Williams was a police officer, someone had "framed" him. To set aside a conviction, it is not sufficient that the circumstantial evidence show that the act might possibly have been done by someone else. Hunter v. State, 91 Ga. App. 136, 138 ( 85 S.E.2d 90). The evidence need only exclude every reasonable hypothesis save the guilt of the accused, which is primarily a question for determination by the jury. Workman v. State, 137 Ga. App. 746 (1) ( 224 S.E.2d 757). Under the facts of this case, the jury was authorized by the evidence to find Williams guilty; thus we, as an appellate court, are not inclined to disturb the verdict of the jury. Harris v. State, 236 Ga. 766, 767 ( 225 S.E.2d 263). While the verdict was not demanded, we are satisfied that the quantum and quality of evidence was sufficient to satisfy any rational trier of fact of the guilt of the appellant beyond a reasonable doubt. Boyd v. State, 244 Ga. 130, 132 (5) ( 259 S.E.2d 71); Turner v. State, 151 Ga. App. 169, 170 ( 259 S.E.2d 171).
Judgment affirmed. Deen, C. J., and Sognier, J., concur.
SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 6, 1980 — DECIDED MARCH 13, 1980.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4615
|
__label__cc
| 0.679265
| 0.320735
|
Tough love [sound recording] / Jessie Ware.
Ware, Jessie (Composer, Performer). Miguel (Performer). Ekko, Mikky (Performer). Sampha (Musician) (Performer). Ford, James D., drummer (Producer, Performer). Okumu, David (Producer, Performer). Wilkins, Lucy (Performer). Dods, Alison (Performer). Pigott-Smith, Tom (Performer). Robinson, Kate, violinist. (Performer). Koster, Rick, violinist. (Performer). Cameron, Gillon. (Performer). De La Mare, Calina. (Performer). Herbert, Sally (Performer). Singleton, Julia. (Performer). Melhuish, Laura. (Performer). Greene, Vince (Performer). Spriggs, Robert. (Performer). Langford, Oliver (Performer). Matthews, Vicky, violoncellist (Performer). Byers, Jonny (Performer). Sheeran, Ed, 1991- (Performer). Wüthrich, Aryn. (Performer). Sclafani, Chris, vocalist (Performer). Levin, Jeremy (Performer). Levin, Andrew (Performer). Ash, Ben (Performer). Dew, Sam (Performer). Hynes, Devonté (Performer). Taylor, Leo (Drummer) (Performer). Kummrow, Emma (Performer). Mazzocchi, Luigi (Performer). Lee, Jennifer (Violinist) (Performer). Epsy, Blake (Violinist) (Added Author). Kim, Jonathan (Performer). Fischbach, Glenn (Performer). Peterson, Phil, violoncellist (Performer). Butman, Daniel (Added Author). Jefferies, Paul (Musician) (Producer, Performer). Chin, Mitchum (Performer). Watanabe, Yoko (Producer). Takahashi, Umi (Producer). Haynie, Emile (Producer). Bashmore, Julio (Producer). BenZel (Producer).
CD Music recording
Stan Getz Library CD 38048 37684001087380 Annex Copy hold / Volume hold Available -
Physical Description: 1 audio disc : CD audio, digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Publisher: [Santa Monica, CA] : Interscope, [2014]
Copyright: ℗2014
Compact disc.
Tough love -- You & I (forever) -- Cruel -- Say you love me -- Sweetest song -- Kind of, sometimes, maybe -- Want your feeling -- Pieces -- Keep on lying -- Champagne kisses -- Desire.
Jessie Ware.
Subject: Rhythm and blues music.
Rock music > 2011-2020.
Popular music > 2011-2020.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4617
|
__label__wiki
| 0.776241
| 0.776241
|
"Nin, Anaïs"
Not Coded (15)
Biography & Autobiography (12)
Literary Figures (12)
Personal Memoirs (1)
Short Stories (single Author) (2)
Authors, American -- 20th century -- Diaries (3)
Nin, Ana�is, -- 1903-1977 -- Diaries (2)
Miller, Henry, -- 1891-1980 -- Relations with women (1)
Paris (France) -- Fiction (1)
Six Months (15)
Quarter (15)
Nin, Anais (15)
Nin, Ana�is, 1903-1977 (3)
Miller, Henry (1)
Main Library (Curbside Pickup) (3)
Oliver La Farge (Curbside Pickup) (2)
Southside (Curbside Pickup) (1)
Diary of Anaïs Nin (4)
From a Journal of Love (2)
Unrated (18)
Entire Collection (19)
1) Tropic of cancer
Fiction Miller, H
[2004?], c1961 xxxiii, 318 p. ; 21 cm.
[1961] 287 p.
Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with...
2) The early diary of Ana�is Nin
Nin, Ana�is
BIO NIN, A
c1978-1985 1st ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 4 v. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm. English
3) Incest: from a journal of love : the unexpurgated diary of Ana�is Nin, 1932-1934
c1992 1st ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich xi, 418 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. English
4) Henry and June: from the unexpurgated diary of Ana�is Nin
c1986 1st ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich viii, 274 p. ; 24 cm. English
5) Incest
Nin, Anais
The trailblazing memoirist and author of Henry & June recounts her relationships with Henry Miller and others-including her own father. Writing with uncensored white heat, Anaïs Nin's diaries were like a broad-minded confidante with whom she shared the liberating psychosexual dramas of her life. In this continuation of her notorious Henry & June, she recounts a particularly turbulent period between 1932 and 1934, and the men who dominated it: her...
6) Fire
The renowned diarist continues the story begun in Henry and June and Incest. Drawing from the author's original, uncensored journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin's journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo Moré, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair...
7) Linotte
Born in Paris, Anaïs Nin started her celebrated diary at age eleven, when she was immigrating to New York with her mother and two young brothers. The diary became her confidant, her beloved friend, in which she recorded her most intimate thoughts and kept watch on the state of her character. Offering an amusing view of Nin's early life, from age eleven to seventeen, it is also a self-portrait of an innocent girl who is transformed, through her own...
8) Little Birds
Evocative and superbly erotic, Little Birds is a powerful journey into the mysterious world of sex and sensuality. From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.
9) A Literate Passion
This exchange of letters between the two controversial writers-Anaïs Nin, renowned for her candid and personal diaries, and Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer-paints a portrait of more than two decades in their complex relationship as it moves through periods of passion, friendship, estrangement, and reconciliation.
10) Delta of Venus
An extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from the mistress of erotic writing In Delta of Venus, Anais Nin pens a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hat maker named...
11) In Favor of the Sensitive Man
Essays, lectures, and interviews-on everything from gender relations to Ingmar Bergman to adventure travel-from the renowned diarist. In this collection, the author known for 'one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters' shares her unique perceptions of people, places, and the arts (Los Angeles Times). In the opening group of essays, 'Women and Men,' Anaïs Nin provides the kind of sensitive insights into the feminine psyche and...
12) The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955
Spanning from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, this volume covers the author's experiences in Mexico, California, New York, and Paris; her psychoanalysis; and her experiment with LSD.
Anaïs Nin continues "one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters" with this volume covering more than a decade of her midcentury life (Los Angeles Times). She debates the use of drugs versus the artist's imagination; portrays many famous people in the arts; and recounts her visits to Sweden, the Brussels World's Fair, Paris, and Venice.
Beginning with the author's arrival in New York, this diary recounts Anaïs Nin's work as a psychoanalyst, and is filled with the stories of her analytical patients-as well as her musings over the challenges facing the artist in the modern world. The diary of this remarkably daring and candid woman provides a deeply intimate look inside her mind, as well as a fascinating chapter in her tumultuous life in the latter years of the 1930s.
Nin's years of struggle and final triumph as an author in America. "Transcending mere self-revelation... the diary examines human personality with a depth and understanding seldom surpassed since Proust...dream and fact are balanced and...in their joining lie the elements of masterpiece...
The renowned diarist continues her record of her personal, professional, and artistic life, recounting her experiences in Greenwich Village for several years in the late 1940s, where she defends young writers against the Establishment-and her trip across the country in an old Ford to California and Mexico.
The seventh and final volume of the author's 'remarkable' diary is filled with the reflections of an older woman as she journeys through the world (Los Angeles Times). 'One of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters' ends as the author wished: not with her last two years of pain but at a joyous moment on a trip to Bali (Los Angeles Times). As she ages, Anaïs Nin reflects on how the deeply personal and introspective nature of her writings...
18) The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927
In this volume of her earlier series of personal diaries, Anaïs Nin tells how she exorcised the obsession that threatened her marriage-and nearly drove her to suicide.
The diarist's account of her life in the early 1920s explores 'the conflict she felt between artistic longings and her pre-ordained female fate' (The Detroit News). Continuing the journey of self-education and self-discovery she began in Linotte, Anaïs Nin discloses a part of her life that had previously remained private. She discusses the period in which she met Hugo Guiler, the young man who later became her husband, and made the wrenching transition...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4618
|
__label__cc
| 0.526455
| 0.473545
|
Colombo Business Journal
Reading: The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Inve...
View Harvard Citation Style
View Vancouver Citation Style
View APA Citation Style
Alt. Display
The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance
Balaji Kanagasabai ,
University of Madras, IN
About Balaji
Department of Management Studies
Vaneeta Aggarwal
About Vaneeta
The main objective of this research paper is to study the impact of financial literacy on investment performance, with the mediating effects of risk tolerance. Data was collected using a standardised questionnaire from 203 individual investors in Chennai, India and the results indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between financial literacy and investment performance while the level of risk tolerance is partially mediating that relationship. This study is the first of its kind which has explored the mediating role of risk tolerance, and it demonstrated that higher levels of financial literacy make investors more tolerant towards risk which in turn makes a better and satisfying investment performance. This study has several implications for investors, financial advisors and policymakers. It also aids in understanding the significance of financial literacy for the investors and ameliorating awareness and intention to invest among the non-investors.
Keywords: Financial Literacy, Investment Performance, Risk Tolerance, Structural Equation Modelling
How to Cite: Kanagasabai, B. and Aggarwal, V., 2020. The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance. Colombo Business Journal, 11(1), pp.83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Published on 30 Jun 2020.
Kanagasabai, B. and Aggarwal, V., 2020. The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance. Colombo Business Journal, 11(1), pp.83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai B, Aggarwal V. The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance. Colombo Business Journal. 2020;11(1):83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai, B., & Aggarwal, V. (2020). The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance. Colombo Business Journal, 11(1), 83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai B and Aggarwal V, ‘The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship Between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance’ (2020) 11 Colombo Business Journal 83 DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai, Balaji, and Vaneeta Aggarwal. 2020. “The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship Between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance”. Colombo Business Journal 11 (1): 83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai, Balaji, and Vaneeta Aggarwal. “The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship Between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance”. Colombo Business Journal 11, no. 1 (2020): 83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Kanagasabai, B.and V. Aggarwal. “The Mediating Role of Risk Tolerance in the Relationship Between Financial Literacy and Investment Performance”. Colombo Business Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, 2020, pp. 83–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/cbj.v11i1.58
Jump to Discussions
Published by Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Colombo
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4621
|
__label__wiki
| 0.883002
| 0.883002
|
Posts tagged: Foreign Correspondents Club of China
But if not the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, Then What?
By Elizabeth M. Lynch, July 18, 2012
Part 3 of a three part series on the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act & foreign journalists in China
(Click here for Part 1; click here for Part 2)
There is a chance that passage of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act could result in China granting visas to U.S. government journalist, but that possibility is slim. The effects of passage of the Act mentioned in Part 1 – the eradication of the Chinese press in the U.S., an all out visa war, and greater suppression of freedom of the press – are much more likely and not positive. But the U.S. does not have to sit back and just watch the Chinese government harass and censor their journalists. Below are some less extreme alternatives that the U.S. government can conduct to express its displeasure with the Chinese government and perhaps change the current situation.
Alternative #1: Raise the Issue When it Happens
The U.S government’s tepid response to Melissa Chan’s unlawful expulsion was a missed opportunity to underscore the U.S.’ commitment to freedom of the press to the Chinese government. The Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is not necessary if the U.S. government publicly stresses that this is an important issue. While some may argue that private diplomacy and comments work better with China, the current Administration has publicly censure China when its behavior bucks international human right standards. As recently as last Tuesday, while on a trip to Mongolia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly criticized China for its lack of freedom for its own people.
Similarly, if freedom of the press means something, after Melissa Chan’s expulsion, the U.S. State Department should have issued an official statement from a high ranking official reprimanding China for unlawfully using the visa process to censor foreign journalist coverage. Perhaps such a statement would have given Beijing pause and might cause it to change from its current course of conduct. But a mere statement of “disappoint” permits Beijing to continue harassing foreign journalists and interfering with their coverage by threatening to deny visa renewals. Rhetoric can make a difference or at the very least serve as a signaling device to Beijing that this is an important issue that the U.S. government is not going to take lightly.
Alternative #2: List the Harassment of U.S. Journalists on its Website
The Foreign Correspondent Club of China (“FCCC”) previously posted their members’ incidents reports and the yearly surveys on their website. But since February 2011, the FCCC is no longer posting the reports or the surveys because of increasing pressure from the Chinese government. As Peter Ford, president of the FCCC, told China Law & Policy, the FCCC removed mention of the incident reports because “the [Chinese] Foreign Ministry threatened the FCCC president and other officers with unspecified ‘serious consequences’ if the club continued to make public statements that the government regarded as political. To ensure the club’s continued existence we have since limited our public statements to particularly egregious violations of our journalistic rights and freedoms, such as physical injuries sustained by foreign reporters at police hands and Melissa Chan’s expulsion.”
Ambassador to China Gary Locke - can he help protect US journalists?
The public availability of the incident reports provided an important look into the treatment of foreign journalists in China, including their visa issues. But with the Chinese government’s censorship of the FCCC, that important information is no longer available and it becomes difficult to know the current situation in Beijing.
But the U.S. Embassy in Beijing can serve this function by posting U.S. journalists’ incident reports. At the very least, they can list the issues that U.S. journalists are having with the visa process serving two purposes: informing its citizens about the j-visa process and highlighting to the Chinese government that this is a serious matter that the Embassy plans to monitor. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing does something similar for air pollution; the Embassy has a page dedicated to listing air quality reports every hour. This webpage has irked the Chinese government since the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection hosts a similar webpage but usually with more positive air quality numbers, making apparent that someone is not telling the truth. There is no reason why the same can’t be done with U.S. journalists in China.
Alternative #3: Deny a Visa
But another reason why the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is not necessary – and another tool that can be used to protect our journalists in Beijing – is that the U.S. can deny visas under current law. The Immigration and Nationality Act provides the executive branch with a list of circumstances, which at times are very vague, where the government can deny a visa. Section 212(a)(3)(C) allows the State Department to deny a visa if there are adverse foreign policy concerns: “An alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.” Within the courts, the executive branch is given almost exclusive deference in immigration and visa decisions. See Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972).
If rhetoric does not work with the Chinese government, the U.S. government can threaten to deny a visa to a single Chinese reporter. This might do the trick without damaging freedom of the press too much. In “The Visa Dimension of Diplomacy,” Prof. Kevin D. Stringer analyzed the use of visas as a diplomatic tool. Although Stringer is not keen on the denial of a visa as a sanctioning tool, he does note that on occasion it has produced positive results. After India unexpectedly conducted nuclear tests in 1998, the U.S. denied a visa to Dr. R. Chidambaram, the Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, who had come to the U.S. multiple times before.
The denial was symbolic but had a larger psychological impact on Indians on work visas or those who wanted to send their children to a U.S. college.; would their visas be denied as well? How far would the U.S. go?
Similarly, the U.S. government could threaten to deny – or just not process – a visa to a key Chinese reporter. In February 2012, to much fanfare in China, the Chinese government launched CCTV America, based in Washington, D.C. A threat to deny a visa to one of their top reporters or directors could put the Chinese on notice that the U.S. is not going to stand for the harassment of U.S. reporters abroad. Similar to the 1998 India situation, given the large number of political elites’ children who attend college in America, a single visa denial could have a similar psychological impact on influential elites in China.
The U.S. does not have to pass the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, but it does need to communicate its displeasure with the way foreign correspondents are treated in China. There are other avenues to do that but one thing is clear, the U.S. government must start raising this issue otherwise things will only continue to deteriorate as it has for the past three years.
To see Part 1, click here; to see Part 2, click here
Censorship, Human Rights | Al Jazeera, China, Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, expulsion, FCCC, Foreign Correspondents Club of China, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, Immigration and Nationality Act, journalists, Kevin D. Stringer, Kleindienst v. Mandel, Melissa Chan, Peter Ford, press freedom, State Department, US Embassy, visa, visa diplomacy
The Chinese Media Reciprocity Act and Censorship of Foreign Journalists in China
Part 2 in a three part series on the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act & foreign journalists in China
(For Part 1, click here)
Putting aside the shrill rhetoric surrounding the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act and the fact that it only deals with the harassment of a small segment of U.S. journalists in China (the VOA and RFA reporters), the Act does draw attention to an increasingly problematic issue: the Chinese governments harassment of foreign journalists through the visa process. It also raises the question: what should the U.S. government be doing about this harassment?
The Visa Renewal Process for Foreign Journalists – a Censoring Tool?
In the past two years, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (“FCCC”) has documented an increasing number of incidents where the Chinese government threatens not to renew a visa or unnecessarily delays the visa renewal process. In China, a journalist visa (“j-visa) is only for a year and must be renewed every December. What should be a routine event has turned into an anxiety-ridden occasion. In 2011, the FCCC started focusing on the difficulties some of its members experienced in renewing their visas. A 2011 FCCC survey reported that 27 foreign journalists waited four months for a visa renewal. According to Peter Ford, president of the FCCC, the FCCC considers waiting more than three months for a visa for a permanent correspondent excessive (for a temporary correspondent the FCCC believes it should only be a 30 day wait). Thirteen journalists waited six months for a visa; and for three, their visa applications have been pending since 2009.
For 2012, the numbers have only gotten worse. In the FCCC’s 2012 survey, released on May 31, close to a third of all respondents (36 out of 111 respondents) reported difficulty with renewing their j-visas or obtaining visas for new colleagues.[1] Furthermore, the FCCC’s 2012 survey found that 21 of these reporters were told or believed that their visa difficulties were a direct result of their China coverage, demonstrating the Chinese government’s attempt to censor foreign correspondents by threatening their j-visa. Peter Ford, president of the FCCC, told China Law & Policy that he doesn’t think that these threats and the continued harassment has had a chilling effect on foreign reporters’ China coverage.
It’s true that great and hard-hitting stories still make their way to our shores and maybe we just haven’t hit that tipping point. But if China increases its pressure on foreign journalists, at what point will they crack and soften their stories? A loss of a visa, especially for freelance journalists, could easily mean a loss of one’s livelihood.
A Foreign Correspondent Expelled from China: Becoming More than Just a Visa Problem
This past May, the Chinese government took the bold step of kicking out a foreign journalist: Melissa Chan, a U.S. citizen and long-time Al Jazeera English correspondent in Beijing. The reason for Chan’s expulsion from China? We don’t know. The Chinese government has elected not to share that information. But most speculate that it was a result of the Chinese government’s displeasure with Al Jazeera’s documentary of Chinese forced labor camps, a documentary that Chan played no role in filming and it was produced out of Al Jazeera’s London bureau. Likely though, Chan’s hard-hitting coverage of official corruption, government land grabs, black jails and other sensitive topics didn’t help her case. Prior to her expulsion, Chan was already being harassed: her visa was not renewed for another year, instead she was on three short-term visas, probably to keep her on a “tight leash.”
Al Jazeera English China correspondant, Melissa Chan (photo from Al Jazeera)
Is Chan’s treatment a bell weather for other reporters? Soon after Chan’s departure, Ford, as then president-elect of the FCCC was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the body which, in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Security, oversees foreign journalists) and was reassured that Chan’s case was “sui generis.” “I was assured by a Ministry official that Melissa’s case was specific to her and other correspondents had nothing to fear.” But as Ford went on to muse, the official’s statement only provided so much solace to the remaining correspondents in China; as long as the Chinese government continues to be mum on those specifics and persists in using the visa process as a censorship tool, other foreign correspondents don’t know if they have crossed that line that Chan crossed until they actually cross it.
As discussed in Part 1 of this series, one reason to oppose the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is a belief in freedom of the press. One would think that the U.S. government would have a particular interest in guaranteeing that journalists around the world – especially foreign journalists abroad – are left unharassed and are free to report their stories. But the U.S.’ reaction to the expulsion of one of its citizens questions this commitment. In a single press briefing, Department of State deputy spokesperson, Mark C. Toner, expressed the Department’s “disappointment:” “I would just say that we’re disappointed in the Chinese Government – in how the Chinese Government decided not to renew her accreditation. To our knowledge, she operated and reported in accordance with Chinese law, including regulations that permit foreign journalists to operate freely in China.”
True Chan was not working for a U.S. media organization and instead was working for Al Jazeera, and her expulsion came soon after the difficult negotiation on Chen Guangcheng, but regardless, one would think that the U.S. government, the stalwart of press freedom, would have been more than just “disappointed.” Even if the U.S. government did not want to raise the issue of an Al Jazeera reporter, it could have used Chan’s expulsion to highlight the case of Andrew Higgins, one of the Washington Post’s China correspondent who since 2009 has been waiting for a j-visa to enter China.
If freedom of the press is so important, how can we just sit back and watch the Chinese government toy with and try to influence any U.S. reporter, even one working for private news outlets? What can the U.S. do to try to change this situation in China?
To be concluded in Part 3
[1] The FCCC’s “2012 FCCC Correspondent Member Survey Highlights” is on file with China Law & Policy. To obtain a copy, please email fcccadmin@gmail.com.
Censorship, Human Rights | Al Jazeera, Andrew Higgins, China, Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, expulsion, FCCC, Foreign Correspondents Club of China, journalists, Melissa Chan, Peter Ford, press freedom, Radio Free Asia, RFA, visa, visa diplomacy, VOA, Voice of America, Washington Post
What is Wrong With the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on the “Chinese Media Reciprocity Act” (H.R. 2899), a bill introduced last fall by Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California. The Act attempts to combat China’s restrictive visa policies for U.S. government-employed journalists. Instead of issuing journalist visas to most if not all Chinese journalists in the U.S., the Act would require that the number of visas issued to Chinese government journalists be identical to the number of visas that China issues to U.S. government reporters.
In reality, the impact of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is anything but reciprocal. The U.S. has two government-sponsored news agencies in (or trying to get in) China: Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA); the remaining U.S. journalists in China work for private media outlets. China on the other hand, with its state-owned media, has 13government-run agencies and over 800 media personnel working in the U.S. If passed, within 30 days, the State Department would be required to revoke the number of visas issued to Chinese journalists to equal the number of visas issued to American government journalists in China which currently stands at 2. The Act would all but eliminate a Chinese media presence in the U.S.
Given its extreme and inflexible nature, the Act shouldn’t be passed. But it does highlight a truly important issue: the harassment, censorship and expulsion of foreign journalists from China and raises the issue of what the U.S government should do about it.
The Act has many problems. First, it solely focuses on China, giving it the air of a Chinese Exclusion Act. China is not the only country which denies foreign journalists visas – a quick review of the worst countries for journalists on Reporters Without Borders’ website reveals that Burma, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea similarly deny foreign journalists visas. But this Act is exclusively about China.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Second, the rhetoric by the Act’s proponents leads one to believe that they are more motivated by a Cold War mentality than a true concern about U.S. journalists’ access in China. Rep. Rohrabacher’s testimony in support of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is filled with red herrings concerning Confucius Institutes, billboards in Times Square, and the Chinese purchase of AMC movie theaters (in order to flood the US with Chinese propaganda films). Testimony by John Lenczowski focused more on Russian spies in the US Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War than the actual treatment of U.S. journalists in China today.
Third, passage of the Act could lead to even worse retaliation by China. China repeatedly harasses the two VOA reporters in China (see Nick Zahn’s testimony, p. 5-6) and it has consistently denied visas to RFA reporters. Perhaps the most famous incident was when the Chinese government rescinded the RFA reporters’ visas only days before they were to accompany President Clinton on his 1998 trip to China.
But other major media outlets, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN, just to name a few, have reporters on the ground in China doing some hard hitting reporting. Yes these reporters are also often harassed and are often forced to wait months for a visa or are threatened by the Chinese security apparatus that visa renewal will be denied (one of the Washington Post’s China reporters – Andrew Higgins – has been waiting for a visa since 2009, forced to report from Hong Kong). But in general, most reporters are able to renew their visas and solid reporting from China is able to make it to our shores. But some, like the Committee to Protect Journalists, warn that passage of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act could lead to an all out visa war, resulting in China denying a greater number of visas and exacerbating an already tense situation for foreign journalists there.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, is this who we want to be? A free and vibrant press has been a central tenet of the United States; it was crucial to the success of the American Revolution, is encapsulated within the First Amendment, and is rarely if ever abridged. As Americans, we understand that the press is a building block to creating a government truly accountable to its people; unfettered press access is an important goal in and of itself.
In recent years, China has seen some developments in a more professionalized and freer press. Yes, the Chinese press still has to take its most of its cues from the Chinese government, but there has been some development in more real reporting (see Susan Shirk’s Changing Media, Changing China ). But by essentially eradicating the Chinese press from U.S. shores, the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act undermines our goals of this burgeoning freedom of the press in China. Even the reporters harassed by the Chinese government do not agree with such actions. Peter Ford, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (“FCCC”), told China Law & Policy that they “do not support efforts to restrict press freedom in one country in an effort to improve press freedom in another. We remain committed to freedom of the press.”
But all the attention surrounding the Act raises the issue of Beijing’s treatment of foreign journalists. Is there anything the U.S. can do to change what appears to be the Chinese government’s increased harassment of foreign journalists?
Continued in Part 2
Censorship, Human Rights | Andrew Higgins, Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, Dana Rohrabacher, FCCC, Foreign Correspondents Club of China, Peter Ford, press freedom, Radio Free Asia, RFA, visa, VOA, Voice of America, Washington Post
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4627
|
__label__wiki
| 0.508417
| 0.508417
|
West Hartford Christian Lawyers
West Hartford Christian Tax Lawyers
Find the right Christian Tax attorney in West Hartford, CT
Christian Tax Lawyers in West Hartford
Dealing with taxes can be time-consuming and even daunting for some people. However, finding a reliable Christian tax lawyer in West Hartford, Connecticut doesn't have to make things more difficult. LegalMatch provides a simple, online attorney-client matching service in your area.
Many tax projects can be exceedingly complicated, especially when it comes to business or charity rules. For most cases, you'll need to work closely with a tax attorney regarding any legal disputes or issues you may have that involve taxes. Some clients will feel more comfortable if they can work with a Christian tax attorney for major projects, as this may lessen the chances of a conflict of interest during the process.
LegalMatch's one-of-a-kind lawyer-client matching system can put you directly in touch with a Christian tax attorney in West Hartford, Connecticut. Connecticut may have some unique laws when it comes to taxes. However, an accomplished Christian tax lawyer can provide you with legal assistance, in a manner that is both ethical and efficient.
The Necessity of Finding an Experienced Tax Lawyer in West Hartford, Connecticut
Did you know that many tax violations are simply the result of carelessness or error? Many people don't have a complete understanding of the tax laws in Connecticut. However, many legal issues can be avoided by hiring a reliable tax attorney. An experienced tax attorney will have a thorough grasp of the tax laws that govern you and your family.
Whatever your legal needs are, it is to your benefit to hire a Christian tax attorney who practices in West Hartford, Connecticut. Working with an attorney with similar values and beliefs can help you avoid attorney/client conflicts, and will help make the legal process much more efficient. In addition, your attorney can answer any additional questions you may have concerning state and federal tax codes.
How Can a West Hartford Christian Tax Lawyer Help?
West Hartford Christian tax attorneys can provide you with the legal advice and guidance that you need for your tax issues. Additionally, your lawyer can represent you during a lawsuit if a dispute arises. LegalMatch can help make finding an attorney much easier for you. Simply fill out our online questionnaire to be matched with an experienced Christian lawyer in West Hartford today.
Life in West Hartford
West Hartford is a Connecticut town located in Hartford County. It has a population of about 64,000 people and was officially incorporated in 1854. It has consistently been ranked as one of the top cities to live in by magazines such as CNN Money and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. West Hartford has been described as a "vacation-worthy" hot spot, as the city features many cutting-edge shopping destinations and restaurants.
For example, some popular destinations in West Hartford include Blue Black Square, Elizabeth Park, Westfarms Mall, and West Hartford Center. West Hartford Center is considered to be the hub or center of the West Hartford community. It has been a gathering place for city residents since the late 17th century.
In addition to West Hartford's thriving economic scene, the city boasts a number of colleges and universities. These include the University of Connecticut Greater Hartford Campus, Saint Joseph College, and the University of Hartford. Notable West Hartford residents have included NBA player Manute Bol and actor John O'Hurley (Peterman from the "Seinfeld" television series).
Lawyers in West Hartford, Connecticut typically assist their clients at the Hartford County Superior Court. Many West Hartford lawyers further contribute to the community through such organizations as the Hartford County Bar Association.
West Hartford Christian Family Attorneys
West Hartford Christian Trial Lawyers
West Hartford Christian Bankruptcy Attorneys
West Hartford Christian Divorce Lawyer
West Hartford Christian Criminal Attorney
West Hartford Christian Immigration Lawyer
Christian Tax Lawyers in Branford
Christian Tax Lawyers in Portland
Christian Tax Lawyers in Simsbury
Christian Tax Lawyers in Windsor
Christian Tax Lawyers in Enfield
Christian Tax Lawyers in Preston
Christian Tax Lawyers in Windham
Christian Tax Lawyers in Ledyard
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4630
|
__label__wiki
| 0.744482
| 0.744482
|
Powercat chevron double-chevron chat-purple home computer window with a question mark close facebook linkedin menu search twitter youtube apply-purple apply-white chat-white request-purple request-white Jump to HeaderJump to Main ContentJump to Footer
KSIS
OrgCentral
K-State home
School Counseling Camp
The 2020 camp was held online May 26-27, 2020
2020 Camp Theme: Soaring to New Heights
Sponsored by the K-State College of Education, Kansas State Department of Education, and the Kansas School Counselor Association
2020 Keynote Presenters
Tara Brown
Tara Brown is president of Learner's Edge Consulting and an award-winning educator, author and international speaker. She holds a master's degree in administration and supervision and is a nationally certified personal trainer. Known as ‘The Connection Coach’, Tara’s 30-year professional journey as a teacher and coach has taken her coast to coast from rural Florida to gang territory in California and to one of the largest high schools in Tennessee with over 40 countries represented. She's worked internationally with teachers and youth in Dubai and Beirut.
During the 1990’s, Tara worked with Communities in Schools, the leading nonprofit dropout prevention organization in the nation, and established a successful program at Lindbergh Middle School in Long Beach, California. She worked closely with at-risk teens, many of whom were entrenched in the gang lifestyle, and helped empower them with leadership and life skills to reshape their view of the future.
In 2005, Tara played a key role in piloting a leadership development program at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, targeting nontraditional leaders. Because of the success of this program, it expanded to all high schools in Davidson County and earned Tara the Pioneer and Teacher of the Year awards in 2006. Since leaving the classroom, Tara’s passion and humor continue to drive her work with adults around the globe. Her goal is to motivate, inspire and better equip adults with the ability to connect and have meaningful relationships with kids of all ages, so their potential can truly be unleashed.
Brian Coleman
Brian Coleman is a graduate of Northwestern University and DePaul University. He has served as a school counselor at Jones College Prep since 2014. A former actor, Coleman found his love for education and students while performing with About Face Theatre company and its youth talk-back program. These programs encouraged him to earn his master’s degree in education and pivot into the school counseling field. Coleman recognized that serving as a school counselor would afford him with daily opportunities to “support, validate and affirm the next generation of leaders and change agents.”
As the faculty sponsor to JonesPride, the school’s LGBTQA+ student organization, Coleman became aware of students’ frustration about the lack of resources, relationship support and inclusive language for gender and sexual minorities in the freshman sexual health curriculum. In response, Coleman collaborated with the Student Government Association to spearhead a revised sexual health education program for 377 sophomore students. The program’s success is leading to potential expansion opportunities to freshman, junior and senior students.
Coleman’s holistic approach to school counseling at Jones College Prep includes advocating for expanded education and knowledge for students as well as school staff. According to vice principal Plunkett, in addition to postsecondary planning and academic planning, Coleman has a strong commitment to ensuring the school provides interdisciplinary social/emotional learning supports for all students.
“As a school with college in our name, there tends to be a great deal of focus and energy placed exclusively on students' college and postsecondary planning processes,” Coleman said. “However, we have worked to create a broader awareness that students’ holistic well-being is just as important to their current and future successes.” Coleman, who earned his Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) designation in 2017, collaborated with the school team to create extensive social/emotional programming at the freshman level as well as enhanced the school community’s awareness of social/emotional learning as an important facet of the high school experience.
Dr. Carolyn Stone
At the University of North Florida, Dr. Carolyn Stone teaches and researches legal and ethical issues for school counselors. Prior to becoming a counselor educator in 1995, Carolyn spent 22 years with the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Florida where she served as a middle school teacher, elementary and high school counselor and Supervisor of Guidance. Carolyn was the 2006 President of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA).
Carolyn has chaired the last three revisions of the American School Counselor’s Ethical Standards and is in her seventeenth year as ASCA’s Ethics Chair. She was awarded the Mary Gerke Lifetime Achievement Award by ASCA in 2010 and in 2012 was awarded the Bob Myrick Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida School Counselor Association. Carolyn has delivered over 600 workshops in all 50 states and 22 countries. She has authored six books, dozens of journal articles and serves the courts as an expert witness in cases involving school counselors.
Dr. Shari Sevier
Dr. Sharon (Shari) Sevier is the Director of Advocacy for the Missouri School Counselor Association (MSCA). Prior to her position with MSCA, Dr. Sevier spent 30 years as a school counselor at every level, including work as adjunct faculty in Counselor Education in both New York State and Missouri.
Dr. Sevier served two terms as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the American School Counselor Association, and held many leadership positions in both New York and Missouri school counseling organizations. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor for the State of Missouri. A native of Central New York, Dr. Sevier earned her Certificate of Advanced Studies degree in Counseling Services from the University of New York at Oswego, and her doctorate in Counselor Education from Syracuse University.
NBCC-Approved Continuing Education
The Department of Special Education, Counseling, and Student Affairs (SECSA) at Kansas State University has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 4591. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. SECSA is solely responsible for all aspects of the program.
K-State School Counseling Program Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/KStateSchoolCounseling Y purple large block
K-State School Counseling Program Facebook Page
K-State School Counseling Program Twitter Feed https://twitter.com/KSUCounselorEd Y purple large block
K-State School Counseling Program Twitter Feed
Dr. Ken Hughey
khughey@k-state.edu
Dr. Judy Hughey
jhughey@k-state.edu
006 Bluemont Hall
1114 Mid-Campus Dr. North, Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5525 | 785-532-7304 fax | edcoll@k-state.edu
Statements and Disclosures
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4631
|
__label__cc
| 0.678242
| 0.321758
|
Cold Environments (Threats to Antarctica (Although currently not…
Cold Environments
Threats to Antarctica
Although currently not economically viable, the pursuit of mineral deposits in Antarctica becomes more likely as our reserves elsewhere run out. Although the Antarctic Treaty bans all activities, including mining, this comes up for review in 2048 (so not indefinitely). Mining was banned in 1980
An ozone hole has been widening over the Antarctic for over 30 years, and chemicals produced thousands of miles away are found in the bodies of wildlife
The development of scientific infrastructure, such as bases, has a direct impact on the Antarctic because the construction of buildings and related facilities - roads, storage etc. - can be detrimental
For the very wealthy, tourism in Antarctica is becoming an attractive holiday prospect. However, foot erosion, oil spills from ships carrying passengers and and effects of lots of people on the environment make this a threat to Antarctica - in 2007, there were 37,500 tourists
Why does the Antarctic have a colder environment than the Arctic?
Antarctic has permanent snow cover that reflects the sun's rays rather than absorbs them
Antarctica is mostly highland, and the temperature decreases by 1 degree Celsius for every 100m increase in height
Interior of Antarctica is a great distance from the warming effect of the ocean (the North Pole, where the Arctic is located, is right in the centre of the Arctic ocean)
Over the South Pole, the cold air sinks and then flows outward towards the coasts - Katabatic winds that can reach speeds of 200km/h
Glacial environments at the world's highest latitudes (the poles), a barren landscape with little vegetation because it is so difficult for anything to survive there. Includes most of the Antarctic, the Greenland ice sheet and the frozen Arctic
North Pole = Arctic
South Pole = Antarctic
In the centre of Antarctica, precipitation is very low - less than 50mm a year - and there is little evaporation. Only the peninsula has areas of tundra.
Threats to the Tundra
Alaska is the primary state for the production of oil in the USA, especially during the 1970s -80s. However, in recent years reserves have begun to run out and new areas of Alaska are going to be exploited for oil.
In Prudhoe Bay, north-west of Old Crow, there is high-value oil...
However, the indigenous people the Vuntut Gwitchin have a lifestyle that would be severely disrupted by drilling. There are 7000 of them, of which 300 live at Old Crow. They eat a lot of Caribou which is a sustainable source of food because the population is relatively high and fine to hunt. However, drilling would harm the Caribou and thus the lifestyle of the Vuntut Gwitchen because it is their main source of food. Old Crow is adjacent to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the area is also a nature reserve.
Cold environment not permanently covered by snow and ice, but with constant presence of a permafrost (frozen ground). There is a short growing season during with the uppermost section of the soil begins to thaw out, allowing the growth of some vegetation.
High mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, Alps, Andies and Rockies experience cold temperatures and have characteristics of both the Polar and Tundra areas. Known as alpine areas
Introduction: Types of Cold Environment
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4632
|
__label__wiki
| 0.677247
| 0.677247
|
Harry Harrison and Wally Wood Weird Science #13 (#2) "The Meteor" page 6 Original Art (EC, 1950)....
Resold for:
Harry Harrison and Wally Wood Weird Science #13 (#2) "The Meteor" page 6 Original Art (EC, 1950). One of the finest artists to illustrate the pages of EC Comics, Wally Wood had a style that was instantly recognizable to his legion of fans. Perfectly at home with virtually all of the genre comic books published, for many, Wood's genius shone through most brightly in his science-fiction work, even his earliest efforts with Harry Harrison. This page has an image area of 13" x 18", and it has been framed to an overall size of 18" x 24.5". The art is in Excellent condition.
Jerry Weist's Comic Art Price Guide 2011
Want to know more about this artist? Dates, history, background, and value ranges are covered in the comprehensive new guide. Order Now!
Your knowledge of comic art and the professional, timely, and courteous treatment I received has been superb! You are a class organization to work with, who removed the stress from this whole process. The service and professionalism went beyond my expectations.
P. U.,
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4635
|
__label__cc
| 0.634305
| 0.365695
|
Security Council Working Methods and UN Peace Operations: The Case of Chad and the Central African Republic
This week, the UN General Assembly is debating a resolution proposing improvements to the Security Council's working methods, including the use of the veto. One important theme of the proposed resolution is the need to improve the ways in which the Security Council mandates, discusses and monitors peace operations. To coincide with this debate, the Center on International Cooperation is publishing a new paper by Alexandra Novosseloff and Richard Gowan entitled Security Council Working Methods and UN Peace Operations: The Case of Chad and the Central African Republic.
Author(s) / Contributor(s): Alexandra Novosseloff, Richard Gowan
Topic(s): Fragile States, Global Governance
Knights in Fragile Armor: The Rise of "G7+"
Globally 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by violent conflict. International aid to fragile and conflict-affected states accounts for 30 percent of global official development assistance (ODA) flows. However, no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal (MDG). For the first time, a group of these countries have joined together to discuss their shared development challenges and advocate for better international policies to address their needs.
Topic(s): Fragile States, G8 and G20, Post 2015 Development
The Arab Awakening | America and the Transformation of the Middle East
Even the most seasoned Middle East observers were taken aback by the events of early 2011. Protests born of oppression and socioeconomic frustration erupted throughout the streets; public unrest provoked violent police backlash; long-established dictatorships fell. How did this all happen? What might the future look like, and what are the likely ramifications for the United States and the rest of the world? In The Arab Awakening, experts from the Brookings Institution tackle such questions to make sense of this tumultuous region that remains at the heart of U.S.
Topic(s): Arab Awakening, Fragile States
Thematic Series on More Effective Peace Operations
West African Drug Commission Reports
U.N. Peacekeeping : The Next Five Years
How not to intervene in Syria
A Tribe Apart
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4636
|
__label__cc
| 0.726503
| 0.273497
|
Summer Internship/Fellowship: Southern Environmental Law Center, Summer Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship (Deadline: Sept. 15, 2016, Location in various SELC offices in NC, GA, AL, TN)
Posted on September 6, 2016 by citizenyang
https://www.southernenvironment.org/about-selc/jobs/summer-diversity-and-inclusion-fellowship
This seems like a plum fellowship with a second-largest public interest environmental law firm in the country. Note the $10K award that seems to be awarded at successful completion of fellowship.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is accepting applications for its 2017 Summer Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship. This is a new position to SELC and provides the opportunity to be an integral part of a team working on a full range of issues of particular importance to the South – clean air, clean and adequate water, energy, forests, coasts and communities – in addition to working with our Diversity Coordinator to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It is a 10 week assignment.
The Fellow can expect to do research and writing on litigation or other environmental advocacy in a substantive area as well as on diversity in the workplace. Research may include federal and state environmental statutes and regulations, procedural and evidentiary issues as well as legal and non-legal research on diversity. In addition to research and writing, the Fellow will also participate in strategy sessions, document review, client meetings, site visits, and other aspects of case or project management. At the end of the fellowship, the Fellow will give an oral presentation on a substantive environmental issue and receive extensive feedback.
The Fellow may also observe depositions, hearings, meetings on environmental policy with government officials and leaders of other environmental groups. We hold periodic seminars or lunch and learn sessions to introduce the Fellow to a wide range of environmental issues and projects. Other special events and outings, including a summer hike or canoe trip, are held each summer.
About SELC:
With offices across the region (core offices in Charlottesville, VA; Chapel Hill, NC; Atlanta, GA; and satellite offices in Asheville, NC; Charleston, SC; Birmingham, AL; Washington, DC; Richmond, VA; and Nashville, TN), SELC uses law and policy expertise to protect the South’s natural resources and to preserve our rural countryside and community character. Although our regional focus is the Southeast, much of our work is national in scope and impact. Our legal and policy staff comprises some of the nation’s leading experts in their respective fields, and over its 30 year history, SELC has earned a reputation as one of the most effective environmental organizations in the country. We currently have a staff of over 100.
Criteria for Consideration:
Demonstrated commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion
Demonstrated leadership ability
Interest in environmental or non-profit career
Community service work
Must be a second-year law student attending and in good standing at an American Bar Association accredited law school
Must have a strong undergraduate and law school record
Must possess excellent writing skills
The selected Fellow will receive $500 per week from SELC for the ten-week summer fellowship. SELC does not reduce this amount if the fellow receives additional outside funding. The Fellow will be guaranteed an interview for future associate attorney positions that become available within three years of completion of the fellowship.
The Diversity and Inclusion Fellow will receive a nonrenewable award of $10,000* for his/her community service, academic achievement, and demonstrated diversity work. The $10,000 award is contingent upon accepting and successfully completing the summer fellowship.
*$10,000 less applicable payroll and withholding taxes
Applications should include a cover letter emphasizing your interest in this fellowship, resume, writing sample, transcript or grade report (with date of birth and social security number redacted) and a reference list. The cover letter should include office preference(s) (Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Atlanta, Charleston, Asheville, Birmingham or Nashville) and should specify whether you would also like to be considered for our Summer Clerkship. Applications are due by September 15, 2016. Applications received between September 16 and October 15 will be considered for our Summer Clerkship. Submit applications to:
Brienne McKay
Southern Environmental Law Center
601 West Rosemary St., Suite 220
bmckay@selcnc.org
SELC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is continually seeking to diversify its staff. We strongly encourage applications from persons of all backgrounds.
This entry was posted in Jobs & Other Opportunities by citizenyang. Bookmark the permalink.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4638
|
__label__wiki
| 0.990755
| 0.990755
|
Watch Eric Clapton Join Hawkwind for Eight Songs During U.K. Show
Eric Clapton linked up with Hawkwind for a lengthy guest turn during their show in Guildford, England, part of the space-rock band's 50th anniversary tour.
The ex-Cream guitarist came onstage during "The Watcher," a 1972 track written by future Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister before he split with Hawkwind.
Adding bluesy licks and solos on his Fender Stratocaster, Clapton hung around for the rest of the main set and full encore, playing on seven additional songs: 1970's "Hurry on Sundown," 1971's "Silver Machine" and "Master of the Universe," 1973's "Welcome to the Future," 1975's "Assault and Battery" and "The Golden Void" and 1992's "Right to Decide." Watch below.
Clapton is a longtime friend of singer-guitarist Dave Brock, Hawkwind's lone original member. The pair often played guitar together during their pre-fame teenage years in the early '60s.
Watch Eric Clapton Perform 'The Watcher' With Hawkwind
"It would’ve been about ’63 or ’64 – quite early on," Brock told Music Radar in 2018. "We used to sit around plonking away on guitars. We used to hang out in Richmond because it was a really nice place, and go down Eel Pie Island and meet up in L’Auberge coffee bar. Eric lived in Cobham in Surrey, which isn’t far from there. That’s where everybody used to hang out. We used to sit there and play guitar and swap around — each one of us would have a go. We used to sit in Richmond Park, drinking cider and smoking marijuana."
Clapton was so young that he didn't yet own an instrument. "I used to play blues guitar and Eric didn't have a guitar," Brock told the Quietus in 2011. "We used to sit there and I would show a few chords to him, 'off you go' and then [later] he'd have his guitar, we used to sit there playing together. I've got some photographs from then."
Watch Eric Clapton Perform 'Silver Machine' With Hawkwind
Watch Eric Clapton Perform 'Assault & Battery / Void of Golden Light' With Hawkwind
In another Cream connection, late drummer Ginger Baker played drums on Hawkwind's 1980 record, Levitation. Decades later, Clapton sat in on an orchestral-backed version of "The Watcher" from Hawkwind's 2018 album, Road to Utopia.
Brock has continued to lead Hawkwind across 32 LPs and several live releases. The band's most recent studio effort, All Aboard the Skylark, arrived in October.
Clapton recently played a trio of U.S. shows leading up to his Crossroads Guitar Festival. He released Happy Xmas, his first holiday LP, last year.
Watch Eric Clapton Perform 'Right to Decide' With Hawkwind
Watch Eric Clapton Perform 'Master of the Universe / Welcome to the Future' With Hawkwind
Eric Clapton Albums Ranked
Next: Everything You Need To Know About Hawkwind
Source: Watch Eric Clapton Join Hawkwind for Eight Songs During U.K. Show
Filed Under: eric clapton
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4643
|
__label__cc
| 0.737405
| 0.262595
|
Negative Effects on the U.S. Economy Caused by World War II
ASHLEY SEEHORN
The U. S. engaged in World War II from 1941 until 1945. All the Allied and Axis nations were affected by this war, in both positive and negative ways. Americans recovered from World War I only to face another devastating and costly war with Germany during World War II. The war specifically impacted American society in multiple ways: social, political and economical.
Military Spending vs. Reforms
New Deal Funding Reduced
National Deficit Influences American Daily Lives
Corporate State
Conversion and Reconversion
1 Military Spending vs. Reforms
The U.S. government, despite being run primarily by progressive Democrats, suspended most economic and social reforms in favor of increasing defense expenditures. Antitrust legislation was virtually ignored during this period. Factories lengthened the typical work day to increase production, ignoring labor laws to do so. Businesses throughout the nation suffered from labor shortages due to men leaving to serve in the military. Women entered the labor force in large numbers, and child labor laws were relaxed or even ignored to boost the dwindling workforce. The number of teenagers in the workforce rose from one to three million during the war, about one million of whom dropped out of high school.
2 New Deal Funding Reduced
Congress took the opportunity provided by the war to cut funding to several New Deal agencies. Among the effected organizations were: the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the NYA (National Youth Administration). These organizations were intended to help disadvantaged groups who were typically discriminated against in the job market, including women and minorities. Therefore, these groups were most affected by the reductions in funding to these associations.
3 National Deficit Influences American Daily Lives
The U.S. federal deficit increased as war spending continued to increase. U.S. federal government spending increased from $9 to $98.5 billion during this time. Despite the abundance of employment opportunities during the war, wages were so low that 20 million Americans were living at the poverty level. Twenty-five percent of all workers made below 64 cents per hour. With the reduction in the New Deal programs, these poverty-stricken Americans had little hope of government assistance. Despite harsh economic conditions, the U. S. government encouraged Americans to grow gardens and consume what was needed. In efforts to conserve and save money, food and fuel rations took place during war times.
4 Corporate State
During the war, the U.S. government spent an average of $250 million dollars each day on government contracts. Two-thirds of these government contracts were awarded to the hundred largest corporations in the U.S. This act of favoring big business crippled many small businesses, causing a large majority of them to dissolve due to lack of trade. This, coupled with the slackening of antitrust law enforcement, succeeded in growing big businesses and enmeshing their interests with those of big government.
5 Taxation
World War II was the beginning of the U.S. personal income tax. In 1940 the personal income tax was extended to all working Americans, and the method of deduction from paychecks was instituted. This taxation was necessitated by the increase in government spending for the war effort. Hence, Americans felt the severity of the war. The income tax for much of the working American class increase from 1.5 percent to 15 percent, increasing the cost of living for many families.
6 Conversion and Reconversion
During the war, civilian industry was largely converted to military production. After the war, businesses began the process of reconverting to civilian operations. This change was accompanied by the termination of the women and children who had been employed in these same factories during the war. The termination of these individuals, while necessary for the returning soldiers to enter the workforce, was a huge blow economically to the women and children involved.
1 Auburn University: The Impact of WWII on America's Political Economy
2 World War 2 Facts: Negative Effects on the U.S. Economy Caused by World War 2
3 Texas Gateway by TEA: World War II Impact on U.S. Economy and Society
4 Forbes: The Cost of War
Ashley Seehorn has been writing professionally since 2009. Her work has been featured on a variety of websites including: eHow, Answerbag and Opposing Views Cultures. She has been a teacher for 20 years and has taught all ages from preschool through college. She is currently working as a Special Education Teacher.
The American Economy of the 60s and 70s
Immigrant Restrictions During the Progressive Era
The American Economy During the 1800s
The Effects of the Progressive Era
Canadian Life of the 1920s
Negative Parts of the Industrial Revolution
Where Did European Immigrants Come From During the...
The Embargo Act of 1807 Had What Effects on the US?
Three Causes of Labor Unrest in the 19th Century
The Methodist Church's View on Prohibition
Push & Pull Factors for Italian Immigrants
Conditions for Farmers in the Late 1800s
Farming Tools in the Early 1900s
Domestic Politics in the 1920s & 1930s
Why Did the United States Have Economic and Other Problems...
How Did the Panama Railroad & Canal Affect Population?
The Relationship Between Slavery & Cotton
What Change Took Place in the American Labor Force...
Living Wage Vs. Minimum Wage
How the GDP Affects Supply & Demand
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4644
|
__label__cc
| 0.612514
| 0.387486
|
Collection of plastic waste
Collection of algae
Snow control
Collection of
A cleaning device developed by Clewat is one of the few concrete solutions to the marine plastic waste problem that works.
Plastic waste in the ocean is one of the largest environmental problems, which affects all the seas of the world.
It is estimated that there are currently over 150 million tons of plastic waste in the seas and 10 million tons more of plastic waste are transported annually into the seas. Plastic garbage in the oceans is a threat to marine animals and marine ecosystems, but also to human health.
When plastic particles get into the sea, it won’t disappear, instead, it slowly grinds into microscopically small particles, microplastic.
There are no sea areas in the world where there is no garbage. Every minute one truckload of plastic is dumped into the sea. The sea has been treated as a landfill and the consequences are now visible. The plastic waste must be removed from the water as soon as possible.
We can do better. Already today.
Instead of good intentions for the future, the Clewat solution is available and operating now. We bring new efficiency into the fight for saving the seas. We develop and manufacture water cleaning vessels that are able to clean up garbage and microplastics from waterways. The technology of our vessel is based on the creation and utilization of water flow.
Our product is a catamaran raft which, with the booms in front, collects garbage at the mouth of the vessel, where the water flow is regulated so, that various garbage and impurities end up on the vessel’s conveyor and further sorted into trash. By adjusting the length of the booms, the width of the area to be treated, can be increased even over a kilometer.
A cleaning device developed by Clewat is one of the few concrete solutions to the marine plastic waste problem that works. We are able to collect from the water up to half a millimeter-sized particles, and at most our equipment can collect as much as 200 cubic meters of biomass per hour.
Clewat
Sähköpostiosoite / E-mail:
Copyright © 2021 CleWat Oy. All rights reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4645
|
__label__cc
| 0.683102
| 0.316898
|
Trailer: Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Men movie
Marvel just unveiled their new superhero and X-Men franchise movie and this time, it's a heroine. Dark Phoenix, an upcoming superhero movie that focuses on Jean Grey.
To those who aren't familiar with the X-Men, lets give you a quick rundown. X-Men is a team of superheroes tagged as "Mutants" and are considered enemies of humans. These humans have special abilities and are mostly in a school where Professor X is their leader.
The X-Men has been retold many times and at some point, it focuses on some lead characters such as the Wolverine and now, it's Jean Grey's turn.
In this trailer, we get a glimpse on what the story is all about - Jean Grey.
Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner) appears to be struggling when controlling her psychic powers and she is slowly becoming into something different.
It seems that her powers are getting out of control, take a look at that Police Car - Yikes!
Professor X, bless his soft heart, seems to be looking for the root cause of Jean's problems.
But wait, there's more. And who do we have here? Magneto.
Dark Phoenix will be showing in Cinemas on February 14, 2019.
See full trailer below:
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4651
|
__label__cc
| 0.649266
| 0.350734
|
The human spirit rises above the rubble: A Nepali experience
by The Columnist | Jun 25, 2015
In April 2015, a massive earthquake shook Nepal and killed more than 8,000 people and injured more than 23,000. The Columnist talked to Uzwal Raj Gautam, Chief Secretariat of the Nepal Media Society and Television Broadcasters Nepal, to find out more about the situation in Nepal and its people after the disaster.
Can you share with us what happened to you when the earthquake struck?
It was just a normal, perfect Saturday in Kathmandu, it was the holidays in Nepal and I was enjoying some quality time with my family on the ground floor of our family home. The earthquake struck at about 11.56am local time and the house started to shake. All 6 of us, including my 75-year-old mother and 11-year-old nephew were shouting out God’s name, we were all scared as the quake lasted almost a minute. Fortunately, there were no casualties or damage. Once it was safe enough, we ran out for open space and heard over the radio that there were many casualties and damage in the city area of Kathmandu where the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the hardest. We remained there for the whole day with all our neighbours and others in the community. It was a terrifying experience and we went to a temporary shelter at the Singh Durbar premises and stayed there for 3 days.
In April 2015, a massive earthquake shook Nepal and killed more than 8,000 people and injured more than 23,000 (Source: Uzwal Raj Gautam)
What is the situation in Nepal now after the earthquake?
The earthquake left Kathmandu in a very bad state and many people died because the homes they were in were either weakly constructed or were old. Also, many historically important sites were seriously damaged. Thankfully, the airport was still open, the electricity, water supply and banking systems were not affected seriously. All basic systems and needs were restored within 72 hours with the help of the Nepalese Army, police, locals and other foreign rescue teams. Life is slowly getting back to normal and people are used to feeling small after shocks. Schools are now open and students have resumed their classes. Most government and private offices are also now functioning normally as they did before. However, our economy is seriously affected, with no commercial activity and few tourists as the tourism sector took a hit. I think it will take 3 years for things to go back to pre-earthquake days.
Life is slowly getting back to normal after the earthquake (Source: Uzwal Raj Gautam)
Tell us more about your work and how you and your organisation are helping to build confidence among the Nepalese people?
For the last 7 years, I have been working as the Chief Secretariat of the Nepal Media Society and Television Broadcasters Nepal. I am also part of the association of owners of big private media houses, which produces 8 publications and owns 11 Television companies. Our member organization has started many campaigns to collect donations to hand over to the Prime Minister’s relief fund for quake victims. Although most of our member media houses were seriously affected by the disaster, they are still committed to protecting the right of information for the people.
Beyond humanitarian aid, what does Nepal need? And how can the international community support the recovery efforts of Nepal?
Nepal has requested the international community and donor agencies from all over the world to help and support in re-construction, restoration and rehabilitation. Nepal needs a huge amount of money in the form of a long term soft loan, aid and professional support that will help in this rebuilding effort. The international community can also help by promoting tourism in Nepal and by importing Nepalese products.
How has this natural disaster changed Nepalese society?
The Nepalese people have shown amazing unity, helpfulness and cooperation towards each other. They have spread social harmony and have an attitude that never gives up. Society has changed in many aspects. Like to follow rules and regulations and to adhere to a new code of conduct in the construction of new buildings. We have also learned to face big challenges with unity and support from each other. I hope my experience may help you to understand the current situation. Thank you again for your deep concern and love towards me and to the people of Nepal.
Thank you very much for joining us.
This interview was conducted for The Columnist, a newsletter by Consulus that offers ideas on business, design and world affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Consulus.
Rethinking the Value of Objects: Interview with MUJI’s President, Masaaki Kanai
Transkinect: Renewable Energy by Driving on the Road
Leadership in an Emerging Asia: An Interview with Claire Chiang
K K Hlaing’s Thoughts on Myanmar’s Oil and Gas Sector
On Shariah-compliant Investments: Interview with Managing Editor of Halal Universe
Peace on Earth: An Interview with Rev. Kyoichi Sugino
How to create a sustainable market
Madhu Patel on 27 June 2015 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the coverage on your experience regarding the massive earthquake that shattered so many lives, property etc. And Nepal definitely needs further international help to continue helping to rebuild Nepal.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4652
|
__label__wiki
| 0.867909
| 0.867909
|
Johanne Sutton
Attacks On The Press
Attacks on the Press 2001: Afghanistan
March 26, 2002 12:11 PM EST
In recent years, it had become common for people who care about Afghanistan to worry about its growing invisibility. The all-encompassing burqa gown, which the ruling Taliban forced women to wear, seemed a metaphor for the militia’s efforts to hide Afghanistan’s people and problems from the world. Visits by foreign correspondents were restricted; taking pictures…
37 journalists killed for their work in 2001
January 3, 2002 12:00 PM EST
New York, January 3, 2002–A total of 37 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2001, a sharp increase from 2000 when 24 were killed, according to CPJ research. At least 25 were murdered, almost all with impunity. The dramatic rise is mainly due to the war in Afghanistan, where…
37 periodistas asesinados por su trabajo en el 2001
Nueva York, 3 de enero de 2002 — Un total de 37 periodistas fueron asesinados en todo el mundo como resultado directo de su labor en el 2001, un brusco incremento en relación con el año 2000, cuando 24 fueron asesinados, según las investigaciones del Comité para la Protección de los Periodistas (CPJ, por sus…
Four journalists believed killed
November 19, 2001 12:00 PM EST
November 19, 2001—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the apparent murder of four journalists who were seized yesterday while traveling between Jalalabad and Kabul. The journalists have been identified by their news organizations as Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer for the Reuters news agency; Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman for Reuters;…
CPJ MOURNS THREE JOURNALISTS KILLED ON ASSIGNMENT
New York, November 12, 2001—CPJ is deeply saddened by the deaths of three colleagues killed while reporting in northern Afghanistan. Johanne Sutton, a reporter for Radio France Internationale; Pierre Billaud, a reporter for Radio Television Luxembourg; and Volker Handloik, a free-lance reporter on assignment for the German news magazine Stern, were killed on the evening…
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0015.json.gz/line4653
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.